The White Album and Manson’s reception

The Beatles – Texts and Contexts

Prof. Keiper

Dunja Piperkovic, Luka PejicDecember, 2010

• Ninth album

Label Apple

Released in 1968

Length: 93’35’’ (double album)

Recorded at Abbey Road Studios

• The Beatles’ best selling album // 19-times platinum

LENNON’S REJECTED COVER IDEA

THE WHITE ALBUM’S COVER ART AS A CONTRAST TO PETER

BLAKE’S DESIGN OF SGT. PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS

CLUB BAND

MEDITATION IN INDIA (SPRING 1968) MAHARISHI MAHESH YOGI

I left because I felt two things: I felt I wasn't playing great, and I also felt that the other three were really happy and I was an outsider. I went to see John and told him: 'I'm leaving the group because I'm not playing well and I feel unloved and out of it, and you three are really close.' And John said, 'I thought it was you three! (Ringo Starr)

FALLING APART?

The first album by The Beatles or in the history of rock by four solo artist

s in one band. (Lester Bangs)

“REVOLUTION #1” & “REVOLUTION #9”

SOCIAL AND ARTISTIC

REVOLUTION

“WHILE MY GUITAR GENTLY WEEPS”(The Little Black Songbook, p. 348-349)I wrote "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" at my mother's house in Warrington. I was thinking about the Chinese I Ching, the Book of Changes... The Eastern concept is that whatever happens is all meant to be, and that there's no such thing as coincidence - every little item that's going down has a purpose. (George Harrison)

Eric Clapton and George Harrison

That was the tension album. We were all in the midst of that psychedelic thing, or just coming out of it. In any case, it was weird. Never before had we recorded with beds in the studio and people visiting for hours on end: business meetings and all that. There was a lot of friction during that album. We were just about to break up, and that was tense in itself. (Paul McCartney)

Chaos

Spiral slide

Written in 1968 by P. McCartney

Prototype for 1970s heavy metal sounds

The version on the album was out of control. They were completely out of their heads that night. But, as usual, a blind eye was turned to what the Beatles did in the studio. Everyone knew what substances they were taking, but they were really a law unto themselves in the studio. (Brian Gibson, technical engineer)

(“Helter Skelter”, The Little Black Songbook, p. 114-115)

Charles MansonAmerican criminal and cult leader

Believed that The White Album predicts the forthcoming apocalypse

Manson as an aspiring musician

Every time I go to the storeI gotta have an ID with meI got to have an ID with me

I refuse, so they can seeWhat they wanna be

Free, I'm freeSong ‘‘Don’t Do Anything Illegal’’

Lie: The Love and Terror Cult

Manson’s album recorded in 1967/1968

Released in 1970

Covered by The Beach Boys, Guns N’ Roses, Marilyn Manson etc.

“My relationship to music is completely subliminal, it just flows through me.”

Manson and The BeatlesWhen the Beatles’ White Album came out, Charlie listened to it over and over and over and over again. He was quite certain that the Beatles had tapped in to his spirit, the truth — that everything was gonna come down and the black man was going to rise. It wasn’t that Charlie listened to the White Album and started following what he thought the Beatles were saying. It was the other way around. He thought that the Beatles were talking about what he had been expounding for years. Every single song on the White Album, he felt that they were singing about us. The song "Helter Skelter" — he was interpreting that to mean the blacks were gonna go up and the whites were gonna go down.

Former Manson follower Catherine Share, 2009

Manson’s interpretations

“HELTER SKELTER” RACE WAR

“PIGGIES”

ESTABLISHMENT

“I WILL “/ “HONEY PIE”

MANSON AS JESUS

“REVOLUTION 9”

RISE!

Killings - - - August 1969 / seven people killedIt was upsetting. I mean, I knew Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate and - God! - it was a rough time. It stopped everyone in their tracks because suddenly all this violence came out in the midst of all this love and peace and psychedelia. It was pretty miserable, actually, and everyone got really insecure - not just us, not just the rockers, but everyone in LA felt: 'Oh, God, it can happen to anybody.' Thank God they caught the bugger. (Ringo Starr)

I don't know what I thought when it happened. I just think a lot of the things he says are true, that he is a child of the state, made by us, and he took their children in when nobody else would, is what he did. Of course he's cracked, all right. (John Lennon, December 1970)

Charles Manson as an icon

“I'm not your executioner. I'm not your devil and I'm not your God. I'm Charles Manson.”

CONCLUSION

Released in 1968 by their own record label Apple

Includes 30 songs (4 songs by Harrison and Starr’s first composition)

Tensions in the studio (Yoko Ono arriving in the studio, Apple forming, Ringo leaving and then returning, constant arguments)

Experimentation with different musical genres and the palette of sounds (dance-hall music, classical chamber music, avant-garde sensibilities, bluebeat, heavy metal)

“Helter Skelter” as a prototype for 1970s heavy metal sounds

Charles Manson’s misinterpretation of The White Album led to a series of killings in California in 1969 > Manson believed that The Beatles, ‘‘four angels’’, were telling him to start an apocalyptic race war

DISCUSSION

What are the most original features of The White Album that you would emphasize?

Do you think that this album is subversive in some way i.e. does it relate to the protests of 1968?

How would you describe the character of the song “Helter Skelter”?It’s just a ridiculous song. (P. McCartney)It says 'Rise!' It says 'Kill! (C. Manson)

What do you think of Charles Manson’s influence on the American culture of 1960’s?