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What would the Beatles’ White
Album be like as a single LP? An ode to Ian McDonald
The Beatles’ White Album (1968) is a legendary
double LP. However, many listeners feel this legendary status has been deserved
despite rather than due to the quality of its 30 widely diverse tracks. Ever
since the album came out, much has been speculated about its compilation into
a single White Album LP – on the basis of ‘what if’ alternate
historical speculation, preferences of listeners and some technical clues.
What are the historical facts surrounding this minor Beatles mythology issue,
and what could a single White Album look like? A purely hypothetical
question fun enough to combine evidence from earlier studies into an
imaginary album. Facts about the White Album The Beatles’ ninth official album simply titled The
Beatles was issued as a double vinyl LP in the Why it became a double lp At its time of release, issuing a double album with a large number of tracks by a major rock group was regarded as an innovative an unusual move. So why did they? With 30 tracks the Beatles concurrently released more than double the amount they had ever released on each of their previous albums, and certainly more than the average amount of songs on ‘pop’ albums contemporary record buyers were accustomed to. In and before 1968, few double vinyl albums were released in any kind of market, let alone in the pop/rock market, where Freak out by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention (1966) stood out as a rare early example. Before recording sessions for the album even began, there was quite a large batch of songs available to begin with. The Beatles had been prolific in writing new songs during their stay in India in winter 1968 – so artistically, the situation was very different in contrast to earlier times when they had to resort to ‘scraping the barrel’ in order to deliver complete new LP’s for the Christmas season such as Beatles for sale in ’64 and Rubber Soul in ‘65. “When we came back, it became apparent that there
were more songs than would make up a single album and so the ‘White’ album
became a double album. What else do you do when you’ve got so many sings and
you want to get rid of them so that you can write more?” (Harrison in Anthology
p.305) Much of the new material avaiable in spring ’68 was rehearsed and recorded on the famous ‘Esher demo’ (of which a few tracks are available on Anthology 3). A complete tracklisting of this session shows that there were even other songs available than the 30 that ended up on the eventual LP, but were left off in favour of newer material composed during recording sessions (“Junk” showed up on McCartney’s first solo album McCartney; “Mean Mr.Mustard” and “Polythene Pam” were eventually included in the long medley on Abbey Road, while a mutation of “Child of nature” became “Jealous guy” on Lennon’s Imagine album). Outsider observations report that interpersonal tension between the Beatles has risen at this stage in their carrer, and resulted in many sessions for the album to become solo sessions. This stimulated a situation in which none of them was willing to give in and leave individual compositions off the final album – for which then, eventually, a double LP was needed to include all of them (Lewisohn, 1986:163). “That
[The ‘White Album’] was just saying: ‘This is my song, we’ll do it this way.
That’s your song, you do it that way.’ It’s pretty hard trying to fit three
guys’ music onto one album – that’s why we did a double.” (John Lennon in Anthology,
p.305) Later, this was more succinctly remembered: “We
made a white album because it was going to be a double album forever” (Lennon
in Badman 1999:391-92, in Spitz 2005, 940) By releasing a large amount of songs in one batch the Beatles may have also have attempted to partly fulfil a pre-set song quota in the group's new recording contract, signed with EMI in January 1967. This hypothesis, stated by George Martin (Lewisohn, 1986:163) has also been confirmed by other sources: “Partly
for business reasons, the Beatles were determined to record virtually all the
material they had written in Rishikesh and during the months since their
return – more than enough to fill what was to be their first double album.”
