Whither The White Album Covered?

I can't remember which cool East Coast band of the Throwing Muses - Pixies - Breeders - Belly axis covered a Beatles song first - it might have been Throwing Muses covering "Cry Baby Cry" or it might have been the Pixies covering "Wild Honey Pie" for a Peel Session - but basically every one of those bands (except Belly, now that I think about it) (but including members of the bands solo) covered a Beatles song. & every one of those covers came from The White Album.

Why do people like hip post-punker Americans think the White Album is so cool? Why do I think it's so cool?

I've been listening - seriously listening, not just familiar with them because they never go away - to the Beatles since I was in sixth grade. I saw that so-awful-it's-brilliant movie Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as a very little kid, & I was enchanted. Dopey as I was, I knew the title song was a Beatles song, but I was certain the rest of the soundtrack was new. That must've irked one of my older brothers - or, more probably, I asked for it - because for Christmas that year, I got the Beatles album. I never looked back - I knew right away the movie was garbage & the candy-colored record was the real thing. I was probably ten or eleven at the time.

(My older brothers & sisters, alas, were never again able to advise me about music. They listened to the radio, &, when the radio made a right turn, they stayed with what was "classic." My brothers were never able to advise me which Elvis Costello album I should start with, & boy did I get a blank stare when I asked about the Velvet Underground. Probably still would!)

(Maybe that's not entirely fair - my sister Karin did let me borrow a Ramones greatest hits record when I was in high school. But that's probably it.)

Anyway, I devoured the red & blue greatest hits comps (the only Beatles stuff I had besides Sgt Pepper) & though I didn't have the money to buy the records (I was young & had no income, & the records never showed up in bargain bins, & when I saved up & bought "Meet The Beatles," I remember how ripped off I felt because it was barely thirty minutes long), I did tape a show called "Ringo's Yellow Submarine" which was on at the time (it was in fact hosted by Ringo & he played Beatles songs from all over) & one radio station in Dallas used to play entire records at 10pm every weeknight. One night, they were playing the White Album.

I had a crappy unit that wasn't quite a boombox, but it did have a cassette deck & a radio. The antenna had been destroyed long, long ago, so to get any reception at all, I had to put a finger on the little wedge of metal (which was kinda sharp - one false move & it meant a tetanus shot) where the antenna was bent off. The cassette of that broadcast had various moments (one in particular I always expect to hear at the end of "I'm So Tired" as it fades into "Blackbird") when I had to raise my hand for some reason, so the signal faded to static. That was my copy of The White Album for many years - until I bought a copy on white vinyl at a record store years later, when I was in high school.

The next day at school, & this was middle school, I talked to my few friends about it. In particular, I was blown away by "Revolution 9." I had listened to it three times that night. My friend Russell, who, unlike me, had an older brother with good taste in music, & who had listened to the record many more times than I had, dismissed that track as a waste of time, so we talked about the rest of the record. I don't remember being offended, mainly because I was so enchanted. Every new Beatles song was magical to me, & I consumed it uncritically.

Later on, of course, when making mix tapes of Beatles songs for playing in my car or whatever, I would notice certain things - particularly that I almost never put a song on a tape that Paul McCartney sang - but that period of attacking my idols would come later, when I just got exhausted that people listened to this one band & nothing else. As if music started & stopped with them. That is an attitude I find exceedingly dull.

When listening to the White Album a few months ago, & thinking about this show, I made it a point to listen to the whole thing (& expecting to hear static at the appropriate times from the old tape - when will I forget that?) & to think about why I liked it so much. I think it's because it's the one Beatles record that seems like solo records from each of the Beatles, but with all the other Beatles playing on them. John Lennon's stuff is of course astonishing. George Harrison manages to be interesting, promising something he would never deliver ("Long Long Long" may be the greatest song he ever wrote), Ringo's song is a throwaway, like his solo career, & Paul McCartney manages feeble homage, treacle, tedium & schmaltz. (& yes, I think "Helter Skelter" is overrated. If I must listen to it, I listen to hear Ringo get blisters on his fingers.) The record, in a remarkable way, predicts the careers of the Beatles a couple of years before the split - although, it's fair to note, they were really already beginning to split.

I think that's why it's so cool. & by the way, the songs covered by the people above - with the exception of "Wild Honey Pie," they're all exclusively Lennon songs.

This Friday I will have the entire White Album covered in my grubby hands - yes, I even found a cover of "Revolution 9" - but I probably won't get to play it all. What I will play, though - well, you'll have to listen in, won't you?