Twang, Tiggerlion, Nigel T and Steve C with special guest and Beatles lifer Simon convene in the pod to discuss the Beatles album “The Beatles” aka The White Album. Like its subject, the pod is possibly too long, a bit all over the place, somewhat chaotic and at any time one of the fab four is left wondering what is going on. Nonetheless, much ground is covered, the new remixed box discussed in detail and Twang’s lack of Beatles knowledge brutally exposed. Finally the team take the shears to TWA and produce 5 alternative running orders to fit onto one vinyl album.
The Afterword #74: The White Albumcast
by 77 Comments
World naturally be interested in this, but it never, repeat never should be reduced to a single album. It has to be a double, that is all the charm of it, As somebody once said “It’s the bloody Beatles White Album, it sold, shurrup!”.
OO, and indeed, AA.
We could always expand it into a triple by adding the singles, B sides, Hey Bulldog and some outtakes (Not Guilty, Mary Jane).
…or a big box!
As posted some time ago:
Sides 1-3 as is:
Side 4
Hey Jude
Lady Madonna
Junk
Child of Nature
The Inner Light
Side 5
Sour Milk Sea
Goodbye
Not Guilty
Step Inside Love
What’s the New Mary Jane
Side 6 is the old side 4
About bloody time. Edit the White Album – I edit your teeth.
Peace and love, peace and love.
I agree with @dai, reducing the WA to one disc, blasphemy and idiotic. I may listen to the pod thingy in time but I’m busy listening the the contents of that big beautiful white box not to mention those 4 LPs.
One ‘vinyl album*’ my arse.
*By the way they are called LPs.
Sir George Martin thought it should be a single LP vinyl record album, so it was a bit of fun trying to complete his work and comparing notes!
He admitted he was wrong about that. I say it could have been Lennon’s second and possibly best solo album (first one being A Hard Day’s Night)
Dear Prudence
Glass Onion
Bungalow Bill
Happiness is a Warm Gun
I’m so Tired
Julia
Yer Blues
Everybody’s got something to hide …
Sexy Sadie
Revolution 1
Cry Baby Cry
Good Night (with Lennon vocal)
I would leave off Revolution 9 as best place for that is on a double.
The Lennon point was made on the podcast actually. It was a jolly love in for the album if a little irreverent on my part to spice it up a bit. If we’d started with “Macca says it’s perfect and we agree” it would have only lasted 2 minutes.
Didn’t get around to listening to it yet. Too busy digging my car out of kits of other white stuff.
kits? lots
Good to see you playing the game, though!
😉
Hmmm. It’s a different sort of game. If all 4 Beatles are involved in the vocals/songwriting process I want (at least) a double.
Paul McCartney’s solo White:
Back In The USSR 2:43
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da 3:08
Martha My Dear 2:28
Blackbird 2:18
Rocky Racoon 3:33
Why Don’t We Do It In The Road 1:41
Wild Honey Pie 0:52
I Will 1:46
Birthday 2:42
Mother Nature’s Son 2:48
Helter Skelter 4:29
Let Me Take You Back 0:50
Honey Pie 2:41
Ringo’s:
a Don’t Pass Me By
b Good Night
Paul’s is better than most of his post-Beatles albums. Lennon’s White solo is his best full stop.
Amen on Macca, that’s certainly better than his first (though not Ram, which gets bigger and better all the time as far as I’m concerned).
None of those Lennon songs are as good as Nobody Loves You When You’re Down and Out – the Marley’s Ghost of pop songs.
PS. Oop, sorry – Julia.
Plastic Ono Band may be better
Nah.
Twang suggested a Shite Album. I think it’s a great idea! Same rules apply: there has to be a Ringo song, two George and even numbers of Paul and John.
Listen if you dare:
A Beginning 0:50
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da (take 5) 2:52
Yer Blues 4:01
Piggies 2:03
Rocky Racoon 3:33
Don’t Pass Me By 3:51
What’s The New Mary Jane (take 4) 6:12
Martha My Dear 2:28
The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill 3:14
Helter Skelter (take 2, edited) 4:38
Not Guilty (take 102) 4:28
Wild Honey Pie 0:52
Revolution 9 8:22
Sadly, there isn’t enough room for the full shite Helter Skelter experience.
The mad eyed It’s Perfect police will be round for you Tig!
Even a couple of the podcasters won’t appreciate my inclusion of Martha!
