Listen to rare audio of Paul McCartney explaining The Beatles ‘White Album’ track by track
When The Beatles released The White Album in 1968, some people thought that the 93 minutes and 30 tracks represented a bit too much of this, that or the other. Paul McCartney did not, however. “I’m not a great one for that whole, ‘Y’know maybe it was too many of that’,” he opined, “What do you mean? It was great, it sold. It’s the bloody Beatles White Album, shut up!” It’s safe to say that ‘Macca’ resides firmly in the camp that thinks the double album represents a band at the top of their game in an unprecedented state of creative flow despite the tensions that occasionally beset the studio.
Both the triumph and tribulations of the record make it one of the most discussed albums in the band’s arsenal and, therefore, one of the most discussed records of all time, period. This makes it all the more refreshing when you find one of the band earnestly offering up their own thoughts on the fabled outing. Imbued with a sense of consummate creativity and growing division, the dichotomy at play makes it, at the very least, one of the most interesting albums in the lore of the ‘Fab Four’.
This makes McCartney’s Radio Luxembourg rundown with Tony MacArthur a rarity worth treasuring. Hot off the back of the record’s release in 1968, Macca mulled over the highs and lows of the album in a very open fashion with the Australian DJ, with whom he felt very comfortable around. As he dryly espouses: “What do you want me to tell you about it, Tony?”
McCartney offered himself up as an open book which is just as well because the album was not an easy one to dissect from afar. Following Sgt. Pepper’s incredible reception the year before – an album that was adored and rightfully heralded as truly ‘game-changing’ – the public were impatiently waiting for the next album and what the next “step” towards psychedelia may sound like. Nobody knew what to expect, but in typical Beatles fashion, they certainly weren’t expecting The White Album. “Well, it is another step,” McCartney mused, “But not necessarily in the way people expected.”
It’s true. Following the genre-bending, mind-altering power of Paul McCartney’s very pet project with the concept album Sgt. Pepper, much of the audience was expecting an extension of this new vein of creativity. They were expecting more colour, more high art, more vibrancy, more tambourine, more of everything. Instead, The Beatles gave them the White Album. The record offered an abundance of perhaps the only thing fans didn’t expect more of: songs. The Beatles shelved the idea of long sprawling psychedelic numbers and refined the stereo sound explosion to explore the whole range of areas where it could flourish.
It proved to be a cunning move for a band that never stood still on an idea long enough for it to squeal. As McCartney explains: “On Sgt. Pepper we had more instrumentation than we ever had—more orchestral stuff than we’d ever used before, so it was more of a production. But we didn’t really want to go overboard on that this time. We just tried to play more like a band this time, only using instruments where we had to instead of just using it for the fun of it.” Despite tempestuous backstories, McCartney says that one of the main motivating factors for this change was simply “because we like playing together.”
When the incite gets specific, McCartney is happy to express titbits like the rocker ‘Back in the USSR’ being inspired by the Chuck Berry classic ‘Back in the USA’. He reveals: “This one is about a spy who has been in America a long, long time and he’s very American, but he gets back to the USSR,” McCartney joking that the spy in question is quick to see his wife for some overdue respite. The song, Macca admits, is “about the attributes of Russian women but created through George’s guitar and heavy brass.”
McCartney also reveals that Lennon found the title of ‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun’ in an American newspaper and found the line so full of poetry that he had to use it. It goes down as one of the band’s more serious songs, but that’s something McCartney laughs off: “If you asked him would he be willing to die for these words, I’m sure he wouldn’t. So, it’s not that serious.” He concludes, “It’s just good poetry.”
The clip below continues on to deliver some shining behind-the-scenes thinking as to the composition and creation of one of the rock ‘n’ roll world’s greatest records from none other than Paul McCartney himself. It’s a moment of sheer joy as McCartney speaks unguardedly about his work with The Beatles without reproach.
You can check out the full MacArthur interview below.
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