Before I get to the second half of the Beatles' White Album, I must review, however reluctantly, the two unreleased songs recorded during those sessions . . .
As every Beatles fan knows, the group's members wrote songs for their double album that were rejected for lack of space, lack of time, poor quality, or any or all of the above. Among the rejects were Paul McCartney's "Junk," a charming number about life's artifacts that was destined for his first solo album, George Harrison's "Circles," a song not recorded properly by George until he included it on his 1982 album Gone Troppo (sometimes called Gone Floppo, as it was not a big seller or even a small seller), and two unfinished John Lennon songs, "Mean Mr. Mustard" and "Polythene Pam," that were destined for the Abbey Road medley. All of these songs were recorded in early 1968 as demos but were left behind when proper recording of the White Album commenced that May.
Two songs intended for the White Album did make it as far as the recording studio, but they were subsequently left off the record - one was from George, and the other was from John. Both of them ended up on Anthology 3.
The Beatles recorded over a hundred takes of George's "Not Guilty" before George gave up on it. "George wasn't feeling it. It was his song and he wasn't feeling it," explained recording engineer Ken Scott. "He could not get a vocal that he was happy with." Maybe that was because the song wasn't very good.
"Not Guilty" was George's defense of his interest in Indian religion and looking after his own musical and personal concerns within the Beatles, and the song was his attempt to deny culpability for getting in John's and Paul's way as far as their own lives were concerned. Musically, as recorded by the Beatles, "Not Guilty" is a biting, energetic rocker; it swings with the same assurance and swagger as Buffalo Springfield's Neil Young classic "Mr. Soul," and it throws in a hurdy-gurdy hook in the bridge reminiscent of "Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" as well. But the lyrics are rather clumsy and embarrassing. George tells John and Paul he is "not here for the rest, I'm not trying to steal your vest" - which makes it sound like John and Paul are afraid that George will rummage through their clothing. He also tells them, "I'm really sorry for your aging head." John and Paul have one head between them? What is George talking about? But, no, George says, he's not guilty of any of that. But he was guilty for using the wrong verb tense just so he can come up with rhymes like "I'm really sorry that you're underfed, but like you heard me said: Not guilty."
George re-recorded the song for his self-titled 1979 album, but he learned the wrong lesson from the White Album recording; instead of reworking the lyrics so that they would make more sense, he only changed the arrangement, giving it a lighter jazz-pop feel. No, no, no - the original Beatles recording sounded so much better, even if the words were a hopeless jumble. George's solo remake of "Not Guilty" did have its defenders, with Beatles author Simon Leng writing that it was "all shimmering cool and acoustic sea spray – here is a man looking back on events rather than being caught up in their heat." But by revisiting and rearranging it eleven years later, George had only underscored how irrelevant "Not Guilty" had become. Paul was still riding high with Wings in 1979, and John was in retirement at the time; George himself had just gotten married and sired his son Dhani, his only child, and he was enjoying a period of bliss. Returning to a song that no longer reflected his mood or the moment hardly did anyone any favors.
At least "Not Guilty" aimed to make some sort of a point, which is more than what can be said for John's rejected song "What's the New Mary Jane."
John wrote "What's the New Mary Jane" in India with Alexis "Magic Alex" Mardas, a Greek fellow serving as Apple Corps' electronics "expert." Mardas was one of the first employees of the Beatles' Apple company, running an electronics division that, under his direction, came up with ideas that ranged from the fanciful to the absurd. One or two of Magic Alex's ideas, like the 72-track tape machine he proposed for the Beatles' own studio at Apple's Savile Row office, did become reality long after the Beatles called it quits, but not because of anything Mardas did; he was always better at thinking of ideas than carrying them out, and his efforts at putting the bell on the cat always resulted in disaster, costing the Beatles the equivalent of 3.8 million American dollars in today's money. Old Alex, alas, was the same way with songwriting as he was with technology.
"What's the New Mary Jane" is full of lyrics that, had word processors existed in 1968, could have been the result of a copy-and-paste snafu on the file it would have been typed up on. But Lennon and Mardas were probably stoned and/or drunk at the time, so that would have to have been expected, except that John was normally able to come up with literary lyrics while under the influence of anything. Here, he was just being silly. And not in a Goon Show way; John was a musician, not a comedian. (Writer Steve Turner suggested that John was trying to mimic the cadence of an Indian speaking English as a second language, which recalls the borderline-insensitive depiction of South Asian culture in the Help! movie.) All we can discern about Mary Jane from this song is that she likes exotic food, she's good at making contacts with Apple, and she has an Indian husband, and "he groovy such cooking spaghetti." The verses revolve around a chorus about how bad it was that such a nice girl had a menstrual cramp at the most inopportune time: "What a shame Mary Jane had a pain at the party." Mardas had dozens of ideas that came to nothing for every idea he had that turned out to be brilliant, so his influence here is all too obvious.
As embarrassingly bad as the lyrics are, the music is a sonic version of one of Magic Alex's experiments with light boxes gone totally awry. A piano anchors a tune dependent more on melody than chord structure, the sound filled in by all sorts of strange tape noises, echo and reverberation plastered all over the place, paper being rustled in front of a microphone, and a smattering of unaccomplished handbell and xylophone. And John's fellow participants - George Harrison, Yoko Ono and Beatles assistant Mal Evans - couldn't stop giggling and snickering . . . not at John, but with him. Oh - now I get it . . . the pain Mary Jane had at this be-in was in her ears.
At the end of the fourth take, which was deemed the "best," John could be heard saying, "Let's hear it, before we get taken away!" Too late.
But the story doesn't end there, boys and girls. During the 24-hour master-tape banding session for the White Album in October 1968, "What's the New Mary Jane" was still in the running, "Not Guilty" having already been dropped some time before. Only peer pressure and lack of space prevented its inclusion, but that didn't stop John from trying to get it released. In November 1969, John edited and mixed the fourth take of "What's the New Mary Jane" for the B-side of a Plastic Ono Band single, the A-side of which was to be another offbeat Beatles outtake from John, "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)," but possible objections from EMI to releasing Beatles recordings under the name of a different artiste prevented that single's release. However, the Beatles did release "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)", a comic goofball tune that did capture a Goon Show feel worthy of Peter Sellers' pipedreams, as the B-side of "Let It Be," their last British (and penultimate American) single.
In his 1980 Playboy interview John Lennon insisted that, apart from the songs he was working on for what would become his and Yoko's Milk and Honey LP, every song he ever wrote that he'd recorded professionally or given to other artists was out. Perhaps he'd come to realize what a stinker "What's the New Mary Jane" - credited to Lennon and McCartney, not Lennon and Mardas - was and he pretended he'd never taped it.
When, twenty-eight years and one solar cycle after the White Album's release, in 1996, both "Not Guilty" and "What's The New Mary Jane" were finally released on Anthology 3, curiosity about both tracks and what they were like was satisfied among the many Beatles fans who'd never been able to hear them on bootlegs. But the lesson they learned was twofold. First, the Beatles were human and made mistakes, and the fact that there were four of them ensured that their most egregious mistakes would never get out while the band was still together. They were always saving each other from their worst instincts. Second, curiosity killed the cat, and so some inquiries are better left unanswered.
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