I Met the Walrus_ How One Day With John Lennon Changed My Life Forever - Jerry Levitan [8]
A few songs were getting airplay about a week before the album’s release. In the car one night, I heard “Back in the USSR” on the radio for the first time. It started with the sound of a jet plane. And then it landed, full force with a thumping beat. That specific emotion is forged into my memory. So when I ultimately bought the White Album and held it in my arms, I knew something of what I was about to experience. But I had heard only a few songs on the radio and this was a double album with thirty new Beatle songs! I stared at the cellophane-wrapped White Album for the ride home. I did not want to open it yet. It had to be done right.
We did not have headphones, so I put my small, portable hi-fi on my night table. I lay on my bed, facing up, with the speakers on either side of my head to get the full effect. When the needle hit the outside of the record, even a new record, you heard the comforting mellow sound of friction. I heard the slowly approaching airplane. By the time my uninterrupted adventure ended with Ringo singing “Goodnight,” I was in transcendent splendor. Listening to it over and over again, all night, made me feel important, part of a special club selected by the Beatles to change the world. I studied those albums, word for word and sound by sound. Not a nuance passed me by. Having listened to Beatle records so often, I could discern who played what instrument, who made what sound, and who harmonized with whom. To this day, I hear a Beatle song as if it was in many different layers, songs within songs: Paul’s melodic and imaginative bass lines, John’s sharp guitar chords and Donovan-style finger picking, George’s unique lead guitar, and Ringo always keeping it together with his simple yet brilliant hits on the drums. Every breath, sigh, grunt, and whistle was imprinted in my memory cells. The White Album was a gift. That was how I saw it. With the White Album, or as I liked to call it, the double White Album because they’d given us an impressive two albums in one, the Beatles had gone beyond the bold experimentation of Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour. They were now supreme craftsmen of expression, innovation, and presentation. And with the album came tangible goodies. Four 8 x 10 close-up portraits of each Beatle. No mugging for the camera anymore. No psychedelic art. Paul, with stubble, up close and personal. George, direct and purposeful. Ringo, stylishly eccentric. John, transmuted and disconnected. The Beatles seemed to have had a direct hand in preparing a poster of Polaroids, proofs, and photos. These were not posed publicity shots but personal giveaways to the fans. The Beatles as they had become. In the bath. Contemplative. Naked. Stoned. And for the first time, Yoko Ono made her formal and dramatic appearance.
Stories of John’s relationship with Yoko had started to surface. They met on November 9, 1966, at the Indica Gallery in London where Yoko’s exhibition of Unfinished Paintings and Objects was on a private preview display. John climbed the ladder, gazed through a magnifying glass hanging from the ceiling, and read the word “YES.” Later he would refer to that as being the moment of instant connection. Yoko Ono had already created a buzz in the art worlds of London and New York by staging such performance art events as sitting on a stage inviting the audience to cut her clothes until she was naked, covering the lion statues in Trafalgar Square with white sheets, and filming 365 naked behinds, one for every day of the year. John, the Philosopher King of Rock, had met his match.
Much of the newspaper and magazine coverage of Yoko was merciless and racist. She was ravaged and ridiculed—as was John—for