As we said in the last video, most of 1968 was involved with the creation and release of the White album. A trip to [UNKNOWN] and a trip to the U.S. to launch Apple core. And then by May into the studio May through October working on the White Album released in November of 1968 going to number one on both sides of the Atlantic. So another big hit album for the Beatles. And as I said, again, in the last video the Beatles become more a group of songwriters playing on each other's songs here. Then they are a sort of band working together, because in the studio now it's you, you know, you can work without the other guys there, and that frequently happened. Sometimes sessions would be going on for the album in two different studios at the same time at Abbey Road. So talk about being separated out. There might be a John song being worked on in one studio and a Paul song being worked on in another studio. If you look at The White Album chart that I've provided for you, you'll see that I've broken this out into the Paul McCartney songs, there are 12 of those. The John Lennon songs, there are 13 of those. The George Harrison songs, there are four of those, and the Ringo Starr song, there is one of those. So, just looking at those numbers for a minute, and remembering when we were looking at the very first albums that first batch of albums that we were talking to before, coming up before Sergeant Pepper. A Beatles album could have as many as 14 songs on it. And so, when you look at Paul with 12 and John with 13, and a lot of these songs being longer than two, two minutes and 12 seconds or something, right? [LAUGH]. You see that there, really it's a double album, in the sense that you really have an album from Paul and an album from John. And then, as I said before, kind of an EP from George Harrison, all sort of put together. So within this listing of the Paul McCartney songs and the John Lennon songs and the George Harrison songs I, I, I, I've also sort of coded them according to some of the topics that I'm going to be talking about. Now one of the things I say about John or about Paul's music that is, is that they reveal a marked longing for the past and for past styles, and. The interpretation I bring to a lot of Paul McCartney's music in 1968 going into 1969 is a sense of looking to the past to figure out what the way forward is. In other words looking to the music that used to excite him so much, or to the music of others as inspiration to find his own way forward. Now, I would draw your attention to the interpretation I brought to Beatles For Sale, because I said exactly the same thing about the band there. Remember when it followed A Hard Day's Night - Beatles For Sale - people thought, well, maybe it's not such a good follow up album to A Hard' Day's Night and all that. But my interpretation of it was the Beatles returning to their past. There were more cover versions on that tune. Sort of working their way forward by looking toward their past. And I think in 1968 that's kind of what is happening with Paul McCartney. In fact this week and next week and the last week of the class really to the, to the end of the Beatles career I'm going to argue that Paul. I think suf, not suffers, but is inspired by a kind of nostalgia for having things back the way they used to be. They've taken a, a long journey in a short period of time, and I think in many ways Paul wishes they could, they could be the way they were in 1962 or 1963. So it seems to me that a lot of his music there's kind of a longing to, to get back to that. And well, part of that will come out in the get back sessions that we'll talk about next week as well as [UNKNOWN] music as well. So you'll see asterisks in the Paul McCartney column. But all the songs that I'm marking as song that are based on music of others. Both John and Paul have songs that refer to their state in India, and all of these songs were written in India without referring to their state. But there are couple of tunes that actually refer to the things that happened when they were In India, or really strongly prompted by something like that. In the John column I find his music getting increasingly experimental during this period. And we should probably bear in mind that Yoko Ono and John sort of start as a couple in May of 1968, although they've known each other for some months before that. In May of 68, they really sort of established that relationship. John leaves his wife and and so Yoko, being an avant-garde artist, brings I think, a lot of that experience and has that, had a certain kind of effect of encouraging that in John's music. So as you look down the John column you'll see not only the songs referring to the stay in India, but also what I call his finger wagging songs. This is John sort of making fun of somebody or talking at somebody about something he doesn't think they should be doing, or something they're doing that's foolish. Sort of in the Bob Dylan finger wagging tradition of telling somebody why, why they're wrong or why they're misguided. And then the little number sign, little crosshatch, shows John's songs prompted by phrases of others. And this goes into that topic we've been following up to this point of, of John using found objects, or received sources as ways of creating lyrics. So lyrics aren't really so much about him as much as they are about sort of creating a kind of an interesting lyrical thing, given some kind of a thing. We talked about the circus poster in Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite, we talked about the newspaper in A Day in the Life, we talked about the Timothy Leary psychedelic experience book in Tomorrow Never Knows. So we're going to see more of that and those songs are indicated by that cross hatch. As far as George Harrison is concerned at this point its really with the White album that George's songwriting begins to match that of John and Paul. And maybe of all these songs, and we'll take a look at it in detail a little bit later. While My Guitar Gently Weeps is a song that really sort of forecasts what George's solo career is going to look like post Beatles. He has Eric Clapton guesting on lead guitar and that. I mean, it really is in many ways some, I bet you some fans would argue, it's the best track on the album. So anyway that you can even make that argument credibly give you a sense of how far George Harrison has come over these couple of years of writing songs. As he said at the beginning John and Paul were lucky, they got to get all of their terrible songs out of the way. I had to do my terrible song in public, but I think by this point the terrible song writing is over. Actually, I don't think any of his songs are terrible, but I think that is the way that he would have put it so. The way I'm going to structure the lectures that follow is we'll talk about the Paul songs and then we'll do a close-up on Paul songs. Then we'll talk about the John songs, we'll do a close-up on John songs. And then we'll talk about the George songs, the Ringo song, we'll do a close-up on that and we'll finish with Yellow Submarine. So let's dig right in to The White Album. The songs of Paul McCartney. [BLANK_AUDIO]
