Music history might have taken a completely different course. '80s hair bands doing soft-shoe vaudeville tunes!
I think of this story a lot: In some documentary I saw the interviewer chats with Paul as he pilots his private yacht somewhere, and asks him something like “Don’t you really think there wasn’t enough good material on the White Album for a double album?”
Paul must get asked that a lot by ballsy reporters, and certainly knows it’s A Burning Question out there for millions.
He looks at him and says: “Hey, it’s the fucking White Album.” Meaning: you want to put something out better, be my guest.
Also to Number 9 guy: you must have been some weird high school kid, if you said that then.
I picked Mother Nature, cause that’s where I’m at now. Younger I would have picked Helter Skelter. Younger still I would have picked Yer Birthday, because my parents bought it for me, and I first played it, on my eighth (ninth?) birthday.
Another Savoy Truffle. I have a fondness for the lost Beatle, George. And it suits my somewhat Puritan bent that you inevitably pay for your fun.
It is said that he got many of the lyrics off a box of Macintosh’s Chocolates. By the way, Montelimar is the word’s capital of nougat.
Everybody’s Got Something To Hide. I like that livelier style of rock better than the heavy plodding Helter Skelter. Musicals props also to Savoy Truffle and Birthday, and if Sexy Sadie is really about the Haharishi, good on ya John Lennon.
I liked “Cry Baby Cry,” as well as its cool coda, “Take Me Back,” the coolest non-song ever. I’d love to hear Paul do a “full” version someday.
“I read somewhere” that the song’s working lyric was “Maharishi, what have you done?” (and so forth), later sanitized by Lennon to “Sexy Sadie.” To render it non-libelous?
Nah. I think being a fragment is part of its strange creepy beauty. Like a half-remembered dream or something.
Frankly, this rather brings home the fact that nearly all the best stuff on the White album is on the first two sides. I voted for “Helter Skelter”, and it was not a hard choice, although it is hardly The Beatles at their very best. "Revolution 1, which I think I actually prefer to the rockier version behind “Hey Jude”, wold be my second choice. Frankly, though, I regerd some of the stuff her as being somewhere between awful and unlistenable: “Birthday”, “Yer Blues”, “Goodnight”, and, obviously, “Revolution 9”. The rest of the tracks vary between weak and fun but slight.
IIRC he said that in the extended Playboy Interview. The change would have been so to make it more general rather than person-specific, he indicated he had a tendency for unpleasant breakups with people.
Number nine
number nine
number nine
Meh, there’s a very good reason they only used as much as they did on the album.
(In addition to TreacherousCretin’s point.)
We must have read the same “somewhere”, but I don’t remember the reason for changing the object of his disaffection. I assumed it was for legal reasons but JRDelirious seems to have answered it.
I didn’t know this story, but I now think it would have been a much better song if he had left it. I have always found it hard to imagine just what sort of person Sadie is meant to be, but put “Maharishi” and the whole song finally makes sense.
Maybe he changed it to avoid upsetting George. (Not that John was the considerate type, but it could have threatened the group’s cohesion at a time when John still cared.)
Thanks for the link. You just blew my little mind.
That was Ringo? All these years I thought it was John.
I think side 2 of the White Album represents a fundamental aspect of human nature: The desire to loosen up, let go, try things.
I find it very welcoming and interesting.
Yes.
I love Long Long Long-- I’m just a foolish romantic who loves George’s voice in 3/4 time.
Cry Baby Cry to help the crew of Serenity get out of another tight spot.
You did? What, from holding the pick too strongly while strumming that rhythm guitar? :). Actually, your mistake is cool – it makes the statement surreal (perhaps lysergically induced) rather than literal.