The Beatles (The White Album)

I was thinking about The Beatles (The White Album) recently and had a couple realizations about it.  In the liner notes of the two copies I have (a 2009 remaster and the smaller version of the 50th anniversary edition with just the two discs of the album and the Esher demos), the album's contrast with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is discussed to some degree.  In the 50th anniversary edition liner notes, John Lennon is quoted:  "The double album was a complete reversal from Sgt. Pepper."  Paul McCartney is more specific: "On Sgt. Pepper we had more orchestral stuff than we'd ever used before so it was more of a production.  But this time we didn't really want to go overboard on that and we've tried to play more like a band."  This musical shift seems to have carried over to the album covers, too.  The liner notes in the 2009 remaster explain that "Any expectations of a cover to rival the vivid art work of Sgt. Pepper or Magical Mystery Tour were immediately overturned.  The outside of the sleeve was completely white with the only lettering consisting of 'The Beatles' embossed on the front and also printed on the spine with the catalogue number."

In more ways than one, even the titles indicate the opposing qualities of the two albums.  The most obvious difference is the length:  "The Beatles" (even called a "minimalist title" in the 50th anniversary edition liner notes) is much shorter than "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."  (Note that Lennon and McCartney both abbreviate it to just "Sgt. Pepper" in the quotes above.)  More significantly, though, the eponymous nature of the title "The Beatles" demonstrates an authenticity instead of the artifice involved in pretending to be Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

"Too Much Monkey Business"

Last week, I was thinking about Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business" and discovered a feature in it that's also included in the cover that the Beatles did on the BBC.

The line "Same thing ev'ry day, gettin' up, goin' to school" is sung to a melody something like this:

(I'm pretty sure the Beatles' version is in A major but Berry's original is in F major.)

The melody here just alternates between two pitches, so there's a musical representation of the repetition and predictability of the narrator's routine.

"Chains"

Yester-day, I listened to the first disc of On Air - Live at the BBC, Vol. 2 and noticed a small feature in "Chains."  George Harrison sings the line "But I can't break away from all of these" by himself, but the following "Chains"* is sung by multiple voices.  Because there are more voices here, there's a sense of the abundance of "all of these."

While referencing the version on Please Please Me to verify that this feature is there, too, I also noticed that in the line "Can't run around," "around" is sung with a melisma (D C Bb), giving a sense of either breadth or movement.

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*Logically, it has to be "chains," but I think the Beatles actually sing just the singular "chain."  In his book Here, There, and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles, Geoff Emerick explains that on early tracks such as "Misery" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand," the Beatles sang initial S sounds as SH, partially because "it removed any kind of potential 'de-essing' problems, where if there was too much top end (treble), the sound on vinyl would distort" (p. 60).  I think the S is left off "chains" here for a similar purpose.