I’m upset you put both Rocky Racoon and Don’t Pass Me By on there – not a Shite Album in my ears
I said in my review of the new box that no two Beatles fans agree on what should constitute a Single White. Looks like that’s also the case for a Shite Album.
For me a Single White is a Flat White.
In other words, fashionable but unsatisfying.
I’m mad, me. I think musicians are better at putting records together than I am. Seriously, I ought to be locked up!
Musicians are rubbish at sequencing. That’s a job best done by a producer. Not amateur b*ll*cks talkers like us.
😉
The sequencing of TB is a masterpiece in itself. Partly because of, er, George Martin of course.
It was the only Beatles 24 hour session putting all that together. I do think the Piggies/Rocky Racoon/Don’t Pass Me By sequence is a problem, though, which is why I replicate it for The Shite Album. They wanted all the animals on side two but didn’t include Lennon’s Monkey. Side Three is very strong. Don’t Pass Me By wouldn’t detract it too much and Monkey would liven things up on side two before doing It In The Road.
Or, in the case of The Joshua Tree, sequencing by Kirsty MacColl
Ah. But she took the piss, didn’t she, starting with the best, then the next best and so on, allowing the album to get worse track by track.
Yeah – Kirsty clearly gave a big thumbs-down to “Mothers of the Disappeared”…
Revolution 9? I love it.
Helter Skelter is one of the few disc 2 tracks (only ever had the CD) which would escape my one-disc-cull.
I mean the Anthology 3 version. The slow blues dirge that is nearly thirteen minutes long in the new box on the first disc of Sessions (disc four of the set).
The thirteen minute HS is so tedious it could almost be the Doors.
For me disc 2 is superior to disc 1. Side 3 is my favourite, flawless.
You are naughty.
Known for it.
AKA “The Brown Album”?
No, that’s the second Band album. which is not shit. It is The Shit.
(a lesson on the imprtance of the definite article. See also “What’s The New Mary Jane is bollocks, Cry Baby Cry is the bollocks”)
Your chat about first time hearing the Bloody Beatles White Album got me thinking – and in fact one of my earliest memories – this was pre school, I must have only been 3 or 4 -in the mid 70s – and my mum bringing the radio into wherever I was sitting, plonking it in front of me and saying ‘have a listen to this it’s the Beatles’ – and they were playing Bungalow Bill of all things. So my first memory of the Beatles is a White Album track.
It’s also interesting that for a lot of you it remained an enigmatic, elusive mystery – same here, and even when I got into the Beatles when I was a bit older I didn’t hear it for years because it was so expensive to buy…even when the CD came out wasn’t it like 25 quid or something ridiculous?
It was always at least twice the price of a single album, if not more. Remember, LPs at the time were generally just over thirty minutes. The White Album isn’t just a double, each side of vinyl is longer than usual. It works out as the equivalent of three LPs, even if, clocking in at 8:22, Revolution 9 takes up half a side. Double albums were rare in 1968. It took people quite a while to get to side three. Also, although it was tricky to skip a track in those days, you could easily tune out during, say, Rocky Racoon or go off and make a cup of tea. Other tracks were so short, if you blinked you’d miss them. You had to focus to ‘hear’ them all. As a result, it took years of listening for it all to sink in.
My parents’ mono copy, which I grew up with, doesn’t have gaps between the tracks. I say that because there are other records where the songs are tightly edited together where physical gaps have been put in, presumably to help DJs. The Fabs wanted you to play the whole thing through.
So do as you’re bleedin’ told!
Either that or stick to sides 1 and 3!
The actual reason there are no gaps is because each side was so long there isn’t any room.
Ah.
You can tell I grew up in the 80s. Gaps between tracks were smaller by then. Older albums= big gaps.
Side 2 is such a disappointment, only about 5 brilliant tracks on it ….
I was under the impression that there are no gaps between tracks because that’s how they wanted it done. Same as on Sgt. Pepper’s LHCB.
Rather strangely, side 1 of Abbey Road is separated tracks and Side 2 is continuous.
Well the idea of (most of) side2 of AR is to be continuous.
Well done on another good episode chaps. Not a big fan of the WA but a really good panel made it a great listen. It almost makes me want to go back and revisit this album…almost
Cheers FF. I’m glad someone has actually listened to it!
