I Met the Walrus_ How One Day With John Lennon Changed My Life Forever - Jerry Levitan [9]
I, however, adored it. First of all, John was in love. What was wrong with that? Second, they seemed to be of the same mindset. Positive. Experimental. Political. Funny. Finally, it was clearly what John needed to free himself from the monster that the Beatles had become. I was loyal to the bone. No matter what you thought of Yoko, the songs were so good, so new, so innovative that it was impossible to deny their genius.
There were songs of power, pain, and politics. Paul’s “Blackbird” is his message of support to black women in America. George’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” laments the alienation and detachment many people felt at the time. John throws a dagger at pop culture with the fragmented “Happiness Is a Warm Gun.” A dramatic departure from their previous albums, there were only two romantic love songs in the thirty tracks, Paul’s “I Will” and George’s “Long, Long, Long.” John would later single out the White Album as the beginning of the end of the Beatles. They argued and recorded many songs on their own, John in one studio working on his tune, Paul in the other. Ringo tried his best to feel part of it all. It was his voice we heard at the end, singing a lullaby in “Goodnight,” written especially for him by John. Parodies of themselves in “Glass Onion,” pulling out the stops to entice “Dear Prudence,” making the rowdiest rock song ever in “Helter Skelter,” struggling with violence as a political tool in “Revolution,” the double White Album was breathtaking in its scope and the degree to which each of the Beatles exposed his personal life.
It took a few days for my copy of the double White Album to get dirty. That probably was the point of it. Fingerprints—mine and others—were everywhere. I took it to school with me everyday and lectured about it on my soapbox. Having read everything I could about the making of it, I dazzled and bored kids and teachers with my knowledge. “Martha My Dear” was about Paul’s sheepdog. “Dear Prudence” had its genesis in India with John and Paul trying to coax Mia Farrow’s sister out of her cabin in the Maharishi’s ashram. And “Sexy Sadie” was about John’s eventual disillusionment with the Maharishi. “I’m So Tired” had John singing about trying to quit smoking and “Back In the USSR” gave loving tribute to the Beach Boys, Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis. The pinnacle for me, though not for everyone else, was “Revolution 9.” It did not take me long to be able to mimic John’s eight-minute-and-thirteen-second apocalyptic vision of the future. I can do it to this day. There was not a note, a sound, an image, tone, or word that I did not worship about the double White Album.
The world had barely a week to digest this massive pop release when John and Yoko released through Apple Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins. The front and back covers featured John and Yoko naked. The photos were taken by themselves and not manipulated in any way. No pop artist since has come anywhere close to such a dramatic, uncompromising act of defiant courage and audacity. John Lennon, emboldened by his new partner in love and art, took his stardom and twirled it in the air. As John said in his liner notes, he and Yoko “battled on against overwhelming oddities.” John’s friend and collaborator Paul McCartney lent a gracious quote that appeared on the front cover: “When two great Saints meet, it is a humbling experience. The long battles to prove he was a Saint.” Paul was supportive of John but even then confused by