The Beatles (album)

The Beatles, also referred to colloquially as the White Album, is the ninth studio album and only double album by the English rock band the Beatles, released on 22 November 1968. Featuring a plain white sleeve, the cover contains no graphics or text other than the band's name embossed. This was intended as a direct contrast to the vivid cover artwork of the band's previous LP Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The Beatles is recognised for its fragmentary style and diverse range of genres, including folk, British blues, ska, music hall, proto-metal and the avant-garde. It has since been viewed by some critics as a postmodern work, as well as one of the greatest albums of all time.

The album features 30 songs, 19 of which were written during March and April 1968 at a Transcendental Meditation course in Rishikesh, India. There, the only western instrument available to the band was the acoustic guitar; several of these songs remained acoustic on The Beatles and were recorded solo, or only by part of the group. The production aesthetic ensured that the album's sound was scaled down and less reliant on studio innovation than most of their releases since Revolver (1966). The Beatles also broke with the band's tradition at the time of incorporating several musical styles in one song by keeping each piece of music consistently faithful to a select genre.

At the end of May 1968, the Beatles returned to EMI Studios in London to commence recording sessions that lasted until mid-October. During these sessions, arguments broke out among the foursome over creative differences and John Lennon's new partner, Yoko Ono, whose constant presence subverted the Beatles' policy of excluding wives and girlfriends from the studio. After a series of problems, including producer George Martin taking an unannounced holiday and engineer Geoff Emerick suddenly quitting during a session, Ringo Starr left the band for two weeks in August. The same tensions continued throughout the following year and led to the band's break-up.

The Beatles received favourable reviews from most music critics; detractors found its satirical songs unimportant and apolitical amid the turbulent political and social climate of 1968. It topped record charts in Britain and the United States. No singles were issued in either territory, but "Hey Jude" and "Revolution" originated from the same recording sessions and were issued on a single in August 1968. The album has been certified 24× platinum by the RIAA. A remixed and expanded edition of the album was released in 2018 to celebrate its 50th anniversary.

## Background

By 1968, the Beatles had achieved commercial and critical success. The group's mid-1967 release, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, was number one in the UK for 27 weeks, until the start of February 1968, having sold 250,000 copies in the first week after release. Time magazine declared that Sgt. Pepper constituted a "historic departure in the progress of music – any music", while the American writer Timothy Leary wrote that the band were "the wisest, holiest, most effective avatars (Divine Incarnate, God Agents) that the human race has ever produced". The band received a negative critical response to their television film Magical Mystery Tour, which aired in Britain in December 1967, but fan reaction was nevertheless positive.

Most of the songs for The Beatles were written during a Transcendental Meditation course with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Rishikesh, India, between February and April 1968. The retreat involved long periods of meditation, conceived by the band as a spiritual respite from all worldly endeavours – a chance, in John Lennon's words, to "get away from everything". Lennon and Paul McCartney quickly re-engaged themselves in songwriting, often meeting "clandestinely in the afternoons in each other's rooms" to review their new work. "Regardless of what I was supposed to be doing," Lennon later recalled, "I did write some of my best songs there." Author Ian MacDonald said Sgt Pepper was "shaped by LSD", but the Beatles took no drugs with them to India aside from marijuana, and their clear minds helped the group with their songwriting. The stay in Rishikesh proved especially fruitful for George Harrison as a songwriter, coinciding with his re-engagement with the guitar after two years studying the sitar. The musicologist Walter Everett likens Harrison's development as a composer in 1968 to that of Lennon and McCartney five years before, although he notes that Harrison became "privately prolific", given his usual subordinate status within the group.

The Beatles left Rishikesh before the end of the course. Ringo Starr was the first to leave, less than two weeks later, as he said he could not tolerate the food; McCartney departed in mid-March, while Harrison and Lennon were more interested in Indian religion and remained until April. Lennon left Rishikesh because he felt personally betrayed after hearing rumours that the Maharishi had behaved inappropriately towards women who accompanied the Beatles to India. McCartney and Harrison later discovered the accusations to be untrue and Lennon's wife Cynthia reported there was "not a shred of evidence or justification".

