The Smiley Smile Message Board

Is the White Album the Beatles acid casualty album? Schizophrenic in nature, is this the burn out album with John, Paul, George & Ringo having exhausted psychedelia? Personally, except for John Lennon, I don't think the Beatles went as far over the edge as you could go with acid like Skip Spence or Brian Wilson. But is this there Smiley Smile, Oar, etc. ?

Hell no there are very rarely any acid causalites in records, I gotta say that is a cop out for some  artists who put out a merdaty record..Man in no way shape or form have I ever heard anyone say that that album is an acid causality, it very barely even grazes an acid laced album... It is a great fodaing record.   I think that there are a few songs on there that shouldnt be there to make it flow better, but merda it is a great great album. I could live with someone sayin that Trout Mask Replica, acid causlty, or maybe a red crayola album... but not the white album... i

xoxo
suga

I gotta say man George also has some really killer pysch tunes.... Its all too much... can you say spirtaul exsperience? And you cant ever burn out on good pysch never impossible... I enlisted in the pysch rock army years ago and I dont ever see myself getting burnt out and I have rarely if ever come across a burnt out pysch album... I can tell you I have been burnt out on Darkside of The Moon about as much as I have on hearing ppl say "its soooo pyschedelic"

xoxoxo
suga

I dunno if that made anysense but it made sense to me.................. ;D

Yeah, I think it was less drugs and more of the personal chaos that gave the album it's unusual feel. John and Yoko messing with heroin couldn't have been a helpful ingredient, though. McCartney has said that he was uncomfortable seeing the imagery turn to things like "needing a fix" and "me and my monkey." But you also had the breakup of John's marraige tossed into the stew, Paul's breakup with Jane, George emerging as a great songwriter but not being given an adequate outlet, the insanity of Apple, the marathon feel of the sessions as they dragged on from May to November...

I love "It's All Too Much." Have you heard the bootlegged version, it goes on for a minute and a half after the commercial mix fades out.

oh yeah I love that bootleg, I just happen to have it on a driving mix dont ask me why...

Yeah I will addmit that the herion didnt work for john lennon as well it does for say Sly (and the family stone...)

suga

Hate to sound lame, but where is "It's All Too Much" from?

Now dont quote me on this because I have been wrong before.... but I am pretty sure it is Yellow Submarine... I know my beatles records man, but sometimes it gets really hazy in the ol grape

xoxoxo
suga

Now dont quote me on this because I have been wrong before.... but I am pretty sure it is Yellow Submarine... I know my beatles records man, but sometimes it gets really hazy in the ol grape

xoxoxo
suga

I thought the booted "It's All Too Much" was 10 minutes or so.

It's around eight minutes.

The drug burn out content is John's, the musical burn out is chiefly Paul's. No clear 'casualties', however, just some shrapnel wounds along the way from excess drugs and gurus and tiring relationships.

Happiness is a Warm Gun is the only explicit (as mud) 'reference' or commentary on drugtaking or creeping psychosis therefrom. I thought heroin was the drug of the punch line, or maybe it was just an NRA poster stealing and perverting the peacenik Charles Schulz tag-line of the time that inspired the song, as Lennon claimed. But there's more to it than just that in any case, a surreal logic joining the terms: forget the warm puppy as what happiness is and substitute the Peanuts-patented 'security blanket' that Linus defined happiness by...as a starter. There's a score of John interviews of the day and sometime beyond where John uses that very term to describe his neurotic self's comforting  'transitional' objects (in psychoanalytic parlance a thing to hold and cuddle as transition between a mother's breast rudely ripped away too soon and standing on your own, independent, real adult love to follow,  no recourse to teddy bear props making you feel whole.) Lennon's blankets included first and foremost his piano (so he said), but also his bed, and his favorite old 45s scattered in arm's reach around it, played over and over,  his drugs, and sometimes his band and mates when he ventured that far away from home.

That's constitutional to him. at least by this point:  drugs may have exacerbated an 'Oblomov' like syndrome (O. was a Brian Wilson-like fellow in old Russian fiction who couldn't get out of bed) he had to begin with.

Join this brand of 'happiness'  to a gun, forget heroin and the works for a moment, and concentrate on the macho Charlton Heston-endorsed symbol of imperiled virility  in the late sixties moment, and you may start to see Lennon smiling with self-diagnostic epiphanic  knowledge of his own scared mama's boy-bullying nature and upon the fellow jerks caught up in the same religion.

