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Lee Ranaldo On The White Album

6:00 AM GMT 05/09/2008

Lee Ranaldo On The White Album

"I consider myself lucky that I was very young when The Beatles albums came out. I got the White Album for Christmas 1968, and just kept playing it through all these family gatherings between Christmas and New Year's Eve. I remember the older folks dancing to Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da; it drove home that the Beatles were so timeless that people of any age could love some aspect of what they did; if they didn't want to listen to Helter Skelter, they could enjoy Ob La Di or Honey Pie, the sweeter stuff on there. Helter Skelter, however, proves that, no matter where they were at or what crazy experiments they might be conducting, they were still a pretty kick-ass rock'n'roll group. I guess they realised there was a lot of competition out there at the time, from bands like The Who and Cream, and that they maybe should step up their game in terms of being an actual rock band again, especially after they'd stopped touring.

"Those tracks really flesh out that The White Album in a lot of ways, because otherwise it would be all acoustic pretty stuff; to have stuff like Helter Skelter and Everybody's Got Something To Hide...and even Revolution and Revolution #9 – on the album makes it a much harder record, in a good way."

"The recording has this quality of being very chaotic and off-hand, and yet it has this consummate professionalism about it at the same time. It has an amazing, driving melody, Paul's fantastic bass-playing, and the whole 'noise' section...it's done in that great spirit of a lot of early rock'n'roll, where you write it and then go blast it out; they came out of a cellar full of noise, after all. And I think it's the first track ever that fades out and then fades back in on itself, which was pretty striking and innovative at the time. Everybody faded out, but nobody faded back in.

"As for the Manson connection, I remember being fascinated with all the stories, finding how obsessed he was with that record in particular, how the Beatles were supposedly feeding suggestions and information to him. I was really interested in the ways in which psychedelic culture became delusional – so high you can't tell the truth from fantasy anymore. The Manson phenomenon signals the end of that era in a way, the idealism of hippy culture meeting the reality of the modern death machine. It's a very significant footnote to the song, but it's nothing the Beatles actually had any involvement in, or real influence over. It's just another way in which they were influencing the culture; everything they did had an impact, everything they said in interviews, everything they recorded."

As told to Stevie Chick

Photo courtesy of Alex Vanhee.

Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 05/09/2008

Related MOJO content:

Beatles , Sonic Youth

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