Collectively, the group wrote around 40 new compositions in Rishikesh, 26 of which would be recorded in rough form at Kinfauns, Harrison's home in Esher, in May 1968. Lennon wrote the bulk of the new material, contributing 14 songs. Lennon and McCartney brought home-recorded demos to the session, and worked on them together. Some home demos and group sessions at Kinfauns were later released on the 1996 compilation Anthology 3. The whole set of Esher demos was released in the remixed 50th anniversary deluxe edition in 2018.

## Style and production

### Sessions

The Beatles was recorded between 30 May and 14 October 1968, largely at Abbey Road Studios in London, with some sessions at Trident Studios. Their time in Rishikesh was soon forgotten in the tense atmosphere of the studio, with sessions occurring at irregular hours. The group's self-belief led to the formation of a new multimedia business corporation, Apple Corps, an enterprise that drained the group financially with a series of unsuccessful projects.

The group block-booked time at Abbey Road through July. The open-ended studio time led to a new way of working out songs. Instead of tightly rehearsing a backing track, as in previous sessions, the group recorded all the rehearsals and jamming, then added overdubs to the best take. The production aesthetic ensured that the album's sound was scaled down and less reliant on studio innovation than Revolver and Sgt. Pepper. Harrison's song "Not Guilty" was left off the album, though 102 takes were recorded.

Only 16 of the album's 30 tracks feature all four band members performing. Several backing tracks do not feature the full group, and overdubs tended to be performed by the composer of the song. McCartney and Lennon sometimes recorded simultaneously in different studios with different engineers. George Martin's influence had gradually waned, and he left abruptly to go on a holiday during the recording sessions, leaving his young protégé Chris Thomas in charge of production.

During the sessions, the band upgraded from 4-track recording to 8-track. As work began, Abbey Road Studios possessed, but had yet to install, an 8-track machine that had supposedly been sitting unused for several months. This was in accordance with EMI's policy of testing and customising new gear extensively before putting it into use. The Beatles recorded "Hey Jude" and "Dear Prudence" at Trident because it had an 8-track console. When they learned that EMI also had one, they insisted on using it, and engineers Ken Scott and Dave Harries installed the machine (without studio management authorisation) in Abbey Road's Studio 2.

The band held their first and only 24-hour session at Abbey Road during the final mixing and sequencing for the album. This session was attended by Lennon, McCartney and Martin; Harrison had left on a trip to the US the day before. Unlike most LPs, there was no customary three-second gap between tracks, and the master was edited so that songs segued together, via a straight edit, a crossfade, or an incidental piece of music.

### Genres and length

The Beatles contains a wide range of musical styles, which authors Barry Miles and Gillian Gaar view as the most diverse of any of the group's albums. These styles include rock and roll, blues, folk, country, reggae, avant-garde, hard rock, music hall and psychedelic music. The only western instrument available to the group during their Indian visit was the acoustic guitar, and thus many of the songs were written and first performed on that instrument. Some of these songs remained acoustic on The Beatles and were recorded solo or by only part of the group (including "Wild Honey Pie", "Blackbird", "Julia", "I Will" and "Mother Nature's Son").

Author Nicholas Schaffner views the acoustic slant as reflective of a widespread departure from the LSD-inspired psychedelia of 1967, an approach initiated by Bob Dylan and the Beach Boys and adopted in 1968 by artists such as the Rolling Stones and the Byrds. Edwin Faust of Stylus Magazine described The Beatles as "foremost an album about musical purity (as the album cover and title suggest). Whereas on prior Beatles albums, the band was getting into the habit of mixing several musical genres into a single song, on The White Album every song is faithful to its selected genre. The rock n' roll tracks are purely rock n' roll; the folk songs are purely folk; the surreal pop numbers are purely surreal pop; and the experimental piece is purely experimental."

Martin said he was against the idea of a double album at the time and suggested that the group reduce the number of songs to form a single album featuring their stronger work; the band refused. Reflecting on the album years later, Harrison said that some tracks could have been released as B-sides or withheld, but "there was a lot of ego in that band." He also supported the idea of the double album, to clear out the group's backlog of songs. Starr felt that the album should have been two separate records, which he jokingly called "The White Album" and "The Whiter Album". McCartney said that the record was fine as it was: "It was great. It sold. It's the bloody Beatles' White Album. Shut up!"