That's my broader interpretation of the closure that the title line tries to bring, resolving what's a very fragmented 'acid casualty' like song up to the concluding point when the jokey chorus and 'narration' ("When I hold you in my arms, and I feel my finger on your trigger,
I know no one can do me no harm"), supplies, a total demystification of macho romantic love and its fantasy love objects as expressed in old 45s he loved and formerly lived by, and that he felt compelled to start moving beyond. The primal cure he's seeking everywhere at this point (Sexie Sadie, heroin, Yoko) begins here most fruitfully in the self-understanding and mockery of what he's always stood for,  with laughter.

But what leads up to it is the ultimate dead end of the path followed from Strawberry Fields through I am the Walrus, an alienated trip, at first dreamily so, then utterly self-loathing.

On the other hand, this nadir (shades of it on Glass Onion as well, totally out of sorts with the Beatles BS) is countered by so many other songs with him seeking clarity rather than obfuscation, coming out as tenderness (like Julia and Prudence) or as honest p.o.ed statements saying exactly what they mean and what they feel like ("I'm so tired", John talking about "Revolution", or him and his monkey, or "Yer" Blues (the last two a little convoluted in the old style however as to lyric  as is Sexy Sadie too, not quite coming clean, a psychic strip tease with some veils not quite dropped )...generally becoming Plastic Ono Band John aka his old pre-psychedelic enthusiastic opinionated angry loudmouthed self, shouting to be heard, the one he was before he discovered weird filters of various sorts :-)

John sounds healthy and radiant to me here. Paul's the one who's the relative casualty by comparison just in terms of the number of funny masks he assumes. Tons of great ditties by him, but as in the pre-Revolverist days the 'truth' only comes out when he's rocking and laughing and spoofing and fodaing around the hardest: Birthday,  the truly great Back in the USSR. the manic  'hardeyharhar!' of surf instrumental Wipeout as visited upon Helter Skelter, Paul's 'Happiness is'  number on the great White one, a far scarier tune than John's because it's so disarming the way the best Freudian jokes often are, an eruption of banked sexual-violent energy going further than the unexplored psyche behind it probably intended. I think Manson interpreted this one exactly right (in his own wrongheaded fashion). It's Paul exploding, not a pretty sight but kind of fascinating.

Meanwhile George is keeping his own council with his new super friends, little brother stealing the coolness factor while his elders have momentarily mislaid it, and Ringo keeps on being Ringo.

That's a version, anyway. 

Very enjoyable discourse, cabinessence. It's a pity that McCartney didn't flesh out the "Can You Take Me Back" fragment into what was a potentially incredible song................

very nice point about that ghostly song fragment from Paul which promises (or prays for) more than it delivers.

Good points.  I agree.

I haven't heard it, but I think there's quite a bit of that fragment floating around among collectors now. A minute and a half or something, but wether or not it actually goes anywhere musically, I couldn't tell you. I doubt it, or they'd have done something with it besides what they did.

Yeah it's just doodling. The best bit is the fragment they used on the album. It's got silly percussion up until then.

I love almost all of Paul’s cuts on the White Album. Lennon wasn’t the same after Pepper….maybe not the same after Revolver. Strawberry Fields was perhaps his pinnacle as an artist. Compare the genius of gems like “Strawberry Fields”, “Tomorrow Never Knows”, “In My Life”, with the later day self-indulgence of “I Dig A Pony”, “Dig It”, “Me and My Monkey”. He wasn’t the same man, although we’d get occasional glimpses of his genius on tracks like “Across The Universe” and “Because”. Other songs, like “Glass Onion”, are held together only by the caring hand of George Martin and his orchestral additions. His solo albums dont' do much for me either.

 But McCartney was still churning out gold. No “acid-casualty” was he. He uses every color of the spectrum on the White Album, demonstrating his mastery of songwriting by visiting various styles, from the hard rocking “Helter Skelter” to the showbiz nostalgia of “Honey Pie” to the gentle acoustic of “Mother Natures Son” (great brass!). Hell, he even tries his hand at a Beach Boy’s style production. The man was infallible. Aside from the filler (Do it in the Road, Wild Honey Pie), McCartney had a full album’s worth of classics spread out over the White Album. Remove the other members songs and you have a Beatle-era “Ram”. And it is his classic songs on “Let it Be” (“Let it Be” and “Long and Winding Road”) that keep the album from being an complete and total piece of garbage (in my opinion). Lennon’s material was God-awful (aside from Don’t Let Me Down).

