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Time for reflection

No apologies today as I return to a what is commonly known as The White Album, a classic and often under-rated Beatles offering recently in the news for being re-released in an anthology version.

Here’s a link to a piece by David Lister, setting the album in its historical context as a sprawling snapshot of where the various members of the band ‘were’ as they approached their eventual break-up two years later, as appears today upon the website of – THE INDEPENDENT

I well recall my own perplexed reaction – and of those around me – when it was first released, a seeming mash-up of glorious classics and sundry throwaway, inconsequential, strange, often unfinished pieces. It was as if the band could have made another nailed-on classic single LP if they’d wished but instead had decided to debunk their own myth by hiding it within a double-album-worth of try-outs and dross.

When later the Beach Boys issued their somewhat under-powered 1972 album Carl and the Passions – ‘So Tough’ , some four years after their mastermind Brian Wilson had descended into befuddled oblivion and inactivity courtesy of nervous breakdowns and drug-taking, I still remember with fondness a single line from a review by NME writer Nick Kent.

Commenting upon Marcella, the only track contributed by Brian to the album – legend has it that, with their record company reluctant to release a Beach Boys album in the absence of something penned by him, Brian had been sat down at a piano and urged to ‘come up with something’ – Kent wrote simply [this is the gist as I remember it] “an inspired doodle by Brian Wilson is worth 95% of the output of all other pop writers“.

Here’s a link to what I’ m referring to, courtesy of YouTube – MARCELLA

Reading Lister’s article, he mentions that – unusually – the cover of  the Beatles’ The White Album was odd because (firstly) it had little on it to indicate its title let alone the name of the artiste/group that had produced it; and (secondly) every single unit had a unique serial number upon it.

It’s probably forty years since my original copy of The White Album was last in my possession, but seven or eight years ago Charlie Jenkins – a talented advertising art/film director who had worked on the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine cartoon – gifted me his original copy of it [serial number 0536828] which I have, framed and mounted, on the wall beside my computer table even as I type.

To finish today, here’s a link to the remastered version of what might be described as “an inspired doodle” by John Lennon [I say that only in part because it’s just 2 minutes 44 seconds from start to finish] from the album.

There are, of course, so many to choose from, depending upon one’s mood and state of mind, but probably – over time – it ranks within my ‘top three’ list of all-time favourite Beatle songs, again courtesy of YouTube – HAPPINESS IS A WARM GUN

 

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About Michael Stuart

After university, Michael spent twelve years working for MELODY MAKER before going freelance. He claims to keep doing it because it is all he knows. More Posts