![]() Having usurped Cynthia and moved into Kenwood, Yoko went everywhere with John nowadays, including attending the opening of the Beatles’ new King’s Road tailoring shop on 23 May. In a way Yoko Ono is to be thanked for this shake-up in the Beatles’ working methods, even if her presence ultimately proved toxic. It is when the Beatles seem to go too far that the White Album is most interesting. Pepper, allowing themselves instead to spread out and do as they pleased, however wild the music sounded, and indeed the wilder the better. ![]() The format was shaken up, the Beatles getting away from making the self-consciously clever albums of the mid-1960s, culminating in Sgt. They were increasingly at war with one another, often working individually on their own songs, sniping at each other and at odds with the studio staff who’d served them for years, which had an unexpectedly positive result in that the set-up changed old faces left, new people and new studios were used. This important and welcome musical variety - the variety of a box of Good News chocolates, which George references on another of his songs, ‘Savoy Truffle’- is partly a result of the fact the Beatles were no longer a harmonious team. The Beatles were now men making mature, reflective music, the quantity and variety of which sets the White Album apart as one of their greatest achievements. The White Album is a boldly, unapologetically ambitious and arty record. Moreover, here was a wide range of musical styles, from the country sound of ‘Rocky Raccoon’ via Paul’s Beach Boys-on-the-Volga pastiche (‘Back in the USSR’) to the experimentation of ‘Revolution 9’, together with more traditional songs of love and regret, graced by some of the best lyrics the boys ever penned. Here then was the backbone of the only double studio album the Beatles recorded, a relative rarity in the music industry at the time, with songs to spare. George’s contributions were notably ‘Piggies’ and ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, while Paul demonstrated ‘Back in the USSR’, ‘Blackbird’, ‘Honey Pie’, ‘Junk,’ ‘Mother Nature’s Son’, ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’ and the delightfully silly ‘Rocky Raccoon’. John brought the largest number of songs to the demo session including ‘The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill’, ‘Dear Prudence’, ‘Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey’, ‘I’m So Tired’, ‘Julia’, ‘Revolution’, ‘Yer Blues’ and ‘Sexy Sadie’, the last being a swipe at the randy Maharishi. Shortly after returning home from India, in May 1968, the Beatles convened at George Harrison’s home in Esher to run through 23 new songs that became the basis of their next album, The Beatles, better known as the White Album(and hereafter referred to as such) because it was packaged in a plain white sleeve. ![]() Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney - Howard Sounes (2010) PART ONE.
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