The Beatles' White Album was such a musically diverse album that John Lennon, Paul McCartney and producer George Martin (George Harrison and Ringo Starr skipped town) spent a 24-hour session in the middle of October of 1968 trying to work out a coherent running order. After they decided on a few ground rules - neither John nor Paul would get more than two songs in a row, George's songs would be spread out one per side, and each side would be between 20 to 25 minutes long - an approximate structure emerged for all four sides. Side one mostly featured the more pop-oriented rock songs, side three featured the heavier tunes, and side four focused on some of the darker numbers in the set.
And side two? They were mostly the light-pop songs - the ballads, the country-flavored songs, and the folk tunes. Except for "Why Don't We Do It In the Road?", there are no flat-out rockers on side two, and even "Why Don't We Do It In the Road?" was more acoustically oriented thanks to its heavy piano riff. Most of the songs on side two of the White Album underscore the Beatles' contributions to and the influence on the pop genre that emerged in the aftermath of their 1970 breakup - the singer-songwriter movement.
The Beatles were not the first rock artistes to write their own material - Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly were - but they made writing one's own material de rigueur for rock bands that followed them, including the Rolling Stones. But their lighter songs on the White Album's second side also inspired the solo singer-songwriter, accompanied by his or her own instrument and/or a light-rock backing group, with introspective, confessional, self-aware lyrics about oneself and the world beyond. Many credit Paul Simon for kick-starting the singer-songwriter genre with his own deeply personal statements and acute self-awareness - I myself once referred to Simon as the Woody Allen of rock - but on side two of the White Album, the Beatles, through songs mostly written in India on acoustic instruments, discovered their own ability for putting themselves and their thoughts and feelings out for everyone to hear, writing songs that revealed their frailties and insecurities while also presenting their individualistic observations of and interests in the world outside their windows.
Tim Riley sums up side two of the White Album and its first-person orientation quite nicely when he calls "Martha My Dear" and "Julia" bookends of a side of songs that show "less interdependence than there is complete independence. It's a measure of the emotional worlds these songs successfully conjure up that they sound more like entities unto themselves than parts of a larger framework."
"Blackbird," of course, is the perfect manifestation of this me-oriented approach to singing and songwriting. It was recorded by Paul McCartney as a solo track, its subject matter about escape and personal freedom, making it the perfect song for Crosby, Stills and Nash - the ultimate singer-songwriter group - to include in their concert sets. And while the trio may not have picked up on the possibility that Paul was singing to and about black women in America, they still drew an awareness of personal social politics from side two of the White Album, if some of their more acerbic topical songs are any indication - the dripping satire and bite of Graham Nash's songs, both CSN and solo, definitely drew inspiration from George Harrison's "Piggies," and both David Crosby and Stephen Stills have written songs in the same vein.
Other examples of this White Album side's influence on the singer-songwriter movement abound. Echoes of "Martha My Dear," a farewell song to a former lover, can be heard in Cat Stevens' "Wild World," another farewell song to a woman, and one with a dour warning underscored by the piano chords. The downbeat drone of John Lennon's "I'm So Tired" shows up in the songs of Neil Young. Ringo Starr's "Don't Pass Me By" certainly had an influence on the slick country-rock ballads of J.D. Souther, and "I Will" prophesied the soft, romantic musings of both James Taylor (discovered and signed to Apple by Peter Asher in 1968) and Carly Simon. In fact, it seems more than appropriate that James and Carly's son, Ben Taylor, would cover "I Will" in the nineties for a movie soundtrack. "Julia," by contrast, undoubtedly inspired the dark, personal thoughts about and remembrances of friends and lovers offered by Joni Mitchell and Jackson Browne, especially the latter's "Song For Adam" and "For a Dancer," both mournful reminiscences about friends who met tragic deaths.
And "Rocky Raccoon"? Paul's Western tale had to have inspired the story songs of Jim Croce, whose "You Don't Mess Around With Jim" and "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" similarly concern themselves with characters who meet ill fates. But Croce, who, before finding success, had eked out a living doing construction work and driving trucks while struggling to make it as a musician and met several colorful people along the way, based his songs on the gritty realities of urban America and had no time for Hollywood-style vignettes. Thus, McCartney's lovesick Dakota cowboy gave way to Croce's Midtown Manhattan pool hustler and his superfly Chicago gambler. There's even an element of "Why Don't We Do It In the Road?" in "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown," inherent in the rolling piano riff that carries the song and in the element of dangerous sexual attraction when Leroy casts his eyes on another man's gorgeous wife. And "Rocky Raccoon" even brought Paul's own influences back full circle. He and John had always admired Gerry Goffin and Carole King and considered them an inspiration for their own songwriting; their own influence on the duo was apparent in King's 1971 single "Smackwater Jack," written with Goffin about an outlaw facing a showdown with a sheriff to the tune of a honky-tonk piano.
The seventies would be a time of stylistic division in pop, with singer-songwriters sharing airtime on AM hit radio with the likes of the Carpenters and Barry Manilow, while heavier rock acts migrated to the album-oriented rock stations on FM radio. When singer-songwriters suppressed the beat, lightened their arrangements, and put out records bordering on middle-of-the-road "soft rock" in the 1970s, they were doing what the Beatles did on the White Album. But when heavy rockers in the 1970s sang about wanting to rock and roll all night and party every day while flirtin' with disaster . . . they too were doing what the Beatles did on the White Album. A closer look at most of the songs on side three of the White Album should make that clear. We'll get to that soon.
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