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Why Don’t We Do It in the Doll’s House?: A Peek Inside the Beatles’ White Album
I remember what they sounded like. As obnoxious as auctioneers, the loud, peppy DJs on the Top 40 radio stations crammed in as many words as they could between commercials and hit songs that grew increasingly stale, but the disc jockeys on the underground station were low-key. With deep voices, they spoke slowly and softly, and listening to them it was easy to imagine bearded hippies with an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure rock ‘n’ roll. They never played hit singles, and they waited until several songs played before they identified anything, which was frustrating to someone trying to become familiar with at least a small fraction of the overwhelming amount of rock ‘n’ roll that was out there. It really didn’t matter, though: At that point, I still had to hear most songs several times before they penetrated.
This was in Des Moines, Iowa in the early ’70s—early enough that it still seemed like the late ’60s. I was in sixth and seventh grade when I listened to the underground radio station. Occasionally, on a Saturday I would walk to a hippie shop called Elysian Fields and try to figure out who the bands were on the posters covering the walls and flip through record bins while wondering what all the records sounded like. As with the underground radio station, you never heard any Top 40 hits in Elysian Fields. I took in what I could, but I processed little of what I heard. Fortunately, a friend whose older brothers left their record collections behind when they moved out set his selling price at a quarter; it was because of him that I first had a chance to listen to, at my leisure, bands like Captain Beefheart and the Electric Prunes.
One day, one of the deep-voiced hippies announced that the underground station was going to play The White Album by the Beatles in its entirety. Because most of the other Beatles LPs had number one singles, The White Album was probably the only serious candidate for an underground station—that or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Although none of its songs were hits, Pepper’s generally had more of a pop sound than The White Album, and because at that point the wow factor associated with Pepper’s was still fresh, it got much more press. Of all the Beatles records, The White Album seemed the most underground.
Before the radio played it, I still hadn’t heard anything from The White Album. Somehow I ended up with the poster that came inside the record and had the lyrics printed on the back, and sometimes I’d read the lyrics and wonder what to make of them while trying to imagine what the songs would sound like that went with those lyrics. And I’d read about The White Album, usually in connection with Charles Manson, who claimed that it gave him strict instructions to direct a series of gruesome murders. When people thought about that record, they thought about Manson, and that was part of its mystique. Another part was “Revolution 9.” How could it be that an eight-minute sound collage with no melody and no lyrics could be created by the only band that was so popular that touring was no longer a sane option? I had no idea—after all, I hadn’t even heard it yet—but I imagined a minefield full of hidden messages, a treasure chest with all the answers to all the messages secretly embedded in all the Beatles albums. Would I be the first person to unlock the mystery?
On that Sunday afternoon, The White Album played from beginning to end. Reading the lyrics as they were sung, I listened closely, but all the mysteries connected with the album remained mysteries, and, with time, more were added. Actually, for decades The White Album remained the most elusive Beatles record for me. I wasn’t sure where to rate it against the other Beatles albums, and while I could summarize, in 20 words or less (well, maybe not 20), how all of their other albums fit into the grand scheme of Beatles things, The White Album seemed more slippery.
Only recently did The White Album start to make more sense to me. What helped was skimming one of those Beatles books that music nerds have on their night stands. The book said—and I’m sure it’s appeared in a thousand other places, but this was the first I caught wind of it—that the Beatles originally planned to call the record A Doll’s House. That name was scrapped, however, when another British band, Family, released an album earlier in the year entitled Music in a Doll’s House. Plan B was, quite simply, The Beatles. Going along with the simpler title was their simplest cover: White, with the band name embossed on the cover. The implication is a musical Rorschach test where the connections between the different parts of the record are left up to the imagination of each listener.
