Beatlemania Dept. - The Thirty Shades Of Gray Album

The irony! Just when the Beatles started believing in their own myth, their audience started seeing through it. Magical Mystery Tour arrived on a great blue wave of post-Pepper excitement and good will, which broke into gray scum after a few uncomfortable minutes of viewing time. The backlash was almost universal - the Beatles had at last alienated the Man In The Street and the Man On The Clapham Omnibus. They’d tested the public’s patience with the unsettlingly weird Strawberry Fields Forever and the less whistlable parts of Sgt. Pepper, but this shabby, vaguely unpleasant, and above all ballsachingly boring home movie effectively squandered the affection of a nation. Beatlemaniacs will scoff at this, but we’re not here to pander to fans, who are by nature strangely unbalanced. We’re here to understand why love affairs go sour. 

The Beatles believed they only needed a Super-8 camera and a bunch of C-list pals sitting in a bus and a movie would happen. How hard could it be? They didn’t bother with a script - genius is above such mundane travail - so there is no story. Brilliant! They made a colossal error of hubris by premiering it on primetime television. Had they kept it a private project to screen in their living rooms it could be forgiven, perhaps even loved. But they believed it was a product of Beatle-genius, worthy of national exposure, and cleverly hedged their bets by telling us not to take it seriously. A bit of fun for the Christmas holidays! Fuck us if we couldn't take a joke, right?

Except nobody was laughing. There was nothing remotely fun, or even entertaining, about it. Not a single line has been filed at the quote bank - there’s no “it goes to eleven” here. No scenes are replayed among friends, or even recalled with pleasure. Remember the bit where ...? Nope. Maybe where they’re dressed as animals, miming to I Am The Walrus. Or when someone explodes from over-eating. Oh wait, that’s another movie. It was the first time Beatle fans had to defend their idols, and it was hard going for the most articulate of them. Surrealist, brave, non-conformist, the Liverpool Lads cock a scally snook at the pretentions of cinema as art. Or something.

 

The movie, with its insulting absence of talent, craft, fun, excitement and charm - all signature Beatle qualities to that point - set the stage for an album that bafflingly remains a cornerstone of pop; "The White Album". Magical Mystery Tour was forgotten, maybe forgiven. This was The Big One. Even the title was shouting at us - this wasn't an album by the Beatles, this was an album about the Beatles. The impact it had on release is unimaginable for anyone who wasn’t there. It was a global event. That brilliant, brilliant cover. A double! How revolutionary was that? Well, not very, actually, but hey! They printed the track timings! Wow! That’s really ... uh ...

 

I’d been one of the believers defending the Mystery Tour, even though the sour acid of I Am The Walrus and the miserablist Blue Jay Way, the irritating triteness of the title track and Your Mother Should Know, and the disposability of the instrumental Plodding left only the Clever Paulie song Fool On The Hill to actually like. Hopes that the new album would be a return to form (although that phrase was unheard back then) were put on hold by radio previews. The songs, apart from the throat-slashingly horrible Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da, were stubbornly unmemorable and, crucially, un-fun. Still - this was The Beatles! I’d get up to speed. The spokesmen of a generation were leading us to a new level. I ponied up for the album - about the price of a small family car, as it seemed - and started to learn to live with it. I studied the poster, the portraits and the small print as I listened, like a homework assignment. I could find nothing to love. It was a joyless, depressing thing. I had to be wrong. This was The BEATLES.

 

Although I lacked the courage to voice my doubts, I smelled a rat, and I smelled it from the first seconds of the first tuneless track. Sound effect of a plane? He's just flown in? Well, gee whiz. The song left me baffled. Was it meant to be funny? Satirical? Was the target Chuck Berry, or the U.S.S.R.? The U.S.A.? Fuck knew. Or cared. The strongest radio presence was the cringing knock-off ska of Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da, covered by twinkling teenybop popsters The Tremeloes. Or was it bouncing bubblegum combo The Marmalades? Whatever. It was another Stupid Paulie song that not even a Joe Cocker could - or would want to - save. Ska was not their only smirking musical affectation. There was the not-even Yer Blues, the Clumsy Rock Helter Skelter, the Simpering Twenties Honey Pie, the cod psychedelic Glass Onion, the uneasy-listening Good Night, the potting shed C&W Rocky Racoon and Don't Pass Me By, and so on and on and on. Nothing was real. And the songs that weren't half-assed stylistic gestures were just ... half-assed. I'm So Tired, Happiness Is A Warm Gun and others fell into a listless torpor, musically uninspired, and lyrically about nothing - because the Beatles' contempt for the writing process (cf Magical Mystery Tour) led them to believe that the first words that came into their muddled heads were good enough - poetry, even! Harrison's shrewish world-view, as always, extended as far as his bank statement - Piggies was yet another ugly sixth-form whine about his tax dollar putting bacon on the tables of the decadent rich. Still - nice to be reminded of a time when billionaires actually paid taxes.