I love the White Album. Even John’s lesser efforts are still great

Filler?  Those are some of his best on the album.  Like you said, he does everything.  "Wild Honey Pie" is like Captain Beefheart.

I think "Glass Onion" is pretty great too.  I enjoy it a lot more than "In My Life," but part of that is probably because "In My Life" is his "Imagine" during the Beatles years.  Apparently the only song he wrote.

Actually, what I heard is that the song included on the album is cut-and-pasted from various parts of the recorded version.. the officially released version was probably never recorded in that order/way.

I don't understand what you mean here.

I

People associate it with Lennon and the 60s a lot, especially because he's dead.  You know, he's dead -- "In My Life" -- nice sense of closure and sentimentality.  At least from the audience's perspective.  People use "Imagine" in the same way, like hey imagine this peaceful world...isn't it sad coming from the mouth of a dead guy?  I'm not saying people don't know his other songs, but I think they're lazily associated with John and over-played.  Both are good songs, though.

Okay I follow you now. Good point.

Leave it to Bubba Ho Tep to post what I want to say before I ever get a chance to come to the board and see what's up with everyone!  Gotta respect the man.  Always says the truth and doesn't let hero-worship cloud what he hears. 

EXACTLY right about Lennon.   Anything Lennon post Abbey Road is just weak sounding compared to his work with the Beatles in their 65-69 phase...and yes, right around the White Album it was like hearing a great knack starting to wither away due to outside pressures, but mostly his own personal bulls**t that anyone with half a brain would have avoided completely.   Lennon...great songwriter, self indulgent irresponsible jerk.

People associate it with Lennon and the 60s a lot, especially because he's dead.  You know, he's dead -- "In My Life" -- nice sense of closure and sentimentality.  At least from the audience's perspective.  People use "Imagine" in the same way, like hey imagine this peaceful world...isn't it sad coming from the mouth of a dead guy?  I'm not saying people don't know his other songs, but I think they're lazily associated with John and over-played.  Both are good songs, though.
 
McCartney claims to have written the melody for "In My Life" and thinks of it as a genuine Lennon/McCartney collaboration (and McCartney disputes Lennon's claim to have written most of the words for "Eleanor Rigby").
 

YES!!!!

The chords get me alone, then when you include the lyrical subject it's even more.

John as withering hack, huh? Maybe later, but not here, not yet. Julia is one of the finest songs he ever wrote, Dear Prudence is a stately, airy anthem full of sunshine, and one of the best 'band songs' on the album,  Revolution, whichever tempo and style it's played, doowoppy or 'waaah!', is a delight as music and delivery whatever one thinks of the message and political stance ('cop out!' at the time but rather reasonable sounding in retrospect), Happiness is...is a great sinister, totally unclean vibe, very sleazy and desperate; excellent guitar and vocal performance. John's singing is at its peak on this album, period; he's in control of his instrument as to breathing  and he expresses himself amazingly well,  conversationally as well as operatically, often in the course of a single verse like Roy Orbison used to, whisper to a scream: he's transparent here emotionally in every song. That's not just primal blunderbuss screaming, but every shade of whispered emotion too. On relatively (a relative term, he can do no wrong here for me) minor compositions like I'm So Tired, the song's less the thing than the interpretation, a fed up, worn down man muttering to himself and into an imagined 2am telephone, flaring up and fading repeately like the match lighting yet another cigarette (plus "And curse Sir Walter Raleigh, he was such a stupid get!" is one of the greatest free associating 'tired brain' lines I've ever heard, linking the smoke and the romantic spat to the man who popularized chivalry and tobacco, both very overrated daily necessities)

What applies to the singing is true of the playing too. John's overall performance level is very  self-assured and free. I like Everybody's got something to hide...the way that covering band The Feelies did, as a great rhythm and riff to bash away at.

For what it's worth, John and Paul, while often apart here, seem as complementary and competitive as ever. For every Rocky Raccoon, John supplies a Bungalow Bill; for each I Will, a Julia, and so forth. Though their voices couldn't be more distinct, their songwriting is quite of a piece, interchangeable even at times,  witness Good Night, as good a Paul song as John ever wrote (or did Paul 'really' write this one too, eh? Or was it John ghosting Hey Jude, which sounds to me like Paul doing his very best John imitation in his own voice...)

