Search - The Beatles :: The Beatles (The White Album)

MONO,MONO,MONO please!

Micaloneus | the Cosmos | 12/08/2005

(1 out of 5 stars)

"As a reviewer wrote on January 12, 2000, why not the MONO mix for this "special" re-release?



The music is 5 stars, but 1 star for the uninspired release."

I love the Beatles, but far can you push it?

finulanu | Here, there, and everywhere | 03/23/2008

(3 out of 5 stars)

"The Beatles are, without a doubt, my favorite band. By quite a long shot, in fact. But I'm not under the impression their music was infallible by any means, and to me this serves as a rude interruption to the greatest winning streak (which began with Help! and ended with Let It Be) in rock history. Every Beatles album but this released from 1965-1970 deserves 4.5-5 stars. This one... well, it confuses me.

It's too bad, because it's got its strengths. Even for a Beatles record, it's diverse - the first four tracks alone have them going from surf-rock to psychedelic folk to chamber-pop to pseudo-ska without missing a beat. It's very well arranged and produced. And fourteen of these thirty tracks are among the Beatles' absolute finest songs. "Back in the U.S.S.R." is a funny parody of the Beach Boys, Ray Charles, and Chuck Berry. "Dear Prudence" is lush, trippy, and lovely, with some fine harmonies. "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" gets maligned a lot, but I think it's fun. "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" is a deep-thinking rock epic, with a legendary guitar solo from George's Eric Clapton. The three-part "Happiness is a Warm Gun" is the best on the record, one part haunting acid rock, one part ear-bursting proto-metal, one part mock doo-wop. "Martha My Dear" shows Paul at his best with a big, over-the-top, sweetly melodic pop song. "Blackbird" is another lovely Paul ballad; the retro "Birthday" is a fine flat-out rocker; "Yer Blues" is a funny blues parody; "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey" is the group at their most infectious; "Sexy Sadie" has bitter anti-Mariashi lyrics and a fine piano part to match; "Helter Skelter" rocks, an efficient response to the extreme experiments with volume of Hendrix, Jeff Beck and the Who that were occurring in '68; "Revolution 1" isn't as good as "Revolution", but those are some nice horns, and I adore those "shoo-be-doo-wop" harmonies; lastly, "Savoy Truffle" is a funky rocker with a guitar v. sax showdown that probably inspired several Rolling Stones hits. Those fourteen would've definitely kept the album's scope intact, and would've made for the greatest album ever. And even the tossoff goof tracks ("Rocky Raccoon", "Piggies", "Glass Onion"; "Why Don't We Do it in the Road?"; "I'm so Tired") are well-produced, well-written, quirky, and memorable.

The problem lies in the remaining few songs. "Julia" and "Mother Nature's Son" aren't exactly bad, but they're incredibly blah. And Ringo gets screwed. While he had always got the more "lightweight" songs in the first place, they were always amicable, and some of them were great. Neither of his songs is anywhere close to that. "Don't Pass Me By" (which he wrote) is an awful country hoedown, and "Good Night" (which he didn't right) is so schmaltzy it hurts. Paul's interest in '30s jazz had resulted in two great songs on previous albums ("When I'm Sixty-Four", "Your Mother Should Know") comes back to bite him in the butt on "Honey Pie", which can't decide if it wants to be a straight-faced homage to the genre or a mocking parody - it's a poor song either way you cut the pie. No pun intended. Seriously, I had already forgotten the word "pie" was in the song's title by the time I wrote it. That says a lot about me, doesn't it? And "Wild Honey Pie", the twisted cousin to "Honey Pie" is mindless indulgence. Short, yes, but horrendous. And "I Will" is extremely dull, though it's funny how it comes after "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?" on the tracklist. Of course, Paul's not the only one to blame. John did come up with the record's biggest travesty, the notorious sound collage "Revolution 9", as well as the childish, condescending "Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill"; "Cry Baby Cry", an attempt at Syd Barrett-esque whimsy that fails because it lacks what really made Syd's whimsical songs interesting: the undercurrent of menace and insanity. I think he's responsible for "Good Night", too. George doesn't escape unscathed either, chipping in "Long, Long, Long", which other than the flute is dreary.

So this had the potential to be great, but ego gets in the way. Hey, maybe it was made big, sprawling, and messy on purpose, so fans could pick out their own favorites! Who knows?

"