<span>R</span><span>eleased 50 years ago today, The Beatles' </span><span><em>The White Album</em></span><span> is popular music's quintessential double album. That doesn't necessarily mean best – although The Fab Four's eponymous entry surely ranks among a handful of contenders for that titl</span><span>e – but simply the ultimate; the epitome of excess. The most representative, r</span><span>eferred-to and replicated case of the beleaguered 2LP package.</span> <span>Double albums are stereotypically bloated, ego-fuelled, idiosyncratic, genre-hopping, directionless affairs as baffling as they are beautiful – all of which might serve as a fitting introduction to The Beatles' ninth LP. Both the cause and effect of infamous infighting, which would tear the band apart two years later, </span><span><em>The White Album </em></span><span>was the sound of fragmentation, of not one, but three different bands – or perhaps more accurately, two bands and two halves. In the words of their most prolific voice, John Lennon, "the break-up of The Beatles can be heard" in these 30 tracks – of which, tellingly, just 16 feature all four band members performing.</span> <span>Unveiled inside a plain white sleeve in November 1968 – with the only indication of its contents the band's name lightly and lopsidedly embossed – </span><span><em>The Beatles</em></span><span> was technically an eponymous/untitled release, but was almost instantly embraced as </span><span><em>The White Album</em></span><span>.</span> <span>Coming after the lavish, Technicolor tableau of </span><span><em>Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band </em></span><span>a year earlier, pop artist Richard Hamilton's cover was a grand stunt for sure, but the two-disc format had precedent. Legend anoints Bob Dylan as the forefather of the rock double two years earlier – but his career-high </span><span><em>Blonde on Blonde</em></span><span> was simply a longer set of similar-sounding songs, which crucially doesn't chime with the most oft-repeated double-disc adage: that every good double album should have been a great single album – and every great 2LP set could have been a timeless standalone release.</span> <span><em>The White Album</em></span><span> may be timeless now anyhow, but it inspired the peculiar fandom pastime of hypothetically programming a "perfect" 45-minute set from its scattershot contents – in which The Fab Four shed their recent psychedelic skin and renounced the mop-top pop of yore, bouncing haphazardly between everything from ska (</span><span><em>Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da</em></span><span>) and soul (</span><span><em>Savoy Truffle</em></span><span>) to music hall (</span><span><em>Martha My Dear</em></span><span>) and country (</span><span><em>Rocky Raccoon</em></span><span>).</span> <span>For the first time, The Beatles were arguably following trends rather than setting them. What emerged loudest from </span><span><em>The White Album </em></span><span>were two prevalent styles that would come to define late-1960s pop: overdriven blues-rock (</span><span><em>Birthday</em></span><span>, </span><span><em>Yer Blues</em></span><span>, </span><span><em>Revolution 1</em></span><span>) and earnest, confessional acoustic folk (</span><span><em>Dear Prudence</em></span><span>, </span><span><em>Julia</em></span><span>, </span><span><em>Mother Nature's Son</em></span><span>). Jarringly cut together, without the conventional three-second gap between tracks, amid these 93 minutes of music there rests some unashamed filler: Paul McCartney's 52-second</span><span><em> Honey Pie</em></span><span> and two-line R&B pastiche </span><span><em>Why Don't We Do it in the Road?</em></span> <span>Then, of course, there is </span><span><em>Revolution 9</em></span><span> – John Lennon's eight-minute sound collage, inspired by the work of serialist composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, which acts as both the most compelling argument the whole thing should have been cut to a single disc – and perhaps the greatest evidence of The Beatles' prophetically innovative status.</span> <span>The list-makers and chin-strokers have plenty of </span><span>new material to play with, following the recent release of an epic anniversary Super Deluxe reissue, unearthing about 77 extra demos and out-takes from the album's notoriously frenzied sessions.</span> <span>Beyond the oft-amusing, occasionally insightful, studio banter, ploughing through this six-disc set reveals the studious intent – and prolific inspiration – driving The Beatles in 1968. The music might have lacked coherence, but it was clearly planned that way.</span> <span>The bulk of the material was penned by primary song-writers Lennon and McCartney during a stay of a few months in India, where our four recovering hippies joined (and one-by-one dropped out of) a celebrity-packed transcendental meditation course. Legend has it the only western instruments present were acoustic guitars – the stimulus for </span><span><em>The White Album</em></span><span>'s raw, rootsy return.