For all of the accolades brought their way, The Beatles never presented themselves as egotistical maniacs. Compared to every other artist that seems to have their head expand to twice its size the minute that one of their tracks comes on the radio, every member of the Fab Four seemed to remain the lovable version of the moptops that we had all got to know when they made their first appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. They knew they could still kick some ass when they wanted to, though, and Ringo Starr was convinced no one could touch them on ‘Yer Blues’.
Which is strange considering that The White Album is arguably when band morale was at an all-time low. Sure, they were all still writing the best music of their career, but the group had come a long way from being the Four Musketeers, and a lot of the album sounds like them breaking off in completely different directions.
John Lennon was getting interested in expressing himself through his music much more directly, but Paul McCartney was still writing his whimsical tunes like ‘Honey Pie’, all while George Harrison was being humoured or ignored entirely despite having classics like ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ under his belt. Given his track record for songwriting, Starr may have just been happy to help, but ‘Yer Blues’ exists in a weird space for the group.
They had dabbled in blues-infused material all the way back in their days as a bar band, but hearing Lennon cry out in pain felt like the polar opposite of what they had just experienced after undergoing transcendental meditation. Everyone was trying to become cosmic, but Lennon was on the verge of suicide after being separated from Yoko Ono for so long.
To capture that kind of spirit, just going onto the studio floor at Abbey Road wasn’t going to cut it. They needed something a little bit extra, and Lennon eventually warmed up to the idea of performing in a cramped room and cutting the track in that tiny space.
It wasn’t exactly the most comfortable recording situation, but Starr remembered it being one of the best performances they laid down in the studio, saying, “‘Yer Blues’, on the White Album, you can’t top it. It was the four of us. That is what I’m saying: it was really because the four of us were in a box, a room about eight by eight, with no separation. It was this group that was together; it was like grunge rock of the sixties, really – grunge blues.”
And considering how long they had gone without performing together, having them in that tight-knit room brought listeners back to the days before they had even signed a record contract. This was throwing things back to playing for the sake of playing, and Lennon, in particular, is absolutely electric on the song, especially when he’s singing his vocal cords raw on the chorus.
Even though The Beatles were becoming children of the studio, they still weren’t afraid to kick out the jams when they wanted to. Too much time behind the glass might start to hinder a group’s live performance, but as musicians, those years away from the road didn’t do anything to their sonic sheen.
