50 years on and The White Album is having a party
FIFTY years ago the Beatles released a sprawling 80 minutes of inventive rock genius simply titled The Beatles, but we all know it as The White Album.
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FIFTY years ago the Beatles released a sprawling 80 minutes of inventive rock genius spread over 31 songs and two vinyl LPs branded with the new Apple logo (the original one) and wrapped in an all white sleeve with four portraits inside.
It was simply titled The Beatles, but everyone knew it as The White Album.
Since its release in November 1968 nothing has been quite the same in the musical world and many consider this to be the band’s ultimate achievement, Sgt Pepper and Abbey Road notwithstanding.
The Beatles had stopped touring years before so the album was never performed live until 2009 when Tim Woods and Phil Bathols enlisted 21 musicians and singers to perform the entire track list at the State Theatre in Sydney. The smash hit concert was revived in 2014 and was reincarnated this weekend for three shows over two days at Sydney Opera House to recognise the golden anniversary.
The reason for its success — and all the other Live Beatles projects over the years — is the fact that it features some of Australia’s best front men backed by superb session musicians headed by the redoubtable guitar master Rex Goh.
SPIRIT
You Am I’s Tim Rogers is funny and erudite; Grinspoon’s Phil Jamieson is a great mover with comedic dance skills; Chris Cheney of The Living End is a guitarist and driving vocalist few bands can match and in Josh Pyke we see that indefinable star quality.
What’s more they’re all great singers who can stay true to the spirit of the original while stamping their own mark, whether it be Cheney channelling Eric Clapton on While My Guitar Gently Weeps; Jamieson bringing plenty of heft to Yer Blues; Rogers hamming it up for Happiness Is A Warm Gun or Pyke in Paul McCartney melodic mode for Blackbird and Mother Nature’s Son.
Everyone has their favourite track, although Revolution No 9 would probably not be one of them — as Rogers joked after the cleverly adapted Goh version “this Saturday afternoon just got a whole lot weirder” — and the predominantly Baby Boomer audience were left more than satisfied, especially the woman in the front row who danced and sang along throughout the entire show.
Like all good deluxe anniversary editions this White Album came with some bonus tracks in an acoustic mini-set in which our own Fab Four gave us On Our Way Home from Let It Be, the Ballad of John and Yoko and, in a moving tribute to Beatles Live musical director and former Wa Wa Nee front man Paul Gray, who died of myeloma recently, George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass.
Then with the packed out audience on its feet a rousing reprise of Revolution set the seal on a magnificent celebration of a rock masterpiece.
DETAILS
● CONCERT: The White Album Concert
● WHERE: Sydney Opera House
● WHEN: Saturday, July 28