Wonderful words by Balearic Mike.

“Well it was 55 years ago today…” …or something… 

I’m a bit obsessed with this record, which is strange, because I’m not sure it’s my favourite Beatles album. It’s certainly up there, with that honour bouncing around between Revolver, Abbey Road, Rubber Soul, Sgt. Peppers…, and this, depending on my mood. However, I’m just so intrigued by it. Almost a bit frightened by what’s inside that enigmatic, white, sleeve.

That sleeve seems a good place to start, as it’s the first experience you have of the record. This was the first proper Beatles album since they shocked the world, in June 1967, by making “an artistic statement, in a field which had never been considered ‘art’ before”.* Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was a explosion of styles and sounds, with grand orchestras, Indian sitars and tablas, colliding with tape loops and electric guitars, all perfectly wrapped in a cover that was a colourful celebration of psychedelia, pop-art, Edwardian iconography.  Lush, bright, bold, designed by legendary UK pop artist Peter Blake, it perfectly encapsulated the ‘flower power’ aesthetic of “the summer of love”.

Just over a year later, another leading figure in the UK pop art world would design a sleeve that couldn’t be further from its predecessor, for a record that also couldn’t be further from its predecessor. Richard Hamilton** was one of the founding fathers of the pop art movement. His collage “Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?” is one of the most important pieces of post war UK art. Hamilton was also, like Blake, represented by art dealer, Robert “Groovy Bob” Fraser, and had produced a now famous set of prints based on Fraser, and Mick Jagger`s drug bust, titled “Swinging London”.

The association with Fraser brought Hamilton into contact with Paul McCartney, and the two became friends, which is how his commission for the “The Beatles” sleeve came around. Hamilton designed the sleeve in collaboration with McCartney, a plain white gatefold, with nothing printed on the outside, save the tiny “stereo’ on the rear of said pressings. The band’s name, and subsequent title of the album, was blind embossed in Helvetica on the lower right portion of the cover. Original pressings also had a serial number stamped on the front, imitating the limited edition runs in the world of fine art, but turned into a subtle joke, as this serial number entered the millions. The inner gatefold featured the track titles, and monochrome reproductions of 4 portraits by John Kelly, colour versions of which were included as high-quality inserts, alongside a huge poster, again co-designed with McCartney, including a photo-montage of The Beatles on one side, and the lyrics to the songs on the other. Released into the world, from the first moment fans got to see copies, it became known as “The White Album”.

It had been a hell of a year since the release of Sgt. Pepper’s… At that point, the Fab 4 were pretty much considered pop deities. However, from that high point a series of tumultuous events completely changed the dynamics of the band, collectively, and as individuals. It wasn’t quite an annus horribilis, but it wasn’t far off. To begin with, George Harrison and Pattie Boyd took Paul and John to see a lecture on Transcendental Meditation by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, at The Hilton on Park Lane in London. All 4 were suitably impressed by the Maharishi, and agreed to follow him to a retreat he was hosting in Bangor, in Wales, the following day, also persuading Ringo, and their partners, to join them. While in Bangor the first of several blows arrived. They received a phone call telling them devastating news that their manager, friend, and confidant, Brian Epstein, had been found dead in his flat in London. This was the man whose faith and hard work had turned The Beatles from a local Liverpool sensation to the biggest band in the world, and a cultural phenomenon. The footage from the time shows Lennon looking completely shellshocked. This was the person who organised their entire lives, not just their career. While trying to recover from this shock, the band decided to now manage themselves, and ploughed on with the next project they had lined up, their next film. Rather than a follow up to ‘Help!’ or ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, this would be the slightly incomprehensible ‘Magical Mystery Tour’. The film has plenty of detractors, and while I’m not one of them, I will agree that it’s not exactly a slice of laugh-along-fun-for-all-the-family.The BBC made the terrible decision to broadcast it on Boxing Day, and in black & white.*** Magical Mystery Tour was publicly panned by just about everyone, delivering yet another body blow to the band, but this time, perhaps more shockingly, an artistic one. Were The Beatles completely lost and directionless without Brian to help steer them on the right course? The band then decided to reconnect with the Maharishi, and flew to Rishikesh, in the foothills of the Himalaya,s in Northern India, to devote themselves once more to Transcendental Meditation. They joined a large group of “the beautiful people”, including musicians Donovan, Mike Love of the Beach Boys, actor Mia Farrow, and her sister Prudence (yes, from THAT song!).

The setting was idyllic, and The Beatles recall their time in Rishikesh as happy and productive, although Ringo, and his partner and Maureen Cox, returned home after only 10 days. Ringo didn’t like the food. The band had given up  LSD consumption, and with relatively clear heads, save for a plentiful supply of weed, and armed with only acoustic guitars, they wrote lots and lots of songs. McCartney and Jane Asher were the next to leave, after about 5 weeks, with George and Pattie, and John and Cynthia Powell, staying through most of April, until a since discredited allegation of misconduct prompted their departure. Back in blighty, the band all met up at George’s house in Esher to demo some of the songs they`d written on his home 4 track porta-studio, before heading back to Abbey Road in May to begin the recording process proper. However, there would be further personal upheavals before these sessions started. Both McCartney and Lennon would separate from their long-term partners.

