1. Back in the U.S.S.R.
2. Dear Prudence
3. Glass Onion
4. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
5. Wild Honey Pie
6. The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill
7. While My Guitar Gently Weeps*
8. Happiness Is a Warm Gun
9. Martha My Dear
10. I'm So Tired
11. Blackbird*
12. Piggies
13. Rocky Raccoon
14. Don't Pass Me By
15. Why Don't We Do It in the Road
16. I Will
17. Julia*
18. Birthday
19. Yer Blues
20. Mother Nature's Son
21. Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey
22. Sexy Sadie
23. Helter Skelter
24. Long, Long, Long
25. Revolution 1
26. Honey pie
27. Savoy Truffle
28. Cry Baby Cry
29. Revolution 9
30. Good Night
A-
You know, I usually listen to these albums a few times to get a feel for them. There's no way in hell I'm putting myself through this shit twice.
I like the Beatles. And I like a lot of the songs on this album. But The Beatles also includes some of the worst shit the Fab Four ever wrote. The four song run of dreadfulness that is "Glass Onion" through "Bungalow Bill" nearly broke me. I sat there with my head in my hands going "Please end". And that's the reason I'm only giving this an A-.
If you can make it past those four songs, though, The Beatles is pretty good. It's disappointing that the group never really expand upon the promise of Sgt Pepper's, though. Most of these songs were apparently written on acoustic guitar, and The Beatles features a more stripped-down style in terms of structure. Unfortunately, the simplified structure is offset by a whole heap of over-production. It seems like the group had reached a point where they felt they could do no wrong, where they were enamoured with all the new sounds possible in pop music, and so they drape every song here with countless unnecessary bits of arrangement and bury some pretty solid tunes. The result is an album featuring career highlights like the gentle "Blackbird", the strange and moving "Julia", and the truly epic "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", along side sonic nightmares like "Wild Honey Pie", "Piggies", and the infamous "Revolution 9".
Between these two extremes you have a lot of good, if mostly inconsequential, songs. This album shows real development for the group musically - The Beatles is one of the more important releases when it comes to an influence on punk and alternative rock, for example (check the manic "Birthday", for example). And the sheer scope of the album is pretty impressive. I guess I said once that it's inevitable that every great band will eventually release an incredibly self-indulgent double album. The Beatles is really the ne plus ultra of such things. But at the same time, the willingness to try anything, and the sheer range of styles and sounds, broke new ground for pop music. Other Beatles albums are a lot easier to like (and, to my mind, feature far better songs), but this is the one that really forces you to stand still and think about it as a piece of complex, challenging art. Until "Why Don't We Do It in the Road" comes along and makes you want to throw a shoe at the stereo. But then McCartney redeems himself with something fucking bizarre and wonderful like the proto-headbanger "Helter Skelter". I don't know.
Speaking of "Helter Skelter", I guess there's an elephant in the room. This album has since become infamous for inspiring Charles Manson to go off the deep end. If you haven't read it, the book Helter Skelter provides a fascinating overview of the case. The author makes an observation at one point that really sums up something about the Beatles (and, I guess, The Beatles). Listening to "Happiness Is A Warm Gun" (another great song, although the Breeders did it better), he wondered how Manson could interpret something that was clearly intended to be cheeky and sexual as a call to political violence. Especially when "Revolution 1" is explicitly against that sort of thing. It's been said a million times before, but people have really overthought the Beatles. People act like they're the be all and end all of music, like they have this profound wisdom to share with people. At least Lennon thought this was a bit silly - hence the satirical "Glass Onion", which was intended to gently rebuke fans for just this sort of obsessive misinterpretation of their music.
George Martin has said that he personally though The Beatles would have worked better as a single album consisting of the strongest songs here. I agree that would make for a far better album. But at the same time I do like the sloppy mishmash that we actually got. It's strange, thrilling, at times unlistenable, but it's never boring. I'll defend Revolver as their peak with my dying breath, but The Beatles is a great deal of fun, and it's nice to see the biggest band of all time refusing to take themselves seriously. I just don't see how anyone could consider something with "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" on it one of the ten greatest albums ever released.
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