And on top of everything else, Ringo drums at  his unsurpassed best on the John songs. His musical sympathy for the guy is simply psionically amazing throughout the Beatles span, and best still, here.

Burned out.  Acid, dope, stardom, ego.  Burned out.

Bubba nailed it.  I think Strawberry Fizzelds, Penny Lane and all that stuff are genuine contributions to the advancement of musical and human expression.  Just as were Pet Sounds, Today, Surf's Up -- new worlds, brother...dig?  New places.  Burried treasures in the mind and spirit affirmed right in front of our eyes and ears...right?

You're damn bloody right I'm right.  I'm fukin' Rush Limbaugh right...Ted Nugent right.  But TO ME, and this is just me talkin' here fellas, but the stuff on the White Album sounds rehashed, over-the-top, in search of a spanking "even my poo is worth your time" bucket of noodles.  And that's a fact Jack Black...as far as I see it anyway.

Hey, you can't have it both ways in a two-way.  But it can have it's fans, too.  Hear me on that.  That's cool.  Some of the music is cool.  But I think Lennon was largely spent after the pinnacle.  I'd be.  He basically became a flake-out.  I mean Yoko?  Don't give me that sh-t homes.  Get that sh-t outta here.

I think they got their funk on...their groove on occassionally after the pinnacle.  They still did some really good stuff after that.  But I hear artistic and egotistic flatuence all over their so-called White Album.  They couldn't even think of a name for it.

Cabin -- I love Dear Prudence, but I find it ironic that you call it out as a band song when it is one of the few places where Ringo doesn't drum on a Beatles track with drums....

I agree with that, generally his songs were up to par compared to McCartney’s and in contrast to McCartney who more or less walked in the “beatled” track, he tried to broaden the scope of  what they could do with their music, with stuff like “Happiness Is A Warm Gun” and “Revolution 9”. This  is also true of their later careers, where Lennon’s music was the one (together with George’s, really) that strayed most from the Beatles type of music, whereas McCartney carried on doing more or less the same. Maybe in that way Lennon was selfindulgent to some, but I think if people have to develop artistically, they have to be a little selfindulgent and generally I think Lennon toed the line.

Søren

Dude, it's a joke.  They call it The Beatles because that implies that it defines them, and since it's an album that's all over the place, it's hard to define.  Thinking like that is the opposite of burn-out.

Deeeeep.

Ah, but 'the band' I meant wasn't the Beatles, it was Siouxie and the Banshees!  ;)

Seriously, I just meant a song fit for a band, any band, to play, which Prudence is whereas much of John's (and others') work here fits under the heading of solo-trip.

Ringo IS on most of the Lennon material and I stand by what I said about his intuitive sympathy when playing along with his mate 

It was beyond you.

Word, Chris. Stay out of tangling with the cool people here, Shaft. Thank you.

That's cool.  I get it.  I was just being cute...

That's cool, it's the Lennon reflex-backlash ('post-acid reflux'?) that's making me a tad tetchy   8)>:(

I LOVE the Siouxsie and the Banshees version of Dear Prudence! It makes the original sound so... plain and boring.

*sigh*

sighs aside (while sighing, myself), I can relate. The Siouxie version of Prudence for me dusted off what had become a soap impression donated  to the national trust many, many years before, reminding me of what a great piece of pop music it was at base.

Much of White Album started as demos recorded in Rishikesh, and rerecorded not all that differently, low key, lo-fi, a bit contemptuosly dismissive of the usual audience by implication.

This approach telegraphed 'artistic growth',  beyond-pop 'reality' expressed by slightly slovenly recording techniques, warts and all, an aesthetic choice of a piece with the design of the record cover (and the stubble faced Paul and other glossily unvarnished publicity  headshots found within) as well  as made for ageless, undated performances unencumbered by distracting period studio techniques (in many cases)...but the hermetic, don't give a foda potential inaccessibility probably alienated more than it wowed. If you're Dylan (the model here, I suspect), unpolished to begin with, eternally unpredictable, often predictably cruelly unaccomodating, fans accepting anything you deign toss them in the way of a few crumbs, you can get away with this more or less forever.

