The Beatles and the Bible: Sexy Sadie, What Have You Done? (1968-1970)

While Revolver and Sgt. Pepper introduced us to the more spiritual side of The Beatles, The White Album provides us with the band's complete journey in a super-sized, self-titled masterpiece.

Nicknamed The White Album due to it's colorless, artless, exterior, the self-titled The Beatles is a two disc work that is the true test of Beatle admiration. Worshipped by fans and panned by outsiders, The White Album (ranked #10 on the RS500) contains some of the most avant-garde, original and daring work the band would ever produce. From McCartney's risque Why Don't We Do It In the Road to Harrison's moody While My Guitar Gently Weeps to Lennon's eight minute experiment in sound, Revolution 9, The White Album provides a incredible mixture of musical genres, lyrical depth, and of course, spiritual experience. Recorded during the band's more tumultuous times (the members often recorded in separate studios), The White Album defies definition. There is no cohesive theme (illustrated well by the bland cover). There is no definable genre. (How do you define an album with tracks that could be on either a Guns 'n Roses or Lawrence Welk album?) There are songs that cannot even be defined as songs (see Revolution 9, or to some degree, Wild Honey Pie.) There is even one song that isn't a song at all (the "hidden" track Can You Take Me Back at the finale of Cry Baby Cry).

Despite the rather haphazard pot-pourri of tracks, there is an eerie cohesion as well. Lennon's unique acoustic work is repeated on several tracks (Dear Prudence, Happiness Is a Warm Gun, Julia). The three "animal" tracks are presented back-to-back-to-back (Blackbird, Piggies, Rocky Racoon). Some songs share titles (Wild Honey Pie and Honey Pie, Revolution 1 and 9) as well as verses (Savoy Truffle references Ob-La-Di-Ob-La-Da.) Most eerie is that the number of tracks on each album side correspond to the number of letters in each Beatle's name!

Disc 1/Side 1 - 8 Songs (Harrison - 8 Letters)
Disc 1/Side 2 - 9 Songs (McCartney - 9 Letters)
Disc 2/Side 1 - 7 Songs (Starkey [Starr] - 7 Letters)
Disc 2/Side 2 - 6 Songs (Lennon - 6 Letters)

To the outsider, The White Album is pointless and difficult to listen to. To the religious Beatle fan, it is art at its finest.

The eerie cohesion of the album augments the spiritual tone throughout. In fact, the album itself can be summed up by three different religious themes: the inane, the insane, and the ever present Indian influence that defined many of the tracks.

The inane is represented by McCartney's ditty Rocky Racoon - that jealous Old West gun slinger who would experience revival by reading from Gideon's Bible. The insane is a by-product of the infamous Charles Manson, who considered the album an apocalyptic call to his "Family" to proceed on their murderous spree of the late 60s. Taking his cue from both the album and the Bible, Manson saw The Beatles as the fulfillment of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse (Rev. 6:1-7), took on the song title Helter Skelter as the theme song for his attacks, and considered Revolution 9 to be a reference to Revelation 9, which depicts various plagues upon the earth during the End Times.

It is the Indian theme, though, that most defines the album as a whole. In fact, it is in India itself that many of the songs found their genesis.

Sexy Sadie

After listening to a lecture by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at the London Hilton, the band, along with their wives, girlfriends and other friends, decided to spend much of the Spring of 1968 under the Yogi's tutelage at his campus in Rishikesh, India. There, they practiced transcendental meditation and even renounced psychedelic drug use. Most important to this discussion, though, is that many of the songs from The White Album were based on experiences during this period.

Starting with Harrison, his melodic Long, Long, Long depicts his feelings of finding inner peace with God, whatever that meant to him. (Harrison's three disc solo effort, All Things Must Pass, and the song My Sweet Lord in particular gives credit to all sorts of spiritual leaders, from Jesus to Hare Krishna, to a variety of other mystic figures.) Unlike his previous spiritual songs (as well as the subsequent The Inner Light), this work didn't use Indian music as its framework, but instead blended a mixture of waltz, folk and rock to create a very peaceful, as well as solemn, tenor.