(Shotton & Schaffner, 1983:180) “I
later learnt that by recording all those songs they were getting rid of their
contract with EMI more quickly.” (George Martin in Anthology, p.305) Why compile the White Album? Since its release, the album has received cultural status not only as a collection of Beatles songs, but as a musical piece in its entirety, as well as an independent work of art. Many fans of the album also like to adhere to the mythology of the album, its sleeve, and lore surrounding the project of its conception and recording as a whole. So why compile it? Ever since the release of the album, or even its conception, critics have aired opinions suggesting the album would have been better and less uneven in quality had it been released as a single instead of a double LP. Perhaps the earliest source of this critiscism is album producer George Martin, then still closely involved with many decisions taken by the group: “I really didn't think that a lot of the
songs were worthy of release, and I told them so. I said ‘I don't want a
double-album. I think you ought to cut out some of these, concentrate on the
really good ones and have yourself a really super album.’ ” (George Martin in Lewisohn 1986:163) “They
came in with a whole welter of songs – I think there were over thirty,
actually – and I was a bit overwhelmed by them, and yet underwhlemed at the
same time because some of them weren’t great” (Anthology p.305) George Harrison viewed the thirty-one songs as being “a bit heavy”. “There
were a lot of songs that maybe should have been elbowed or made into
B-sides.” (Anthology p.305) “I
think in a way, it was a mistake doing four sides” (Badman, 1999:388 in Spitz
2005:940) Ringo “also thought a double album was extravagant, preferrings its release as a single record” (Spitz 2005:794). Some criticism has even aired a somewhat harsher view on the overall quality of the album: “Mere expert presentation, however, cannot hide the fact that half the tracks on it are poor by earlier standards, or that many of its lyrics are little more than the lazy navel-gazing of pampered recluses.” (McDonald, 1998:286) Which songs would probably have been left off a
single White Album in 1968? As any album in its formative stage, the White Album underwent a gradual selection process during its gestation in 1968. Before its song selection and sequencing process (in autumn 1968) at least two songs had been subject to consideration, but were eventually excluded from the released version of the album: Lennon’s “What’s the new Mary Jane” and Harrison’s “Not guilty” (Wikipedia). Furthermore, the omission of “Revolution 9” from the final tracklisting was at least considered at some stage (Miles, 1998:483).[i] This makes it the first likely candidate to have also been left off a single album version. Many of the remaining songs have a blues based ‘jamming’ character outside the usual stylistic range previously released on Beatles records (yet note an exception in “Flying” released on Magical Mystery Tour and the unreleased “12-bar original” available on Anthology 2). So a more conventional, single White Album would probably not have contained “Everybody’s got something to hide except for me and my monkey”, “Why don’t we do it in the road”, “Birthday”, perhaps not even “Helter Skelter”, nor small ditties such as “Wild honey pie”. Earlier UK Beatles record issuing policy was not to include any track on albums already released as a single. So, although “Revolution 1” sounds rather different from the “Revolution” single version, that also would be a likely candidate to have been left off.
How many songs would have been included? Practical boundaries to a single “White Album” Apart from the total number of tracks available to choose from, the contents of a single White album are limited by the total duration per side and some rules of convention. Up to the White Album, the usual number of tracks on a Beatles album was 13 or 14.[ii] George Martin suggested a selection of between 14 and 16 songs for a single White Album version (Lewisohn, 1986:163).[iii] Mathematically, compilations made up from the 30 tracks available living up to this suggestion would range between 31:38 (including its 14 shortest tracks) and 53:50 (including its 16 longest tracks) in duration. During the Beatles’ active recording career they would not issue an official single UK album shorter than 30:33 (A hard day’s night) or longer than 46:36 (Abbey Road).[iv] Scrutinizing the limitations of record pressing technology in the 1960s, the programme length of long playing vinyl albums was technically restricted to little more than 23 minutes per side, due to the technical upper limit of cutting single LP sides (i.e. the number of grooves that could be included on the surface of one side). Hence, it is likely that the imaginary ‘single White Album’ would have remained within these boundaries. Resulting from either technological improvements or longer songs, Beatles albums show an increasing playing length with almost every release, and the White Album is historically sequenced between Sgt. Pepper's lonely hearts club band and Abbey road. It is therefore likely that its length would have been somewhere between 39:40 (SPLHCB) and 47:26 (WA2).[v] Summarised, a ‘single White Album’ would most likely contain 14 or 16 tracks and have a duration between 39:40 and 47:26. This is what my favourite single ‘whiter’ album would look (sound) like:
What would your Whiter Album look and sound like? Mail me! See what others have selected on this message board. REFERENCES Badman, Keith (1999) The Beatles: off the record.
London: Omnibus. The Beatles. (2000) The Beatles Anthology. London:
Cassell & Co. The Beatles (1995) Anthology DVD series, part
8. Lewisohn, Mark (1986)
The Beatles recording sessions: the official Abbey Road studio session notes
1962-1970. New York: Harmony Books. McDonald, Ian (1998) Revolution
in the head. Updated edition. London: Pimlico. Miles, Barry (1998)
Paul McCartney: Many years from now. London: Vintage. Shotton, Pete;
Schaffner, Nicholas (1983) John Lennon: in my life. New York: Stein and Day
Publishers. Spitz, Bob (2005) The
Beatles: the biography. New York etc.: Back Bay Books. |
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