This past weekend, Luke and I had the chance to listen to The White Album on vinyl. Being the Beatles freaks that we both are, we took the chance to talk about the Beatles.

One thing that seems interesting to me is that the Beatles must have been in some kind of weird state of being to write all the songs that they wrote. I guess this mainly applies to Paul and John. I remember an NBA Playoff Game from long ago when Jordan hit six three pointers in one half of play. It was one of those games where everything he threw up went into the basket. He described the basket as appearing larger than it was, and how he knew a shot was going to go in before he even shot the ball.

It got me to wondering if John and Paul must have been in some kind of songwriting zone. Because as Luke said, the Beatles didn't really write a bad song after they finished "Help!" From "Rubber Soul" to "Abbey Road," the Beatles basically owned the pop world, with 99% of their songs being anywhere from "above average" to "great" to "classic."

I've always contended that when you're a world class artist, you *know* that your stuff is better than anything out there at the time. Everyone from Leonardo Da Vinci to Vincent Van Gogh must have known, at some kind of basic level, that their art was new and revolutionary. I think that John and Paul must have realized this when they were writing their songs. They must have known what kind of pop music was out at the time, and they must have been aware that what they were doing wasn't like anything out at the time.

It must have been weird to write a song like "Birthday" or "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da," which are throw away songs by most accounts. They seem like the type of songs that would have taken no time to write, and no time to record, yet here we are 40 years later still singing them. And they must have known that. There must have been a small part of their psyche that knew that they could write a classic song without much effort, and that it'd sound different than anything out there.

What's amazing about the Beatles is that they were only good for about 7 years. They were always good musicians, but if you look at their music from the time they hit US shores to the time they broke up, they really blew the lid off what was possible with an album. Each album transcended the last. There has rarely been an artist or musical group that changed as much as the Beatles did from album to album. Bob Dylan, the Doors, the Jimi Hendrix Experience...they all changed from album to album, but never as dramatically or as fundamentally as the changes the Beatles made from album to album. I always have to remind myself that "The White Album" was only about 2 years removed from "Rubber Soul."

We also talked about how the great divide between John and Paul, and how it really became obvious during "The White Album." Up until the White Album it was a bit hard telling the difference between a John and Paul song. "Fool on the Hill" pretty similar to "I Am the Walrus" which is pretty similar to "Your Mother Should Know." Yet the "White Album" is where you get "Martha My Dear" following "Happiness is a Warm Gun." The "White Album" is where you get "Julia" following "I Will."

"The White Album" is where you see an almost definite divide in John's and Paul's sensibilities. John got a little darker and edgier, while Paul opted for the tea and crumpets crowd. I'm not saying one is better than the other, though I do find John's "White Album through his solo work" to be more artistically daring. John's music exposed a lot more of himself than Paul ever let on. In another instance of how the two differ, listen to "I'm So Tired," and then "Blackbird."

Luke joked that it'd be funny if Paul was just in the Beatles so that he could get to the "good shit" that he did after he left the group. As if the Beatles were just a stepping stool to "Say, Say, Say" and "Silly Love Songs." haha

Oh well. Beatles Freak moment over...