</span> <span>Most revealing is the reissue's </span><span>haul of 27 basic acoustic demos – of which 19 made the final album – recorded at George Harrison's country home shortly after The Beatles' return, which showcase seemingly throwaway ditties such as </span><span><em>The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill</em></span><span> and </span><span><em>Everybody's Got Something to Hide (Except Me and My Monkey)</em></span><span> emerging in almost complete form at this embryonic stage. McCartney scats the exact solo to </span><span><em>Back in the USSR</em></span><span> he would end up playing on electric guitar, while the contrasting cut-and-paste chunks of Lennon's </span><span><em>Happiness is a Warm Gun</em></span><span> were in place long before the studio marathon to come.</span> <span>As chaotic as </span><span><em>The White Album</em></span><span> sounds, The Beatles knew what they were doing all along.</span> <span>The reissue's 50 studio out-takes reveal a very different side of the process. Before the strings were added, the orchestral Ringo Starr-sung sign-off </span><span><em>Good Night</em></span><span> is toyed with on </span><span>a single guitar, while </span><span><em>Helter Skelter</em></span><span> began life as a mellow, meandering 12-minute blues jam, before McCartney cranked his amp to notorious criminal Charles Manson's beloved proto-metal stomper.</span> <span>It's clearer than ever that </span><span><em>The White Album</em></span><span> </span><span>exists only because EMI allowed its best-selling boys to block book Abbey Road Studios for the better part of four months to experiment at all hours of the day – with Lennon recording in one studio while McCartney held fort simultaneously in another – an indulgence unheard of for any other act of the day.</span> <span>Harrison's </span><span><em>Not Guilty</em></span><span> was recorded 102 times, but never made the final cut – a far cry from The Beatles' 32-minute debut </span><span><em>Please Please Me</em></span><span>, bashed out in the same studio in just a single day, six years earlier, for the cost of £400 (Dh1,881).</span> <span>All these factors played a part in </span><span><em>The White Album</em></span><span>'s dramatically untethered musical approach – but they cannot explain its semantic diversions and divisions.</span> <span>Lyrically things verge disturbingly from Lennon's unflinching confessionalism (</span><span><em>Julia </em></span><span>– a tribute to his mother, mowed down by a car 10 years earlier) and seemingly blatant drugs references ("I need a fix 'cause I'm going down"), to a collective, wilful embrace of flippant silliness.</span> ___________________<br/> Read more: <strong><a href="https://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/music/celebrating-motown-i-heard-it-through-the-grapevine-turns-50-1.785671">Celebrating Motown: 'I Heard it Through the Grapevine' turns 50</a></strong> <strong><a href="https://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/music/feels-like-yesterday-but-times-have-changed-britney-spears-baby-one-more-time-is-20-today-1.783354">Britney Spears' 'Baby One More Time' turns 20</a> </strong> <strong><a href="https://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/music/why-1993-was-the-year-that-changed-music-forever-1.761042">Why 1993 was the year that changed music forever</a> </strong> ___________________ <span>A whole series of songs, to a casual listener at least, appear to concern the exploits of often-cartoon-esque animals – the outlaw cowboy </span><span><em>Rocky Raccoon</em></span><span>, the singing </span><span><em>Blackbird</em></span><span>, skittish </span><span><em>Piggies</em></span><span> and </span><span><em>Martha My Dear</em></span><span> a portrait of McCartney's dog – while there exist copious coded references to food: </span><span><em>Honey Pie</em></span><span>, </span><span><em>Glass Onion</em></span><span> and </span><span><em>Savoy Truffle</em></span><span> (inspired by guest Eric Clapton's fondness for chocolate).</span> <span>At the time it was chic to criticise this detachment as a deliberate attempt to dodge the political turbulence of the day. Now, while we approach the tail end of 2018, a year rife with its own violence and division that invite inevitable parallels – it has instead become fashionable to magnify </span><span><em>The White Album</em></span><span>'s socio-political overtones.</span> <span>The disengaged singer of </span><span><em>Revolution 1</em></span><span> – released as a speedier single simply titled </span><span><em>Revolution </em></span><span>– can be read as either ironic commentary, or mantra. Lennon's </span><span><em>Happiness is a Warm Gun</em></span><span> and </span><span><em>The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill </em></span><span>sound like anti-firearms pleas, while </span><span><em>Piggies</em></span><span> is quite obviously a ham-fisted Orwellian satire.</span> <span>The greatest debate has flared over </span><span><em>The White Album</em></span><span>'s most enduring moment – McCartney's </span><span><em>Blackbird</em></span><span>, a finger-picked, Bach-inspired ode, widely interpreted as an expression of solidarity with the American civil rights struggle – sadly as powerful, poignant and pertinent today as it was 50 years ago.</span> <em><span>The Beatles’ The White Album Super Deluxe is out now</span></em>