If you're The Beatles, probably not. Look how the Basement Tapes inspired excellent poppified and accessible cover versions from every quarter, however gossamer-thin or meager  the  originals, whereas White just got one Obla-di Brit hit cover, and a slowburn coffee house following for takes on Blackbird and Mother Nature's Son, a Barbra Streisand take on Honey Pie, the minimal Paul quotient of no-fail standards barely netting licensing rights even so. (While My Guitar did have a huge cult following, but it wasn't something that could be played in Vegas, thus rarely copied, though positioning George to take off with Abbey Road as the breadwinner of the band.)

It's the least covered Beatles record of all time. As a result, in my opinion, so much greatness iremains locked up in the unfleshed-out originals. They haven't been  explored enough by others in friendlier styles to familiarize us with how great they were to begin with.

Hmm, and perhaps slightly imitative in that goal of a fellow Rishikesh tent-mate's band back on the Coast?

Hmm, could be!

I tell ya, the best version of "Dear Prudence" is by 70's Aussie soul dude Doug Parkinson and his group "In Focus"...

Well, not best, but different... check it out... very cool.

Cabinessence, have you heard the Space Negroes' cover of "Back in the USSR"?  Also, the Pixies and Breeders did good covers from that album.

Relax dudes  :-*  it was a joke.

White album covers, the Breeders version of "Happiness" springs to mind

Another Beatles cover I like better than the original is John Denver's version of Mother Nature's Son. John did so many awesome covers of the Beatles' work (too bad he only did McCartney songs).

And John D's Leaving on a Jet Plane is only really fulfilled by the Peter, Paul & Mary interpretation. Interesting Denver quote on a related subject:


He overlooked Monty Python's "Farewell to John Denver" (which has a version of the tune with 'John' singing something like "You came on my pillow!" before being strangled to death), but that's neither here nor there...Denver's expressing the regret of one who thought of himself first and foremost as a songwriter: one's tunes belong to the world, most gratifying when others adopt and make them their own (then again, it could just be regret over lost residuals and revenue stream of course)

I've heard and like most of the White Album covers mentioned. My original point was the LP was little covered when it was new (adding to the list, I remember a contemporary Italian band doing USSR and Lady Madonna in the style of Blood, Sweat and Tears; Nina Simone did a superb rewrite of Revolution which largely tossed out 'count me out' Lennon lyrics in favor of 'Burn, Baby, Burn!' ones of her own) whereas "Something" on Abbey Road was more what the interpreters were waiting for and expecting, the first universally coverable item since Hey Jude.

Was White Album a parenthesis of self-indulgence between  "good" normal Beatle music? I don't think so, but if sheer number of Hugo Montenegro and Frank Sinatra-covers is a reliable index of greatness and artistic success, The Beatles was certainly a failure, as a truly popular record, anyhow

Great posts on the White, Cabin.
Wild Honey Pie by the Pixies is my favorite White cover.
Prudence is great, but let's not forget that Siouxsie did another classic White cover on the first album, Helter Skelter!

"You may be a lover but you ain't no f uckin' dancer! Look out! Helter skelter, na na na na nanana!"

The vocalizing of the electric guitar was really annoying at first but it grew on me.

Their cover of "Wheel's On Fire" by the Band is definitely one of their best, though.

Haha, you mean the cover of Julie Driscoll's "This Wheels On Fire"!
Glad you're hip to the Banshees, man.

Actually.. that makes much more sense that Siouxsie and co. would be listening to Julie Driscoll as opposed to the Band or Dylan..

I discovered the Banshees on accident; I downloaded "Arabian Knights" thinking it would be a cover of the Alladin song.. I was pleasantly surprised. That "whilst you conquer more orifices of boys, goats, and things" line just completely sold me on them.

Yes, Siouxsie recently stated in Mojo that she's never even heard Dylan or The Band's versions.

I'm a few pages late on this thread but I'll toss in this fresh perspective.

The Beatles as a band and as personalities thrived on excess. This ideal may not have been recognized as such as "excess" then since there wasn't any sort of gauge to compare-- in other words the Beatles self indulgence lead to either futher rock and roll extremism-- (Bowie, Alice Cooper et al) or the direct attack against in the form of punk (which in most cases was it's own debauched overkill.)

