The 1968 double album THE BEATLES, more commonly referred to as "THE WHITE ALBUM" due to its packaging, is my all-time #7 favorite album. The Fab Four composed much of the music here while on an Indian retreat and, while the recording reflected a much more individualist approach to the Beatles' music-making then their previous, more team-oriented efforts, the overall effect...and this may have had a lot to do with their incredibly talented producer George Martin...was a surprisingly cohesive work, especially considering its length and number of tracks. I wouldn't hear the entirety of this album until four years later in the fall of 1972 when a buddy of mine lent me his copy...I bought one for myself soon thereafter. For an album with such a name, The White Album was easily the band's darkest work and should have been named "The Black Album"...it dovetailed perfectly with the personal period of prolonged adolescent depression I was undergoing at the time (especially the contributions from George Harrison and John Lennon). The album also was loaded with "clues" about the "Paul McCartney is dead" conspiracy theory floating around at the time, and I would listen intently to the most suspicious track, Revolution 9, for hidden messages buried beneath the wall of noise in it. That was the longest "song" on the album although it was more an abstract audio collage created together by John and his newfound love Yoko Ono. Some of the tracks I knew from the late '60s like Blackbird (covered by the Brazilian group Bossa Rio) and Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, a Beatle-ized reggae tribute. And I much preferred the "fast" Revolution that was the flip side to Hey Jude to the album's slower Revolution 1. Good Night, written by John for his son Julian, was sung by Ringo Starr, his greatest ever vocal performance in my opinion. Below are my own personal rankings of the thirty tracks...in their own ways they were all good...
1 BLACKBIRD
2 GOOD NIGHT
3 OB-LA-DI, OB-LA-DA
4 MARTHA MY DEAR
5 EVERYBODY'S GOT SOMETHING TO HIDE EXCEPT FOR ME AND MY MONKEY
6 WHILE MY GUITAR GENTLY WEEPS
7 REVOLUTION 9
8 GLASS ONION
9 CRY BABY CRY
10 BACK IN THE U.S.S.R.
11 SAVOY TRUFFLE
12 SEXY SADIE
13 MOTHER NATURE'S SON
14 HONEY PIE
15 REVOLUTION 1
16 BIRTHDAY
17 I WILL
18 HELTER SKELTER
19 THE CONTINUING STORY OF BUNGALOW BILL
20 WHY DON'T WE DO IT IN THE ROAD?
21 DEAR PRUDENCE
22 YER BLUES
23 DON'T PASS ME BY
24 I'M SO TIRED
25 LONG LONG LONG
26 ROCKY RACCOON
27 HAPPINESS IS A WARM GUN
28 JULIA
29 PIGGIES
30 WILD HONEY PIE
Next week I discuss my #6 all-time favorite album...
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