THE BEATLES [AKA: THE WHITE ALBUM]

This is one of those albums that make The Beatles be what they are now; an album that changed the history of the music. And that is not easy considering that only a year before they had already changed the history with Sgt. Pepper's.

Each song from this album is opposite to another one, and as a whole, the result is an extremely heterogenic album. Just see the beginning: a quite rocker song, 'Back in the USSR', followed by a ballad like 'Dear Prudence', then 'Glass Onion' starts warmly with the experimentation, and then a silly song like "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da', etc.

At the end, you have an hour and a half of a journey through a Helter Skelter, with compositions from all the four of them (Don't Pass Me By is the first Ringo Starr's solo composition), and a sea with different kind of music: a sort of rock style with silly lyrics like Paul's 'Why Don't We Do it in the Road' and John's 'Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me and My Monkey'; works with the guitar like 'Julia', 'Blackbird' and 'Mother Nature's Son'; a couple of "what's happening here?" with 'Wild Honey Pie' and 'The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill', and after that you get prepared for anything else that might take place, anything but 'Revolution 9'; a time for the blues: 'Yer Blues'; yes, there are also "normal" songs like 'Birthday', 'Sexy Sadie', 'I'm So Tired' or 'Piggies'. It's possible to continue making classifications, but what for? That's the bone of the White Album. Well, not only that, but also some highlights that deserve a word apart.

'Revolution 9': Before the White Album, is it possible to hear eight minutes of continuing noises, voices and pure experimentation in only one track? So, again we are understanding the reason why this album marked a before and after. .And that "number nine" used again and again in many references to the work.

'Rocky Raccoon' is one of my favourites songs, a good surprise by Paul McCartney. A simple song telling a story accompanied with a guitar, a harmonica, a bass and a honky tonk piano played by George Martin.

George Harrison also shows a great versatility within his four compositions, but without any doubt 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' is his best, and he demonstrate once again that The Beatles aren't only Lennon and McCartney, contributing maybe with the best song of the album.

John Lennon couldn't stay aside of making an all time classic, so there is 'Revolution 1', talking about changing the world.

'Helter Skelter' contains all McCartney's madness, with an ultra-distorted guitar and a lyric about going up and down an amusement ride. A classic.

Talking about The Beatles, there are two clear periods, and the White Album is the exaggeration of the second one, with almost nothing in similar with their first releases, like Please Please Me or With The Beatles. The evolution is complete, with the use of different instruments together with all the already said, and lots of details to be founds with the time, like the inclusion of Yoko Ono's voice in some chorus, in a line of Bungalow Bill and (why not?) also in Revolution 9. A masterpiece because what it was and what still is.

Just as a curiosity, this was the album that inspired Charles Manson to commit those famous crimes. He wrote in the walls of the houses words like "war", "pigs", "death to pigs", "Helter Skelter" and "rise". Understandable knowing that he was, not only a real fanatic of the band, but he considered them to be the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. And when he listened the White Album was all so clear. They were talking to him, inviting to make the Helter Skelter, the Revolution (Lennon sings ".you can count me out" and then adds an "in") against all the Piggies. The signs got even clearer with 'Blackbird' and 'Happiness Is a Warm Gun', and finally, the soundtrack of the Armageddon, 'Revolution 9', with sounds of guns and cries and screams of rise!, and a clear nod to the 9th chapter of the Apocalypse, where is described the final battle.

Well, I have to quote the source of the information on this last paragraph: Marcelo Gobello, from the "Cerdos & Peces" magazine, from Argentina.