Two tracks prior we find Sexy Sadie. Originally titled as Maharishi, the song depicts the Maharishi's supposed hypocritical sexual advances toward some of the women in the group. (The Maharishi taught sexual restraint.) This background gives new meaning to the lyrics:

"Sexy Sadie what have you done
You made a fool of everyone
....
Sexy Sadie you broke the rules
You laid it down for all to see
...
Sexy Sadie you'll get yours yet
However big you think you are
...
We gave her everything we owned just to sit at her table
Just a smile would lighten everything
Sexy Sadie she's the latest and the greatest of them all."

Lennon would later regret obfuscating the title. Bad religious experiences such as this may be part of the reason he would later declare all gods as idols in his solo work. (See the lyrics to God near the end of this blog.)

John's experience at Rishikesh was also chronicled by Dear Prudence, written for Mia Farrow's sister Prudence Farrow, who was with him at the campus. (Some reports depict her as an object of the Maharishi's advances.) Many of songs on The White Album are acoustic (or partially acoustic - e.g., Blackbird, Julia). This reflects the fact that the only Western instrument available to the band during their India visit was the acoustic guitar; songs were therefore written acoustically, and stayed true to their original arrangement.

Future Works

The White Album was the apex of spiritual experience for The Beatles. Subsequent works, like the aforementioned The Inner Light, Harrison's Here Comes the Sun, as well as McCartney's Let It Be (which is ironically similar to Luke 1:35 - "Then [Mother] Mary said, 'Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word'") provide glimpses of spiritual experience and yearnings. Lennon's contributions ranged from meditative (Across the Universe, with its refrain taken from Indian meditation) to near blasphemous (The Ballad of John and Yoko, which compared the couple's media-laced honeymoon experience to Christ's crucifixion). (Note also John's I Am the Walrus from 1967, in which he makes a comical reference to Hare Krishna.)

After recording Abbey Road in 1969, The Beatles split to pursue their solo careers. Albums such as Harrison's choir-like All Things Must Pass and Lennon's dark and revealing Plastic Ono Band continued to reveal the spiritual thoughts of the artists. Sometimes, the lyrics seemed to cut to the heart of biblical Christianity:

"You don't need no passport
And you don't need no visas
You don't need to designate or to emigrate
Before you can see Jesus

If you open up your heart
You'll see He's right there
Always was and will be
He'll relieve you of your cares"
(Harrison, Awaiting On You All)

At other times, they completely rejected biblical truth:

"God is a concept by which we can measure our pain
...
I don't believe in Bible
...
I don't believe in Jesus
...
I just believe in me
Yoko and me
And that's reality"
(Lennon, God)

It is not surprising that John Lennon would be the most vocal atheistic (or at least agnostic) voice of the The Beatles. Wasn't it he who proclaimed that The Beatles were more popular than Jesus? What might be surprising is that my favorite Beatle was and always will be John Lennon. As a teenager, Lennon was my hero; my idol. I learned openness and honesty from John Lennon. I learned art appreciation from him. I also learned that one need not be constrained by popular thought, but should expand his or her horizons to see things beyond what is either apparent or acceptable. I can still get emotional every December 8 - the anniversary of his fatal shooting in 1980. I have that fateful moment etched in my memory when Howard Cosell announced to an shocked Monday Night Football audience than an "unspeakable tragedy" had occurred that evening in New York City. Lennon was, for my teenage years, my inspiration.

So, it seems appropriate that almost two years to the day after Lennon's death - December 10, 1982, to be exact - I made the decision to become a follower of Jesus Christ. From that day forward, my hero worship shifted from John Lennon to Jesus Christ. I am now a follower of Jesus Christ...though I still enjoy the music of John Lennon and The Beatles.

I will always find artistic inspiration from The Beatles. There are some things, though, that they will never convince me to do. John Lennon challenged all of us in 1971 to "imagine there's no Heaven." That's something I find impossible to do.