The Postmodern White Album

Abstract

Since the release in 1968 of the double album The Beatles (immediately and persistently referred to as the White Album), fans and critics have tended to regard it as something of a failure, lacking as it does the cohesion and unity that characterize Sgt Pepper and other of the group’s albums. Many lament what the album could have been had the Beatles worked a structure into it. Doney believes: ‘It could have been a great record … It was tragic … but it could have worked had the Beatles been able to blend as a unit … all these [songs] are fragments. The album was a collection of bits and pieces’ (1981: 88–9); Robertson claims: ‘It lacks the formal unity of Sgt Pepper and Abbey Road’ (1990: 91); O’Grady complains that ‘there is little in this collection of songs to suggest either literary or musical unity … the album fails to demonstrate any particular theme or conceptual reference point’ (1983: 150); Salewicz calls the White Album ‘something of a failure. In the main, it consisted of rough sketches of songs that sounded as though they had been conceived for separate solo records’ (1986: 204); and Coleman concludes: The impression of all the songs on the album is that they are fragments which developed into finished songs at the last moment … the songs are scraps of paper … sometimes throwaway and disposable’ (1984: 450).