But I digress-- what I'm getting at is that the White Album isn't acid burnout, it's simply the next phase of the Beatles deliberatley and obviously topping their last major project. You can pretty much follow the band's self indulgence through Hamburg (all night shows, uppers. "mach schau!"), Beatlemania (insane crowds, insane workload, of which I believe they could have stopped-- it's not like Paul was up there saying "Come on now everyone sit down and we don't play." No they bobbed their heads and girls pissed themselves.), the middle era records (Rubber Soul and Revolver remain the finest in the catalog due to the excess being tempered by stunning great songcraft) right on up to Pepper and the White Album. "Pepper" is a huge production, a roly poly carnivale of an LP, a psychedelic slap to the masses and that's just the music. The album cover is pop art, overflowing with an overwhelming array of the sorta famous and various curios. But the album doesn't escape being just that, a single album. So where do you go? To film of course though the Pepper film evolved into the madcap acid flash of "Magical Mystery Tour." If you want acid burnout, look here but it's not the band that's burned out, it's the bus passengers and vicariously the viewers suffering the malaise.

Beyond that we arrive at the White Album. Bearing a remarkably crisp and clean sound and mix (thanks in part to some work at Trident on 8 track) in comparison to the psychedelic sludge that Pepper became due to endless bouncing) the lyrics are eclectic, crazy, emotional, dry, avant garde-- the record is as diverse as life itself and the record is spare enough to breathe on its own. And it's huge-- 30 songs, 30 songs about just about any and everything. So what do you put on the cover of a huge LP about EVERYTHING.  The answer: NOTHING. Sheer fodaing genius. Drop all the costumes, foda the walrus and all the rest of the bullmerda and it's about the excess of songs this time around.

So where does this path of "excess" lead? To further extremism, next project "Let's track live in a studio while being filmed and freezing our asses off" and maybe hit the road. Even further, "no overdubs" we need to "get back."

And in short it killed the band.

Yes. I would further define it to "lack of honesty" that killed the band. Post-white, they bounced from not enough production to way too much, neither of which being honest choices for the band's creativity and state in that era. White was a verite and hyper-real work, portraying exactly where the Beatles were at. If they could have made 2 more like that, we'd have 2 more classics and the Pepper-Tour era would be viewed as a psychedelic pit-stop in the midst of a straightforwardly brilliant career.

Yes I didn't comment on Abbey Rd since in terms of the band's evolution it's a bit of apochrypha. Production wise, it was a throwback and Macca I'm sure kissed George Martin's ass to get him back on board. Between the full use of 8 track and Martin and the Side 2 song cycle, Abbey Rd is excess gone awry. "The milk's gone bad" as "Chappelle as Rick James" would say.

I can dig it. The pureness of White is why I love it, and the halfbaked and weak nature of some of the material in comparison to the masterpieces sitting beside them is part of the album's brilliance. The album's flaws are part of the brilliance, and vice versa.

The album's "flaws" is it's strength. I'm not one to compile one of those "single disc" white album tracklistings-- the record is perfect right now right as it is. Change nothing, add nothing, move nothing-- "wild honey pie" is as important a song as "While My Guitar Gently Weeps."

Yes, I totally agree, but it's also fun to compile a Revolver 2 from the album, to see an alternate route that could have occurred.

I think that "Revolution 9" was johnandyoko's attempt to display on an aural canvas the mental wanderings of a bad acid trip (I'd think that they would've tripped many a time in '68 which served to bond them together strongly) and the use of McCartney's plaintive "Can You Take Me Back" fragment served as a neat juxtaposition, as a voice of caution pleading for a retreat to normalcy. The troubled "Get Back" sessions were the result of going down McCartney's path................
"The Beatles" was prgrammed in a marathon session by McCartney and Lennono; to have been a fly on the wall...................

For me "Revolution 9" is a little like aural Monty Python (who aired the following year), especially if you see it in connection with "Goodnight".

Søren

John was a great natural comic talent and he could have been an especially vicious Python!!

Smile???????

I would say it’s almost the other way around, it’s exactly because they were honest enough to realise that they were going different ways, that they split up. I think most of their career they seemed to pretty much be following their muse and that’s why they broke a lot of boundaries and in the end why they broke up. The only time they seemed to be going  a little through the motions was around “For Sale” and “Help”, otherwise they seemed to be doing more or less doing what they wanted to do. I don’t see their psychedelic period as particularly dishonest, that was where they were at that point, likewise their “White album period” which really wasn’t particularly underproduced, if you look at it more closely. What  is “dishonest” music anyway ?.  And even if Beatles was a “dishonest” and “selfindulgent” they were a pretty soulful and creative band and that’s what counts in my opinion.

Søren

If honesty is what killed the band, they would have broken up in 1966.

