The Iconic Beatles Album George Harrison Once Admitted Was a “Mistake”

The Beatles’ eponymous “White Album” is a beloved favorite among fans, thanks to tracks like “Blackbird”, “Helter Skelter”, and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”. In hindsight, however, George Harrison once admitted to thinking the album was a mistake. History would show it was hardly the kind of gaff that could topple musical giants like The Beatles in 1968.

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Still, the “Quiet Beatle” might have gone about things a little differently if he had the chance to give it another go.

George Harrison Thought This Crucial Element Was a Mistake

Throughout their short time together as a band, The Beatles produced some truly incredible albums. The “White Album” is certainly among them, although it differs from the rest of the Fab Four’s discography in one notable way: its sheer size. The Beatles was the band’s only double album, featuring four sides of music that swung widely from radio-friendly hits, like “Back In The U.S.S.R.” and “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”, to experimental, highly divisive tracks like “Revolution 9” and “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?”

It was an impressive feat, but according to George Harrison, not necessarily an effective one. “I think, in a way, it was a mistake doing four sides,” he later admitted. “It’s too big for people to really get into it. For reviewers and the public. Maybe now people who have bought it, and if they’ve really listened to it for years or since it was out, then they’ll have their own favorites.”

He mused that it might have been a better decision to make the album compact, around fourteen songs. In his usual way, Harrison was too humble to list the specific tracks he found worthy of saving. But one could assume some shoe-ins would be “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, “Helter Skelter”, “Dear Prudence”, “Back In The U.S.S.R.”, “Blackbird”, “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”, “Happiness Is A Warm Gun”, “Birthday”, and “Yer Blues”.

Even With the Album’s Upsides, It Wasn’t on Regular Rotation for George

In the same interview, George Harrison said that the album’s variety was a notable silver lining to an otherwise too-long album. Referencing “Revolution 9”, he said that it wasn’t exactly in The Beatles’ typical style, but that it “worked very well in the context of all those different songs. That was the great thing about it. That if people spent enough time listening to it, then there were all different types of music and types of songs.”

Harrison, however, didn’t have this album on regular rotation. “It was a bit heavy, you know,” he said. “I find it heavy to listen to myself. In fact, I don’t listen to it myself. I listen to mainly side one, which I like very much.”

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