 

The material was partly written at The Maharishi’s Meditation Camp, and we can imagine the nurturing atmosphere, perfect for song-writing; planeloads of spoiled Western pop stars, WAGs, scenesters and spiritual pilgrims (saintly Mia Farrow!), all sitting painfully cross-legged, struggling to control the eventful vegetarian diet, while Ugly Bearded Guy mumbles into his love beads. The Beatles, to their credit, fell out of love with the greasy-eyed slob pretty rapidly, but their *cough* search for inner peace was symptomatic of end-of-the-decade malaise, the overriding mood of the Gray Album. The Beatles, the ’sixties, everything was falling apart, and nobody wanted to admit it. Their retirement from live performance, because the poor dears “couldn’t replicate the sound of their records” (something that didn't seem to bother any other band on the planet) was the beginning of the end. They'd always been hot-wired to what was happening on the street, supernaturally adept at appropriating an idea so quickly it looked like their own. Now, they locked themselves away in their pig-sty manor houses and stared at the bathroom tiles for inspiration. Blank white squares.

 

In the absence of inspiration and experimentation we got ... reference points. Fans love this, claiming it to be the first (finger-waggle) "post-modern" pop album. It may well be. But it was not clever enough, or too clever by half, a sterile vacuum rather than bubbling cauldron. Who gives a shit about "post-modernism" except "post-modernists"? And who gives a shit about them? A very few songs escaped through the Irony Curtain, their sincerity intact. Mother Nature’s Son is sheerly lovely. Julia wins - barely, on points - its fight against mawkishness. Clapton clearly hadn't read the memo, his guitar wailing passionately instead of gently weeping. Gently fucking weeps?? Jesus wept.

 

It’s the cookie-cutter Glass Onion that tells the story. The psychedelic effects were already, in ’69, quotes from the past. Beatle History 101: “I told you ‘bout Strawberry Fields ...” Stop right there. John is telling us he told us. That distance - self-referential, "post-modern" - pervades this melody-dodging shopping list of a song, and the entire album. There’s nothing remotely as direct and dazzling as Strawberry Fields Forever or Penny Lane. Nothing as thrilling as A Hard Day’s Night. As heartfelt as Help. As compassionate as Eleanor Rigby. The Beatles were history, and "The White Album" is their Coles Notes.

 

Nobody wants to admit a love affair - a marriage - is over. Relationships are dragged into the shit because we don't want to let go. The Beatles were waist deep and we willingly followed in their wake, in denial of the stink. The scuttlebutt was that the album was recorded mostly solo (sorry - soli) because all the evidence pointed towards it; the music-biz gossip and tabloid tattle of breaking up, the scatter-shot lack of direction (sorry - dizzying eclecticism), the separate mugshots. And here’s another clue for you all - the trash-thrown-on-the-floor poster. All this told us what we didn't want to know but knew already.

 

The recent cash cow box set spun a different story for the suckers. Jolly Giles Martin decided the sessions were warm and fuzzy, a real team effort, the lads on a creative roll and having fu-un in the studio. Maybe - we weren’t there, but neither was he. Scag-panda Yoko Ono was, though - nobody’s idea of a good idea, except her smacked-up husband's. Geoff Emerick and Ringo Starr both walked out of the sessions. How toxic do things have to get for Ringo to walk out? Paulie bitching about his drumming, that's how. Giles Goat Boy’s happy revisionism is nothing but marketing strategy - reassess this timeless classic in a fun new light! As with the yoks-free Mystery Tour, there’s no evidence of brotherly (or sisterly) love in the grooves. "The White Album" is Thirty Shades Of Gray.

 

For the first time, nobody played a Beatles album from beginning to end. Its unendurable length (sorry, its epic scope) is another clue. They knew they couldn’t come up with another Pepper, so they kept flinging shit at the wall. Didn't know where to start, or when to stop. The hubris that fueled the Mystery Tour is given free rein. There’s an entire album’s worth of filler in there - Even Beatle Shit Stinks. It’s a popular fan exercise to try to construct the single album it might have been (the Doll’s House), but none of them works because there simply isn’t enough material to make a great single album. Godammit, there isn’t enough to make a great single.

 

Meanwhile, out in the real world, the Rolling Stones confronted the times head-on with Beggar’s Banquet, a blast of honest, unironic, and uncompromisingly adult music beyond the scope of the Beatle-babies in their sound-proofed playpen. The Stones stayed together and went on to shape the 'seventies, while the Fabs broke apart in cat-fight spite and sobbing sulks. Cry baby cry - you're old enough to know better.

 

I wrestled with this four-headed monster until I believed in it. I indoctrinated myself, and treasured my original lo-number mono and stereo vinyls, bestowing on them a liturgical status, beyond criticism. I came late - but not too late - to the realisation that my first impressions were on the money. Falling out of love with the Fab Four was a long and mostly unconscious process, but now I'm down to four (or five) albums I occasionally listen to. "The White Album" was first for the dumpster fire. I loved 'em back then, but I don't pore over old love letters and photographs of ex-girlfriends. When you’re in love (as millions still are with the luvverly lads) you’re blind to faults. You believe in being in love. Belief frees you from having to think and see and question and doubt. The Beatles are a religion with an enduring recorded scripture, but forget about the Second Coming - their happy clappers haven’t accepted the First Going. The Thirty Shades Of Gray Album is both holy text and temple for the faithful, but for the Man In The Street, the Man On The Clapham Omnibus, and The Man Who Fell To Earth after years in the ozone of romance ... it stinks.

Jordan Alexander [who he? - Ed.] gushes over the Emperor's New Clothes ...

 

“The greatest record ever made, not only in terms of its innovation and its strange, impenetrable, endlessly suggestive beauty but also because of its place at the apex of the Beatles’ career and its role as an aesthetic keystone for nearly all the rock-and-roll recordings that have followed"

... and Nik Cohn sees right through them:

 

“Boring beyond belief.”