Yeah, I know that Lennon has said, that he started thinking about leaving in 1966, but even if he gave it a try after all and delayed the actual decision, I don’t think you could call it less honest. Also even if he had his doubts about being in Beatles, I don’t see why that would make his or the others contributions less honest. I don’t think it was a big secret, that there were frictions in Beatles at that point and it also showed up in the music, most notably on the “White Album“. So it seems to me that they more or less pretty honestly did what they wanted to do and when it was over, it was over. It’s not like other bands like BBs or Stones who have stayed together well beyond their date of expiration.

Søren

I disagree. I think the Beatles stayed together well past their expiration date as well.

I think "The Ballad of J&Y" was certainly enough of sign that this wasn't a ship going where she ought to....but all their albums have greatness....I think they expired at Let It Be but then suddenly made Abbey Road. And a somewhat scraped together and yet pompous ending IMHO (Abbey Side 2 medley)

Even at the time, I recognized the 'posthumous existence' aspect of the late band. I found it morbidly fascinating like watching a couple doomed to eventual divorce still stuck in marriage therapy and trying to 'make nice' for the kids between stormy fights and slammed doors. I remember a bewildering bonanza of band and post-band-and-yet-still-of-it-somehow solo material coming out pretty much simultaneously all with the Apple label attached, sometimes bizarrely-confusingly out of sequence (EDIT: or so I learned much later: Let it Be was presented to the world (or innocent folks like me, anyway), as 'end of the Beatles', the final testament, a verite-like presentation of 'the breakup', whereas it pre-dated Abbey Road in actuality; echoing Ian here, I think:  I felt snookered when I discovered this. It was as if -or simply was- the handlers of the band knew the end was on the way and jiggered the history a little to make it play better in terms of a narrative arc. I wouldn't doubt the Lindsay Hogg docu was cut -from the thousand hours of footage available- to play this way instead of some other way, a bit opportunistically and legendarily, the 'truth' of the film being very relative and somehow fundamentally fake in the final analysis. I got the same queasy sense listening to the Beatles Anthology after hearing the bootlegs it was based on, uncut reality being conveyed but essentially  messed with. I'm not drawing any conclusions, but I don't like this aspect of the curating of the legend that crept in increasingly after the White Album, a return to earliest Fab Four P.R. band-protection and mythmaking)

Some good music was actually wrung from the tension, reflects it, moves beyond it.  On the one side, John asserting himself in a Post-Beatles-like way with or without the band, clearly announcing "It's over folks!" over and over again. Instant Karma! was clearly a "Plastic Ono Band" single, beyond the end, but it was also the party of the last couple years continuing. George was on board, Phil was producing, Billy Preston was reputedly in there somewhere, it was the same stripped down style as Lennon had been practising for a long time (and as good a Beatles anthem as he'd ever come up with); Ballad of John and Yoko was so definitively over, and yet it was a beautiful little John and Paul together one last time "One after 99" type nostalgic workout too.

Though the Side 2 Abbey Road collage has its ups and downs, I find Paul's "You Never Give Me Your..." theme pretty heart wrenching as  band-breakup material (..."I break down!") treated as if it were a literal marriage falling apart ("I never give you my pillow,I only send you my invitation"), or that's how I read it. Oh Darling! which is nominally a throwaway number likewise has a passion in the performance that's disarming and overwhelming, and possibly related to the charged state of things (an essential track in any event)

Yes good points! Cabin...I think it was too hard to really let go until someone finally pulled the official plug. (Paul?) but the gems from this period for me are Georges stuff

Old Brown Shoe
Here Comes The Sun
For You Blue

Good read, Cabin...I really want to play Abbey Road now!!

Oh' Darlin is a good number.  There's such a vibe on that whole album--it's warm, but not overly cheery, it's smooth but still has great traction.  That album has always defined the Beatles to me.

That might have been true if they had kept on playing the type of music that made them famous, but they didn't, they kept evolving and experimenting almost up to the end, so musically I don't think you could call them expired.

Søren

Depends upon your opinion of Abbey Road.  I love it.  Ian thinks it is way overrated and not so good.

I also love Abbey Road. Gosh Darn, it's one of the best records ever made. Are people changing their mind on this? Sgt. Pepper is overrated, Abbey Road is not.

This is a great thread...great comments by all, especially Cabinessence.  I really have nothing to add, except that  Abby Road is my favorite Beatles...however this thread is giving me a whole new perspective on late Beatles.