White Beatles Album: Six Artists Who Influenced Iconic Exit

In the spring of 1968, the Beatles traveled to Rishikesh, India, to participate in a transcendental meditation class. After years of success and excesses, it was a chance for the largest group in the world to reset, reconnect, and start writing the music that earned them status.

It worked. Meditating for hours every day, Paul McCartney and John Lennon have experienced a period of unbridled creativity, evoking songs that cross musical styles from ska to blues to avant-garde electronics.

Much of what was written in India ended up in the group's ninth studio album, which, though technically self-titled, is quickly named White Album. When he came out, he stunned some critics: were his 30 songs vigorously creative or just too long? For others, his ambition only confirms the divine genius of the group.

Whatever the truth, it has turned into an extremely influential liberation. In addition to agitating paranoid anticommunists and allegedly inspirational Californian death cults – yes, really – the album was a touchstone for countless groups that emerged in the decades that have followed his exit. You'd be hard-pressed to find a previous half century rock record that was not affected by the White Album at least in some way.

But what were his influences? Today, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the release of White Album, we have selected six artists who inspired the Beatles, leaving an indelible mark on one of the greatest albums of all time.

Chuck Berry / Beach Boys

The opening track is also one that displays its influences in the fastest way. The title, Back in the USSR, is an obvious subversion of Chuck Berry's song: Back in the USA, where McCartney craves balalaikas sounds rather than skyscrapers and highways. The brand propulsion of a Berry tune is also present – frantic pianos and harrowing torn guitar solos. But there is also a clear nod to the Beach Boys with the falsetto choirs arriving a few seconds after the last minute. Is the song an ode to these two artists? Or a sneering parody? Both, probably, and this particular tension is what makes this album such a start.

Donovan

While the Beatles were in Rishikesh, they invited several musician friends to join them. Donovan, the legendary folk singer of the 60s, was part of the traveling troupe. He took part in the daily meditations that opened such creativity for himself and for the band, but it's his guitar playing that left the deepest imprint on writing the Beatles song. One afternoon, Donovan sat down with Lennon and taught him to pry his finger. Lennon first mastered House of the Rising Sun and in a few days he learned to play much more complex arrangements. This led to the compositions of Dear Prudence, Julia and Happiness is A Warm Gun. A few days before the release of the white album, McCartney said that once Donovan had shown the technique to Lennon, "he sort of got stuck in it all," although McCartney told him -not even been immune. Like osmosis, he incorporated style into his own writings, writing Blackbird and Mother Nature's Son.

Karlheinz Stockhausen

The '60s were a period of bold innovation for left field electronic music, and everything was focused on tapes. Steve Reich explored the hallucinatory simplicity of the looping band with his mid-century compositions, It's Gonna Rain and Come Out. Pauline Oliveros also used tapes but with a broader approach, combining them with various electronic tools to create supernatural drones. Karlheinz Stockhausen, meanwhile, weaves different bands to create vertiginous collages. It is possible that the three, and many others, had an impact on the Beatles' musical approach, but it was Stockhausen that had the clearest influence. The band was already a fan of the avant-garde German composer – his face appears on the cover of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band – and is directly inspired by his collages on the penultimate White album title, Revolution 9. The long, obscure, unstructured song of the album was a controversial decision, but it gave innovators like Stockhausen the worldwide recognition they deserved.

Little Richard

The influence of Little Richard on the Beatles began long before the white album; In fact, it's McCartney's impression of the rock 'n' roll icon that piqued Lennon's interest when they first met in the 1950s. McCartney could indeed faithfully reproduce that heartbreaking growl and dragging in the chest and would use it well in the first songs of the Beatles. On a track like She Loves You, McCartney introduced the "woos" that have made Little Richard famous. But as the group matures – once the costumes and moptops are abandoned and the LSD taken – his voice changes and evolves. In a way, Birthday is a bit like a backtrack, McCartney absolutely stealing the main voice, recalling the memories of the man who inspired him for the first time.

Cream

In the year of the release of the white album, the rise of the British blues was still in full swing, with Eric Clapton's Cream in the foreground. And even though Lennon was thousands of miles away, meditating in India, he still felt the tremors. This led to Yer Blues, another song that seems to be a parody as well as a tribute. It's a travesty because of this name – a comical British expression, evoking the particular perspective of the Whites of England playing music from the Mississippi Delta – and also because of the nervous and sharp guitar solos. But it's also a tribute, thanks to those jet-black words ("When I wrote" I'm so lonely, I want to die, "I'm not joking," said Lennon once), and also because is a deafening song of blues. Lennon was clearly aware of the influence of bands such as Cream on him, and even invited Clapton to play him in concert with him a few months after the release of the album.