What The Beatles did July 28, 1968
Smack in the middle of all of the other craziness of 1968 was the transition of The Beatles from pop superstars to socially progressive musicians.
With The Rolling Stones nipping at their heels — and a global explosion in political protest — the four lads from Liverpool pushed themselves past the psychedelia of 1967’s “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and “Magical Mystery Tour” and into the much more abrasive and experimental “White Album” that came out in the early fall of 1968.
“Revolution” may now be thought of as the music that accompanied a sneaker commercial a few years ago, but 47 years ago the potent single tied in with the protests that brought France to a halt in the spring of 1968 and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy in this country (and the resulting riots in cities all over the U.S.)
The “White Album” was already in the can when a horrified nation watched the police riot at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, but cuts from the album were just beginning to be heard at the end of that crazy summer.
The first single from the album — “Hey, Jude” — was revolutionary in a technical and commercial sense in that AM radio bowed to the group’s wishes that the very long song not be cut for airplay (as happened to the original version of The Doors “Light My Fire” the previous summer).
By: Joe Meyers
Source: ct news