But what about the original title? Where did it come from, and what was its appeal? Just as Sgt. Pepper’s featured the faces of dozens of people who influenced or inspired the Beatles, the original album title to The Beatles was a nod to the past, as its original title came from A Doll’s House, a play Henrik Ibsen wrote almost a hundred years before The White Album. A scathing indictment of the Victorian era, A Doll’s House told the world that middle-class wives were second-class citizens—or, if you will, dolls. As the play progresses, the repression and entrapment Nora Helmer experiences becomes increasingly apparent to her and the audience. When she decides, at the end, to leave her husband, her prospects look grim, but she would rather do that than stay trapped in a subservient role.
So why would a play written during the Victorian era speak to the most important band of the late ’60s when the Victorian era seemed like ancient history? A partial answer would be that apparently, in 1968, the world had not yet achieved a state of utopia—not quite. There were, among other things, a war that polarized two generations, racial tension, assassinations, and a few other problems. And while, in some ways, Nora Helmer’s world would have seemed alien to the late ’60s generation, The White Album made clear that the struggle to break free from different forms of oppression and repression was still very much a current event. But, it could do so humorously.
In the opening track, “Back in the USSR”, McCartney (or his protagonist, since McCartney had not yet been to Russia) celebrates returning to Soviet Russia because of all the tail he gets whenever he goes there. The KGB and Communist repression notwithstanding, the revolution—or at least the sexual revolution, which played no small part in the rebellious ’60s—was apparently on. A McCartney interview from 1984 made it clear that something serious was going on under the surface of such a playful song: “It was also hands across the water, which I’m still conscious of. ‘Cuz they like us out there, even though the bosses in the Kremlin may not. The kids do. And that to me is very important for the future of the race.” Three sides later, Lennon would ask, “Don’t you know it’s gonna be all right?” In one sense, McCartney seemed to be saying, it already was.
21 Comments
A “peer”? Not aware of any usage of peer as a noun meaning a look, glance, view, etc. “Peek,” maybe?
D’oh! We just consulted our dictionary and stand corrected.
Paul mccartney is all through the white album,giving hand.Making it the worlds accounted for masterpeice.
Very nice essay on an important record. I used to use this record as a rejoinder to teenage pals who kept telling me that Led Zep rocked “harder” than the Beatles. Helter Skelter shut them up pretty fast. My point was the Beatles were a great hard rock band when they wanted to be and the incredible catalog has so many styles that they remain the. best. rock. band. ever!
He peered into the abyss and saw . . . the nature of abyss.
Peer into this magic crystal and you’ll see the unexpected . . .
Thanks — this is a really insightful reflection on the While Album — and, on the approaching break-up of the Beatles. Puts both in perspective, and makes the break-up feel like something not so much to mourn as to accept as natural and sensible.
i always thought this album shoulda been called “F@ck You, We’re the Beatles,” because of it’s “if we recorded it, it’s worth releasing, like it or not” attitude……i’m of the school that this is a mess…with lots of incredibly “obvious” lyrics…but i can’t deny it’s opening and closing “one-two punches.” it’s just the stuff in between….
cheers
spellchecka
It’s good to run the album around in one’s mind again. I’ve done that so many millions of times, and most of these concepts come up in my mindscape. Judging this or that better or worse is no longer valid as the Beatles are in the Pantheon of Greats, beyond mere mortal criticim.
TO me it was back to jeans and T-shirts, never to return to the psychedelic days, albeit with a tich of the afterglow.
But to me the really staggering thing is how much this album departed from the candy-coated psychedelia of even a few months earlier. It’s the absolute transformation in such a short time that no other musical group ever did. And kept the music at peak quality.
They always did point the way.
Rock on!
Thanks, Jeff, for your sensible analysis of the White Album! Even though the Beatles’ albums are all high quality music, the White Album, by its breadth and creativity, stands out as the one that better represents their musical legacy.
It is my preferred one!
I’m a lifelong Beatles fan. From the very first time I heard the White Album, I’d get a kind-of ‘creepy’ feeling listening to it. There is a vibe of unrest throughout that album. There seems to be a sort of underlying turmoil to ALL of the music on it, and I felt this way before I’d ever read any of the Books by so-called Beatles Experts. McCartney has said it’s the “Tension Album” and I agree. It is a very odd album.