The relationship between John and Yoko Ono has been documented, discussed, and totally dissected. The lovers had met prior to The Beatles` trip to India, and Lennon received letters from Yoko during his stay. Upon his return he broke off the relationship with Cynthia, in the cruellest way imaginable, and committed to his life with Yoko. Much less is generally made of the fact that Paul also split with Jane Asher, but this overlooks how important Asher was in his life. Having met in 1963, McCartney had moved into the Asher family home – being given his own room in their house on Wimpole Street in Marylebone – and welcomed into the family with open arms. It was an environment he found intellectually and artistically stimulating, and he also formed a close friendship with Jane’s brother Peter, giving him the song A World Without Love to perform as Peter and Gordon. In 1966 Paul and Jane moved into McCartney’s new house in St Johns Wood, and the couple announced their engagement. Jane ended the relationship, early in 1968, after discovering Paul had become involved with someone else. Against this shit-show, the Fab 4 set about recording their next record.

The sessions for the White Album have been described as the beginning of the end of The Beatles, with words like, gruelling, difficult, traumatic, etc., thrown around with much regularity. It was certainly different, but since Peter Jackson’s epic Get Back documentary series did much to re-evaluate the ‘doomed’ “Let It Be” sessions, widely regarded as the low point in the fabs time together, we can probably deduce that they weren’t nearly as bad as all that. The constant presence of Yoko by John’s side caused some of the issues, although it’s important to point out that all of the band invited their partners to the studio, including Pauls’ new girlfriend Francie Schwartz. Recording engineer Geoff Emerick quit, and even mild-mannered George Martin left them to it and went on holiday at one point. Ringo also famously left the band during the recording, only to be coaxed back. As we saw in Get Back, the band were constantly bickering, fighting, and falling out over the tiniest things while in the studio. The fact that this was a relatively new thing for The Beatles only goes to underline what a tight knit group of friends they were. They were simply outgrowing each other, and growing up into men with separate lives and ideas. The recording sessions were very different in other ways as well. This was the first album to be recorded onto 8-track instead of 4-track, the band having harangued engineers Ken Scott and Dave Harries to install the machine in Abbey Road’s Studio 2 (without studio management authorisation). Instead of rehearsing a track and then recording it, the band recorded everything, including rehearsals and jam sessions, then simply overdubbed the best take they had. They recorded 102 takes of George’s Not Guilty, and then didn’t include it on the final album! They also recorded individually a lot more, with only 16 of the albums 30 tracks featuring all 4 Beatles. Often they would be working on different tracks, in different studios, simultaneously. Production would be paired back, with next to no studio wizardry, and only a couple of tracks featuring additional instruments or orchestration.

Then there’s the songs themselves. The album is so diverse it sounds like the work of a dozen different bands. It includes pop ditties, hard-rock, folk, country & bluegrass, avant-garde, cod-ska, music hall, rock and roll, and psychedelia. It is a miracle of programming that it works so well, with Lennon, McCartney and Martin, holding their first and only 24-hour session at Abbey Road for the final mixing and sequencing of the album. Unlike most LPs, there’s no gap between tracks, and the master was edited so that songs segued together as a seamless suite of music. This, coupled with its mysterious and avant-garde presentation, might be why it’s such a phenomenal album. It works almost like 4 movements in a symphony, and it`s hard to hear an individual track without thinking of its place in / on the album as a whole. George Martin – and many others I’m sure – famously said that he thought they should have edited it down to a single record, but what the hell would you leave off? One of its strongest features is the breadth and diversity of the music, so editing it would mean sacrificing many of the more outré moments. For every undisputed masterpiece like Dear Prudence, Blackbird, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, or Back In The U.S.S.R., you have the weird and challenging. What would the record be without the inclusion of oddities like Wild Honey Pie and Revolution #9, or my personal favourite, the comedy-musical-hall-country-and-western themed Rocky Racoon! I know it’s controversial, but I will fight anyone who doesn’t love that song!

My own obsession with The White Album began when I first bought a reissue from HMV in Churchill Square in 1989. I then went mad, picking up original pressings, in mono and stereo, in the secondhand shops of Brighton`s North Laine. When I started work at Vinyl Exchange in Manchester, my then boss, one of the owners Mark, let me buy a copy of the original mono pressing with the No. 00000078 stamped on the sleeve for an absolutely bargain price. It’s one of my all-time regrets in life that I no longer own that copy, selling it to a Beatles dealer about 23 years ago for a quite considerable sum. I also have 3 CD copies, and 5 years ago, on the albums 50<sup>th</sup> anniversary, I bought the deluxe vinyl box set. This includes the Giles Martin`s stereo remaster, plus the stunning “Escher Demos”, which are lovely. I think this pressing is my favourite of them all, with even Revolution #9 sounding like actual music!

There’s a great book by David Quantic too. I’ll stop now.

“You were only waiting for this moment to arrive.” 

*According to music critic, and Patti Smith Group guitarist, Lenny Kaye.

**Cool Richard Hamilton factoid: he taught Bryan Ferry at art school for a while! 

***To be fair, most of the UK population probably still had black & white TVs at the time. 

For more from Balearic Mike you can find him on both Facebook and Instagram – @balearicmike. 

Mike has a Mixcloud page packed with magnificent, magical, music, and you can catch him live on 1BTN, from 12 noon until 2 (UK time) every 1st and 3rd Friday.

You can also check out the super silk screen prints of “Balearic Wife” over at @jo_lambert_print