A year after releasing the vividly covered Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967, the cover of The Beatles, or The White Album, was nothing more than the band’s name embossed on a milky background.
The White Album, The Beatles‘ ninth, was more exploratory with a range of genres spanning folk, country, and avant-garde, and was assembled after The Beatles embarked on a transcendental meditation retreat and course with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Rishikesh, India between February and April of 1968.
During the Beatles’ spiritual sabbatical, the songs of The White Album started taking form.
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In between meditative breaks, Paul McCartney and John Lennon would often meet to secretly write songs. At the time, George Harrison, who had been squeezing in two or more of his songs into prior Beatles albums, was also becoming a more prolific songwriter—even writing for other artists—during this period.
Following their trip, The Beatles began recording The White Album between May and October of 1968 and delivered “Back in the U.S.S.R.,” “Dear Prudence,” and “Blackbird,” along with the first song Ringo Starr had written for the band, his countrified “Don’t Pass Me By.”
Harrison also plugged in two of his songs on the double album, including “Piggies” and his classic “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
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“I knew inside of me that it was a nice song,” said Harrison of the latter track in 1987. Recorded in September 1968 at Abbey Road Studios, Harrison sang “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” which shifted from a more folk-bent song to a more fully produced sound, and featured Eric Clapton on guitar.
On December 28, 1968, The White Album topped the charts in several other countries and went to No. 1 on the Billboard 200, where it spent nine consecutive weeks.
Photo: John Pratt/Keystone/Getty Images
