There’s been a lot going on here in 2018 time, including a long-anticipated visit to the “David Bowie Is” exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. So let’s throw together one last post and call it a week.
On these days in 1968 The Beatles put the finishing touches on three songs: “Revolution” (the single version, to which Nicky Hopkins added electric piano), “Don’t Pass Me By,” and — ahem — “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” (“risking the antagonism of the studio engineers and tape operator,” says The Beatles Bible).
At this point they were flush with the most vital of all creative resources: momentum. They would ride that wave for several months, and as a result end up with too much material for a single LP. Or at least that was the opinion that won out — here we begin to touch on the outskirts of the eternal argument over whether the White Album would have been better as a single album. This is not the time for that discussion, but we shall get there by and by.
When we get to that discussion, I will have an opinion.