The Beatles (1968)

 

The Beatles

Artist: The Beatles
Release Year: 1968

Rating: 9/10

Disc 1: 1) Back in the USSR; 2) Dear Prudence; 3) Glass Onion; 4) Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da; 5) Wild Honey Pie; 6) The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill; 7) While My Guitar Gently Weeps; 8) Happiness Is a Warm Gun; 9) Martha My Dear; 10) I'm So Tired; 11) Blackbird; 12) Piggies; 13) Rocky Raccoon; 14) Don't Pass Me By; 15) Why Don't We Do It in the Road; 16) I Will; 17) Julia.

Disc 2: 18) Birthday; 19) Yer Blues; 20) Mother Nature's Son; 21) Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey; 22) Sexy Sadie; 23) Helter Skelter; 24) Long, Long, Long; 25) Revolution 1; 26) Honey Pie; 27) Savoy Truffle; 28) Cry Baby Cry; 29) Revolution 9; 30) Good Night.

I don't like double albums.  Have you ever heard one that sustains its runtime the whole way through?  I haven't, and that includes the almighty White Album.  That's right--not even The Beatles can get away with this!  But they do come closer than most.

No doubt that by now, we've reached the late stage of the band's career.  Each member was developing into his own style as a musician and as a person, and the cracks were starting to show.  In fact, most of these songs sound more like solo John or solo Paul or solo George, with the other three simply making guest appearances.  Is it crass, though, to call Eric Clapton’s guitar solo on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” the best of these?

There are at least ten other different genres on here, all done anywhere from adequately to brilliantly.  Now, most of these genres were already well-established when this album was recorded, so there's not much ammunition to be had against Piero Scaruffi this time around; but I'll take another chance to spit on him anyway, because these songs are mostly outstanding.  We'd be here all day if I talked about every single song, but let me at least point out some highlights.  

Who can resist a rockin' party like "Back in the USSR", with the stinging guitar lines from George and the Beach Boys-style "wooo-ooh" backing vocals?  What about the gorgeous folk of "Dear Prudence" that somehow culminates in that stellar drumming during the last minute?  Who decided to switch genres and time signatures about five times in "Happiness Is a Warm Gun", yet managed to make the whole thing flow so well?  

How does "Martha My Dear" manage to feel so fresh and engaging despite being a 1920s-style music hall sendup, tuba and all?  Why is "Julia" so haunting and lovely in the midst of all those weird chord changes?  And why does everyone forget about the dusky atmosphere of "Cry Baby Cry" that somehow manages to speak to both my childhood wonder and my adult sense of dread at the same time, like a Grimm's fairy tale with hidden undertones or something?  

There are misfires, sure: for instance, the unnecessary kiddie song about Bungalow Bill, with mostly dumb lyrics.  John can't call out Paul's "granny shit" any more after this!  "Yer Blues" may be tongue-in-cheek enough to pass as a semi-joke, but that doesn't mean I want to sit through the whole thing, and then there's the matter of "Revolution 9".  Sure, the thing is an interesting mark of the times (and of John's growing obsession with Yoko), but a sound collage doesn't need to be eight minutes long, never mind how well it was composed.  

For all the variety here, the production is more stripped-down compared to the big and lush sound of the previous two albums, and that only furthers the rough-edged, unpolished, messy-sheaf-of-papers vibe of this record.  Now, anyone who knows me may suspect that the loss of cohesion would be a large black mark on an album, but somehow, this one just manages to hang together by a few essential threads that I find hard to pin down.  Maybe it's the fact that we finally hear each member jump through unapologetically, allowing some kind of personal evolution to come through.  Maybe it's the way the messy, ideas-before-structure tone prevents the listener from demanding the same cohesion we heard before on Sgt. Pepper.  Maybe it's just because the unparalleled songcraft of the Beatles made the individual tracks so great that they work as a collage rather than as a single, grand mural.  I don't know, and maybe that mystery only adds to the allure.