Just a disclaimer: this entire article may be complete conjecture mixed with actual facts that I have read about the Beatles. With that being said, I hope that this can be still be enjoyable despite my own editorializing.

I am no songwriter. I could never be a musician, and I recognize that as a fact. The best songs I come up with are just me singing out loud what I’m currently doing, i.e. Marshall from “How I Met Your Mother.” I wish I had the ability to live life and extract inspiration from it, then pour it all out into an album.



Certain people have that innate ability to make music. They use it as an escape or expression. Some people write to send a message; they want to tell a story. There are limitless reasons for someone to write a song. People have also done some freaking insane things in the name of inspiration. Today’s subject is somewhere on the insanity spectrum, but not full-scale crazy. It is the story of how the greatest band of all time began to fragment, and how that plays out in their music. But it is also the story of how sometimes you just have to make music and forget everything else.

This is the story of how the Beatles composed their ninth studio album, called “The Beatles” or “The White Album” (depends on who you ask, I personally call it the “The White Album”). The album was mostly written during the band’s time in India, where they took a Transcendental Meditation course with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. They came away with 40 compositions as a result of their time.

Quick side note: this is probably the best way I can think of to make new music. Ignore your producers, ignore the morons who tell you to go mainstream. Instead, get away. Do some recreational drugs. Find yourself. Don’t find the world.

Their time in India was most likely the last time they all got along pretty well. When they returned to England, they brought back all of their work and complied it into a thirty song long, double-LP. The recording sessions sound volatile. Between McCartney’s perfectionism and Lennon’s dismissal of the other’s work, it’s a miracle that three more albums came after this one. Harrison and Starr were also realizing their second-tier treatment by McCartney and Lennon. Poor George had really come into his own, but was rarely afforded the time to effectively contribute. The infamous Yoko Ono also turned up around this time, disliked by the other band members.

Despite all their personal issues, they somehow managed to put out another great album. Listening to “The White Album” is like listening to your music on shuffle. There is little rhyme or reason to how the songs are arranged. There are blues songs, rock songs, country songs, and even an early heavy-metal song (you’re welcome, metal heads). The album is just the music. The songs are what they are. It is not much of an “album” but rather an anthology of their lives at the time. They worked on the songs together, but there is a clear distinction between a Paul McCartney song and a John Lennon song. This is the first album where that is very obvious. Paul made sentimental songs. John made experimental, rough songs. When George could contribute, he made sentimental and spiritual songs. And poor Ringo is the drummer.

Ultimately this an album of “why nots?” Why not make a heavy metal song? Why not make an eight-minute song full of random noises? We can do that, we’re the freaking Beatles and people are going to buy whatever we put out. Now, that is a powerful thing to realize. It can lead to either really good music, or absolute crap. Luckily, the Beatles don’t put out a lot of crap.

Some have described this album as the “breakup of the Beatles.” That seems to be a fair assessment. Only on sixteen of the thirty songs do all four members actually perform. The personal issues behind the music ring clearly. The album is disjointed and weird. There is not really a flow, especially in contrast to “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” It is a good album, perhaps one of their best. But, clearly, the beginning of the end.

What happens when you take the biggest egos of the sixties and have them in the same band? If you know even a little bit about the history of the Beatles, you know that things did not end very well for them. That is because they truly had the biggest egos of their time. And they weren’t necessarily unjustified for acting it. Their entire careers, they had been told they are geniuses. Every album had been a smash hit. They had girls tearing each other apart just to get close to them. The “McCartney-Lennon” songwriting duo is one the most lauded in the history of music. But the meetings of the minds eventually tore them apart. “The White Album” is a beautiful falling away from grace. They never went on a bad note. But the Beatles ceased to be because their success had outgrown itself. Something had to give.

In my mind, the last four albums the Beatles made are full of “screw it, let’s just make some music.” They kept making recordings, even when they could have been done much earlier. At a certain point, I think you can set aside your own issues and look at yourself, look at the empire you’ve built, the expectations of your fans, “And screw it all. We’re the Beatles. Let’s just make a masterpiece and go out with a bang.”

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