I’m a lifelong Beatles fan. From the very first time I heard the White Album, I’d get a kind-of ‘creepy’ feeling listening to it. There is a vibe of unrest throughout that album. There seems to be a sort of underlying turmoil to ALL of the music on it, and I felt this way before I’d ever read any of the Books by so-called Beatles Experts. McCartney has said it’s the “Tension Album” and I agree. It is a very odd album.
aka a load of crap.Manson was nearly a year later, and the rest of the review is just about as well researched..as the man said ( you shoulda been there” !!
Just my two cents. I always noticed that pracitcally all of Pauls’ contributions contain some sort of humor, or toungue in cheek or a novelty song.
From the ’sung’ bass line in I Will, or the Beach Boys/Chuck Berry/Ray Charles in-jokes of Back in the USSR the jokiness of OBLADI or Rocky Racoon, birds chirp on Blackbird,Helter Skelter has multiple false endings, etc.When else were his songs so humor oriented ?
very well written.. your analysis is bang on!
The memories of “underground radio” from KAAY Little Rock, Arkansas are forever etched in my brain. The station was one of those AM Super Stations that amped up the signal and was heard….”from the wheat fields of Manatoba to the bayou’s of the Mississippi”. From 11:00 PM until 0100 AM my world was the music that still drives my thought processes. Thank you to those late night radio jocks who played the music that made me the person I am today. Albert Lea,MN was where I was physically listening but my mind was in the space and time of the music. I too heard the White album for the first time on a late night station. They also featured “The Biscuit” and “Firesign Theater” What happened to those days!????
Jeff Wilson is apparently just a few years younger than I am, as we have similar memories of listening to Des Moines “underground” radio station, KFMG — probably the “Frog / Walrus Special Radio Hour” which always started out w “Dear Mary” by Steve Miller Band followed by The Beatles doing “Flying” and I think maybe the “Ohm” by the Moody Blues. Talk about HEAVY.
Talk about BOOTLEG — on the Millard Fillmore Radio Hour on Sunday afternoon they told you to get out your tape deck (reel to reel, of course) to record brand new releases like Janis Joplin, Procol Harum, etc. Those late-night jocks introduced me to alot of music, and I wish I could remember their names.
Of all the albums ever recorded, The White Album is the lp/cd I’ve listened to the most often. I did not know the first working title was “The Doll House.” That title does illuminate a thread that sort of pulls the so many divese songs together. Thanks Jeff…interesting analysis. From my point of view, The White Album is the best band ever’s best album.
Excellent analysis. I’m happy to read something positive about their greatest album instead of the usual “it should have been a single album” and “too much filler”, etc. I think the white album is a masterpiece of sequencing. Each song flows into the other and you can’t stop listening until you come to the final reassuring lullaby that closes the album. Most people complain about “Revolution #9″, but for my money that track is essential. The most amazing thing to me is that although the album is 40 years old, it sounds just as contemporary as any rock being played on the radio today. Try imagining popular music from 1928 being played on the radio along with the Beatles in 1968.
We were just a group of guys and friends hoping to make some music and spending money to start. Never in the wildest of dreams, had it been thought of to turn out the way it did back then.
look if you don’t know buy now that the white album or the beatles is a head album from start to end its a trip just as SP was and so many of there later albums its head games or can i use mind games hehe they loved to get high have a good time and trip there faces off so if you that stupid and dont get it drop some LSD then get back to me its a head trip and the 2 albums are F-ing great and yes its the F-ing beatleslets be real nobody did better really nobody brian from the beach boys went nuts trying to copy there work hehehe they had there finger on the pulse
the white Album has long been the favourite beatles album(any album) of my friends and myself.
It is the beatles album that most young people i meet love(i was born 85).
Although i love the early beatles albums, to me, the beatles as a album band didnt really get going intill Rubber Soul time. I find all their albums from that time on to be amazing in its own way.
The White album is a treasure chest of a album, scary and beautiful at the same time.
Only Abbey Rd comes close.
And “Long,Long,Long” has to be the most underated beatles song ever.