### Personal issues

During the recording sessions for The Beatles, each member of the band began to increasingly assert themselves as individual artists who frequently found themselves at odds. McCartney described the sessions as a turning point for the group because "there was a lot of friction during that album. We were just about to break up, and that was tense in itself"; Lennon said, "the break-up of the Beatles can be heard on that album". Recording engineer Geoff Emerick had worked with the group since Revolver, but became disillusioned with the sessions. He overheard Martin criticising McCartney's vocal performance while recording "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", to which McCartney replied, "Well you come down and sing it". On 16 July, Emerick announced that because of the frequent bickering and tension, he was no longer willing to work with the Beatles and left the studio in the midst of a session.

The Beatles sessions marked the first appearance in the studio of Lennon's new domestic and artistic partner, Yoko Ono, who accompanied him to Abbey Road to work on "Revolution 1" and who was thereafter a more or less constant presence at Beatles recording sessions. Ono's presence was highly unorthodox as, up to that point, the Beatles had generally worked in isolation, rarely allowing visitors, wives and girlfriends to attend recording sessions. Lennon's devotion to Ono over the other Beatles made working conditions difficult by impeding communication between Lennon and McCartney, as well as the intuitive aspect that had previously been essential to the band's music. McCartney's girlfriend at the time, Francie Schwartz, was also present at some sessions, as were the other two Beatles' wives, Pattie Harrison and Maureen Starkey.

Peter Doggett writes that "the most essential line of communication" had been broken between Lennon and McCartney by Ono's presence on the first day of recording. Beatles biographer Philip Norman comments that the two shared a disregard for the other's new compositions; Lennon found McCartney's songs "cloyingly sweet and bland", while McCartney viewed Lennon's as "harsh, unmelodious and deliberately provocative". Harrison and Starr chose to distance themselves partway through the project, flying to California on 7 June so that Harrison could film his scenes for the Ravi Shankar documentary Raga. Lennon's, McCartney's and Harrison's individual projects outside the band in 1968 were further evidence of the group's fragmentation. In Lennon's case, the album cover of his experimental collaboration with Ono Two Virgins featured the couple completely naked, a gesture his bandmates found bewildering and unnecessary.

On 20 August, Lennon and Starr were working on overdubs for "Yer Blues" in Studio 3, and visited McCartney in Studio 2 where he was working on "Mother Nature's Son". The positive spirit of the session disappeared immediately, and engineer Ken Scott later claimed that "you could cut the atmosphere with a knife". Starr abruptly left the studio on 22 August during the session for "Back in the U.S.S.R.", feeling that his role in the group was peripheral compared to the other members, and upset at McCartney's constant criticism of his drumming on the track. Abbey Road staff later commented that Starr was usually the first to arrive at the studio, waiting in the reception area for the others to arrive. In his absence, McCartney played the drums on "Dear Prudence". For "Back in the U.S.S.R.", the three remaining Beatles each made contributions on bass and drums, and the drum part is a composite of Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison's playing. Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison pleaded with Starr to reconsider. He returned on 5 September to find his drum kit decorated with flowers, a welcome-back gesture from Harrison.

### Mono version

The Beatles was the last Beatles album to be mixed separately for stereo and mono. All but two tracks exist in official mono mixes; the exceptions are "Revolution 1" and "Revolution 9", both direct reductions of the stereo master. The Beatles had not been particularly interested in stereo until this album, but after receiving mail from fans stating they bought both stereo and mono mixes of earlier albums, they decided to make the two different. Several mixes have different track lengths; the mono mix/edit of "Helter Skelter" eliminates the fade-in at the end of the song (and Starr's ending scream), and the fade-out of "Yer Blues" is 11 seconds longer on the mono mix. Several songs have missing or different overdubs or effects which differ from the stereo mixes.

In the United States, mono records were already being phased out; the US release of The Beatles was the first Beatles LP to be issued in stereo only. In the UK, the Beatles following album, Yellow Submarine, was the last to be issued in mono. The mono version of The Beatles was made available worldwide on 9 September 2009, as part of The Beatles in Mono CD boxed set. The original mono LP was rereleased worldwide in September 2014.

