I should point out that this is my favorite album in the whole world, so I really didn’t mean the thread to suggest that it was deficient. I just wanted to see what a single LP from this material might have looked like, and what kind of consensus there might be about the cuts that would have to be made.
Anyway, I expected to have to struggle to pack in as much stuff as I could, but once you start stripping the odds & ends (i.e., the relatively inessential stuff), it becomes a much different sort of album, and I actually had trouble finding stuff that still fit. This is what I came up with:
Side 1 (22:23)
Back in the U.S.S.R (2:43)
Dear Prudence (3:56)
Blackbird (2:18)
Why Don’t We Do It In the Road (1:42)
Martha My Dear (2:28)
I’m So Tired (2:03)
Yer Blues (4:01)
Wild Honey Pie (1:01)
Cry Baby Cry (3:11)
Side 2 (23:10)
Revolution 1 (4:16)
Ob-La-Di-Ob-La-Da (3:08)
Mother Nature’s Son (2:48)
Everybody’s Got Something To Hide… (2:25)
Happiness Is a Warm Gun (2:44)
While My Guitar Gently Weeps (4:45)
Long, Long, Long (3:04)
I’m not totally thrilled with it. I think “I’m So Tired” and “Yer Blues” go well together sonically, but that’s an awful lot of pathos for six consecutive minutes. I also wish I could have found a place for “Julia,” “Bungalow Bill,” and “Rocky Raccoon” – I prefer all of them to “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” but they don’t really fit in with the rest of these songs, whereas “Guitar” does.
On the other hand, there are some things I like about it. Most notably: ditching “Good Night,” which could only go at the very end, frees up that spot for “Long, Long, Long” and a breathtaking finish to the album. I also wound up, quite by accident, with seven songs each by John and Paul, and two by George.
Okay, I’ve got it down to 49 minutes and I’m more convinced than ever that Martin was wrong. It’s just not the same album, even though only a couple of the choices were difficult. In particular the whole thing feels a lot less dangerous without Revolution 9. Yeah, few people choose to listen to that one and it’s much parodied, but it still stands out. So to compensate, I’ve reordered the tracks (Dear Prudence may be the best song John ever wrote but it’s not the right way to start an album): I think starting the album “Yes I’m lonely/Wanna die” is about as good as you can do to replicate the shock of having Revolution 9 looming at the back of the album, right before Good Night.
4:01 – Yer Blues
2:28 – Martha My Dear
3:56 – Dear Prudence
0:52 – Wild Honey Pie
3:15 – Sexy Sadie
4:45 – While My Guitar Gently Weeps (Harrison)
3:01 – Cry Baby Cry
2:23 – Happiness Is a Warm Gun
4:15 – Revolution 1
1:41 – Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?
1:46 – I Will
2:54 – Julia
4:29 – Helter Skelter
3:04 – Long, Long, Long (Harrison)
3:11 – Good Night
2:18 – Blackbird
The last tossup for me was Martha My Dear vs. Glass Onion. I kept Martha because I already had more John songs and that made the balance closer, 7 to 6. George keeps his traditional two songs per album, and Ringo gets one.
“Yer Blues” to “Martha My Dear” to “Dear Prudence” is a damned fine way to start things off - better than the original, IMO. But you still should’ve kept “Glass Onion”. I’m actually surprised at the lack of love for that song in this thread.
ETA: I like “Blackbird” at the end, too - kind of like “Her Majesty” on Abbey Road.
To me, it all comes back to the way I listened to new music back then. After discovering the album in the store, I’d rush home and listen to it on my cheesy Sears record player. With the detachable speakers on either side of my head.
All of those LPs live in my memory as self-contained units; snapshots of the artists, if you will. I can’t imagine The White Album in a different order or with any of the songs missing.
A far better exercise would be to edit The Clash’s Sandinista down to a single or double album. There’s a winnowing project that should have been done.
Revolution 9 sure, but actually the White Album is John’s comeback album after being overshadowed by Paul in the previous 4 (Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour). I know he had some great triumphs in that span (Day in the Life, Strawberry Fields), but a lot of mediocre tracks, e.g. Doctor Robert, Good Morning. It’s a shame that the album has Rev 1 and Rev 9, but not the single version of Revolution… which is far superior.
The dogs:While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Why Don’t We Do It In The Road, I Will, Long Long Long, Honey Pie. Uh still 80 minutes long, easily enough on a double LP–and still too long to fit on one CD! I tried to eliminate stuff that works well in album context but isn’t essential (Wild Honey Pie, Piggies, Don’t Pass Me By, Julia, Good Night). Still runs a double LP worthy 67 minutes–and has 20 brilliant songs. There’s never been a double LP or lengthy CD that’s great all the way through. That’s what makes the White Album the album that defines the Beatles, even if Revolver was a better album. What other group could make an album that long that careens from metal to art rock to country to folk, still makes sense when you hear it together, and is packed with amazing songs?
If it were all possible in a parallel universe, I’d like to find room for Harrison’s “Not Guilty” somewhere on the album.
The Beatles truly were amazing. As a musician, I sometimes find myself paraphrasing that line from The Princess Bride when listening to the Fab Four: “I wonder if they were using the same notes we are using?”
I found myself almost agreeing with this. But then I realised you took out both the good uptempo rockers Back in the USSR and Everyone’s Got Something to Hide Except For Me And My Monkey. Ringo didn’t have a song on Let It Be Either, couldn’t you ditch Good Night. Also, why keep Wild Honey Pie?
USSR was a tough call. You’re right that there isn’t really an up-tempo fun song on the album as I did it. Hmmmm.
I probably could, but I kind of like the song and when considering how they put their albums together I wouldn’t use Let It Be as a model, since it was assembled by other people after the band threw in the towel. It’s not a great song, but I kind of like it, and I’m sort of proud of my version of the ending sequence of the album.
I knew somebody was going to ask. It’s my girlfriend’s favorite. I’ve asked her why and I don’t think she could really explain, but she’s possibly the only person in the world who would choose that as her favorite song on the White Album. I like that, and I wouldn’t want to have to be the one to her I cut it!
It’s my favorite album of all time. Except for Revolution #9, there’s nothing I could cut without missing it later. All this typing: “I got blisters on my fingers!”
I’m going to go out on a limb (and I know it’s an umpopular position) and give major props to The Beatles for including “Revolution #9” on The White Album.
To wit; if you look at the album as a piece of pop culture, yeah it doesn’t fit. But you have to look at it in a wider context of what was happening in music as a whole at the time. Classical music was being invaded, for better or worse, by John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis, and many others who were trying to expand both the meanings, functions, and even the methods of creation of music. Lennon, to his credit, didn’t want to be seen as just another songwriter, but was trying to stretch himself. Whether it succeeds as well as, say, Stockhausen’s “Gesang die Junglinge” or “Hymnen” is another matter altogether. But they get my vote and admiration for trying to stretch their abilities into realms that would test their talents rather than rest on them, even if it meant giving their fans music that they might not appreciate or understand.
I’m not sure this would all fit on a 60’s album side - side two is about 34 minutes from a very rough calculation - but I think it works. I didn’t rearrange tracks in any way; that over my head!
