| The Beatles, or the White Album as it is commonly known, surprised people by being sparse and simple. It seemed as if the group had decided to produce the exact opposite of Sgt. Pepper. Long album title? Let's just call it The Beatles. Multy coloured cover? Let's use plain white. Clever overdubs and mixes? Let's use acoustic guitars on a lot of the tracks. Profound lyrics? Let's sing about cowboys, piggies, chocolates and doing it in the road.
The album's most significant new ingredient was the influence of Indian guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Pattie Harrison had attended a lecture by the Maharishi in February 1967 and she encouraged George and the rest of the Beatles to attend a similar event in August 1967 at the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane, London. As a result of this meeting, they all began a ten-day course on Transcendental Meditation, held at University College, Bangor, in North Wales. It was while they were on this course, on Sunday, August 27, 1967, that they heard that Brian Epstein had been found dead at his Belgravia flat - news that precipitated their return to London. The loss of Epstein, who had managed their career since early 1962 and had become something of a father figure, may well have made the Beatles even more open to the guidance of the Maharishi, whom they visited in India in February 1968. The trip to India not only brought of calm into the fraught lives, when for the first time in ages they had time to reflect, but also brought them back together as long-standing friends, able to fool around with their acoustic guitars. Paul Horn, an American flautist who was there at the same time, believes that meditation was a great stimulus for the Beatles. "You find more about yourself on deeper levels when you're meditating," he said. "Look how prolific they were in a such a relatively short time. They were in the Himalayas away form the pressures and away from the telephone. When you get too involved with life, it suppresses your creativity. When you're able to be quiet, it starts coming up". On their return from India, the Beatles claimed that they had brought back 30 songs which they would be using on their next album. There were indeed 30 new songs on The Beatles but not all of them were written in India, and some of the Indian songs (George's 'Sour Milk Tea' and 'Circles') were never recorded by the Beatles. It's probable accurate to say that around half of the album was written or started while they were away. This meant that because they had no access to electric guitars or keyboards, many of these songs were acoustically based. John would later refer to The White Album as being the first unselfconscious album after The Beatles' great period of self-consciousness beginning with "Rubber Soul" and ending with "Magical Mystery Tour" and "Yellow Submarine". "The Beatles" was released as a double album in November 1968 and rose to the Number 1 spot on both sides of the Atlantic. |
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