The White Album edit

How a slimmed down version of The Beatles’ flawed double album could be every bit as good as Sgt. Pepper

Stuck for conversation with a Beatles fan? Ask them their opinion on The White Album. The consensus view on their run of earlier albums — Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper — is pretty much unanimous: all brilliant. And even their swansong LP, Abbey Road, is fondly remembered. But The White Album (or The Beatles to give it its proper name) is the band’s most interesting album, if only because its splits opinion. The general view, voiced by George Martin at the time and by most Beatles fans ever since, is that if it had been trimmed to a single album, cutting out the half-baked songs, studio jams, novelty songs and experimental stuff, it would stand as a Beatles record every bit as good as any other, maybe even the best. Problem is, deciding which songs make the cut and which don’t is a delicate task when you’re dealing with the best pop group that ever existed. But anyway, I’ve had a go.

Editing The White Album down is not just an issue of quality control, but also about injecting some coherence. Lennon and McCartney hadn’t functioned as a songwriting partnership since the early days and by 1968 they were often not even playing on each others songs, never mind writing together. There’s also room for four George Harrison numbers and even one from Ringo. Then there’s the range of styles and tone to consider: the bulk of the songs on the album were written during The Beatles’ meditation retreat to India earlier that year and many remain reflective, acoustic numbers. These sit incongruously alongside some of the heaviest stuff The Beatles ever recorded. Add in (mostly embarrassing) dabblings with ska, music hall, heavy rock and experimental noise art and you’re left with an incoherent mess. So some songs that are less-than-brilliant I’ve left in, and some decent ones I’ve chopped out because they don’t make sense in a single album.

The original album has 30 songs stretched across four sides of vinyl, which means losing 15 tracks. Here’s the running order with the songs I want to keep in bold:

Back In The USSR
Dear Prudence
Glass Onion
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
Wild Honey Pie
The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Happiness Is A Warm Gun

Martha My Dear
I’m So Tired
Blackbird
Piggies
Rocky Raccoon
Don’t Pass Me By
Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?
I Will
Julia

Birthday
Yer Blues
Mother Nature’s Son
Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey
Sexy Sadie
Helter Skelter
Long, Long, Long

Revolution 1
Honey Pie
Savoy Truffle
Cry Baby Cry
Revolution 9
Good Night

Some of these omissions require no explanation. I challenge anyone to make the case that Piggies, Wild Honey Pie, Savoy Truffle or Rocky Racoon are anything other than dross. The “comedy” stuff and the Ringo number are out too, as is Helter Skelter which is liked by Charlie Manson and pretty much no-one else. Some of the acoustic stuff is a bit samey: on the McCartney side, I dropped I Will because Mother Nature’s Son is similar but better. Same for Lennon’s Julia: I know its about his dead mum and stuff, but I’m So Tired is better. Oh, and regardless of whether or not you think Revolution 9 works as a piece of avant-garde art (and I personally think its horseshit) it doesn’t belong on a Beatles album.

The 15 songs left come in at 45 minutes, perfect for a single album. The next challenge is to put them in some sort of sensible order. I considered putting all the McCartney songs on one side and Lennon on the other but that didn’t really work. Instead, I’ve opted to put the heavier, up-tempo stuff on side one and the quieter songs on side two. This justifies the inclusion of tracks such as Yer Blues and Me And My Monkey, which are both a little lightweight, but work in the context of side one, which now has a real bluesy feel, at least until you get to Happiness Is A Warm Gun, which doesn’t really fit anywhere. I’m not a huge fan of While My Guitar Gently Weeps with its dull Clapton solo but it closes side one with a certain flourish.

Side two was simply a case of working in McCartney’s sunnier songs (Blackbird, Martha My Dear etc.) with the darker Lennon stuff. But I reckon it works. The transition from Blackbird to Dear Prudence, for example, would be sweet if they could be flowed into each other. Like side one, side two closes with a Harrison song, in this case Long, Long, Long, easily George’s best song from this period. Here’s how it looks:

Back In The USSR
Yer Blues
Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?
Revolution 1
Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey
Happiness Is A Warm Gun
While My Guitar Gently Weeps

Blackbird
Dear Prudence
Sexy Sadie
Martha My Dear
I’m So Tired
Mother Nature’s Son
Cry Baby Cry
Long, Long, Long

So there you go, a great album. I’ve done a Spotify playlist so give it a listen and tell me what you think.