Just about finished it finally. @Twang gets bonus points for declaring A Hard Day’s Night to be his favourite Fab Four album. These are then taken away for his “laughable” declaration that The Beatles can’t rock. Helter Skelter rocks like almost nothing else since. And in the same vein I was surprised at the love for Revolution 1 when the hard rocking B side version is vastly superior to the plodding one that ended up on the album.
Best track : Happiness is a Warm Gun
Worst track : Wild Honey Pie
Will be interested in hearing the Fabcast album from the solo years, but that podcast is unlistenable, those guys are ridiculous. There is an excellent one about The White Album on the “Swinging Through the 60s” podcast.
The ten minute Revolution 1 is the best of the Sessions tracks, an outtake well worth having.
I would have loved a Giles remix of Revolution and Hey Bulldog, both of which have hi-fi issues.
And BTW you can’t have Hey Bulldog on your single album as it wasn’t recorded in the White Album sessions (and also appears on another album) 😉
I’m rewriting history. I have Piggies, Rocky Racoon, Cry Baby Cry, Sexy Sadie, Martha My Dear, Birthday etc., on the Yellow Submarine album released in 1969.
They would have been great in the film. Though Sexy Sadie might have pushed it into the AA category…
Wow. Removing 3-4 great tracks from “The Beatles”. I thought you had such good taste …
I’m making Yellow Submarine great!!
Plus, they are left over from my single white.
I see. We could also have a different (delayed) version of the Magical Mystery album that included early 68 songs, leaving out the early/mid 67 songs. But let’s not go there …
Magical Mystery Tour should be skipped over but All Together Now could be on it along with Only A Northern Song.
I love Flying and I Am the Walrus, title track is ok, Blue Jay Way is boring and Your Mother Should Know is delightful, Fool on the Hill is very fine.
If we consider it then I do not share your admiration for Hello Goodbye (one of their weakest singles). Can’t stand All Together Now, Only a Northern Song should be on Pepper (another 13 track album).
Nice listen but time to go into unchartered territories.
How about a Sammy Hagar podcast?
30 minutes at most though.
Ooh yes! Live, Loud and Clear (red vinyl natch) still gets a play around here. Fantastically energetic album, not ‘arf.
The White Album? It’s Anthology 0 really. Thanks for sharing your enjoyable and opinionated chat – great listen.
No, it’s Let It A.
Cheers BM.
I’m pretty sure Twang & Co has got a cast-iron case here – contact me at Sue, Grabbit & Runne
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/beatles-white-album-super-deluxe-longer-759081/
I bet Rolling Stone were paid as well.
Tis actually not a bad podcast – after a forty year gap I’m actually rather enjoying Rolling Stone these days. I am 93
I daren’t listen. I bet they are charming, erudite and extremely articulate.
Obviously, all the other participants on this cast were all three.
Late to the party, but I’ve just managed to hear the podcast – as may have been said elsewhere, my first reaction was to listen to the album once again, with the participants’ comments still ringing in my ears….thoroughly enjoyable listening, chaps….that’s the podcast, of course…..
I fell asleep.
Such soothing voices, especially at 3am while stretched out on a comfy sofa after a couple of large G&Ts.
I don’t actively dislike any songs on this album and absolutely love some of them. However I feel no pressing need to hear Revolution#9 again any time soon.
Well done lads, enjoyable 90m of enthusiastic gushing, with Twang’s scepticism a welcome balance.
50 years ago, you wouldn’t buy the same records as your mates, albums were expensive: I was buying Traffic, King Crimson, VdGG, Tull, Yes; a mate was buying Cream, Hendrix, Beatles; another was responsible for the Stones and the Doors; another got Simon and Garfunkel and Dylan, you get the picture. So we’d listen together and pass the albums around. The White Album was such a sprawl of a thing, it took a while to even start assimilating it, The scope, the brilliance and the silliness. Faves? Certainly the fractured doowop of Happiness Is A Warm Gun, the stupid get-ness if I’m So Tired, and the sheer scuzziness of Yer Blues (not much love for that one on the ‘cast). I wouldn’t lose a minute of it, though.
According to this excellent article, that makes me a sprawler. You, Tig etc, are editors. See what you think.
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20181121-why-the-white-album-is-the-beatles-greatest
That is an amazing xcellent article but I can go both ways. In terms of sprawling, I’m grateful for the extended guitar riffing in Not Guilty in the box and think the Esher Junk could easily be added to a Triple White.