## Songs

### Side one

McCartney wrote "Back in the U.S.S.R." as a parody of Chuck Berry's song "Back in the U.S.A." and the Beach Boys. A field recording of a jet aeroplane taking off and landing was used at the start of the track, and intermittently throughout it. The backing vocals were sung by Lennon and Harrison in the style of the Beach Boys, further to Mike Love's suggestion in Rishikesh that McCartney include mention of the "girls" in the USSR. The track became widely bootlegged in the Soviet Union, where the Beatles' music was banned, and became an underground hit.

"Dear Prudence" was one of the songs recorded at Trident. The style is typical of the acoustic songs written in Rishikesh, using guitar arpeggios. Lennon wrote the track about Mia Farrow's sister Prudence Farrow, who rarely left her room during the stay in commitment to the meditation.

"Glass Onion" was the first backing track recorded as a full band after Starr's brief departure. MacDonald claimed Lennon deliberately wrote the lyrics to mock fans who claimed to find "hidden messages" in songs, and referenced other songs in the Beatles catalogue – "The Walrus was Paul" refers back to "I Am the Walrus" (which itself refers to "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"). McCartney, in turn, overdubbed a recorder part after the line "I told you about the Fool on the Hill", as a deliberate parody of the earlier song. A string section was added to the track in October.

"Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" was written by McCartney as a pastiche of ska music. The track took a surprising amount of time to complete, with McCartney demanding perfectionism that annoyed his colleagues. Jimmy Scott, a friend of McCartney, suggested the title and played bongos on the initial take. He demanded a cut of publishing when the song was released, but the song was credited to "Lennon–McCartney". After working for three days on the backing track, the work was scrapped and replaced with a new recording. Lennon hated the song, calling it "granny music shit", while engineer Richard Lush recalled that Starr disliked having to record the same backing track repetitively, and pinpoints this session as a key indication that the Beatles were going to break up. McCartney attempted to remake the backing track for a third time, but this was abandoned after a few takes and the second version was used as the final mix. The group, save for McCartney, had lost interest in the track by the end of recording, and refused to release it as a single. Marmalade recorded a version that became a number one hit.

McCartney recorded "Wild Honey Pie" on 20 August at the end of the session for "Mother Nature's Son". It is typical of the brief snippets of songs he recorded between takes during the album sessions.

"The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill" was written by Lennon after an American visitor to Rishikesh left for a few weeks to hunt tigers. It was recorded as an audio vérité exercise, featuring vocal performances from almost everyone who happened to be in the studio at the time. Ono sings one line and co-sings another, while Chris Thomas played the Mellotron, including improvisations at the end of the track. The opening flamenco guitar flourish was a recording included in the Mellotron's standard tape library.

"While My Guitar Gently Weeps" was written by Harrison during a visit he made to his parents' home in Cheshire. He first recorded the song as a solo performance, on acoustic guitar, on 25 July – a version that remained unreleased until Anthology 3. He was unhappy with the group's first attempt to record the track, and so invited his friend Eric Clapton to come and play on it. Clapton was unsure about guesting on a Beatles record, but Harrison said the decision was "nothing to do with them. It's my song." Clapton's solo was treated with automatic double tracking to attain the desired effect; he gave Harrison the guitar he used, which Harrison later named "Lucy".

"Happiness Is a Warm Gun" evolved out of several song fragments that Lennon compiled into one piece, having previewed two of the segments in his May 1968 demo. According to MacDonald, this approach was possibly inspired by the Incredible String Band's songwriting. The basic backing track ran to 95 takes, due to the irregular time signatures and variations in style throughout the song. The final version consisted of the best halves of two takes edited together. Lennon later described the song as one of his favourites, while the rest of the band found the recording rejuvenating, as it forced them to re-hone their skills as a group playing together to get it right. Apple's press officer Derek Taylor made an uncredited contribution to the song's lyrics.

### Side two

McCartney got the title of "Martha My Dear" from his Old English Sheepdog, but the lyrics are otherwise unrelated. The entire track is played by him backed with session musicians, and features no other Beatles. Martin composed a brass band arrangement for the track.

"I'm So Tired" was written in India when Lennon was having difficulty sleeping. It was recorded at the same session as "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill". The lyrics make reference to Walter Raleigh, calling him a "stupid get" for introducing tobacco to Europe; while the track ends with Lennon mumbling "Monsieur, monsieur, how about another one?" This became part of the Paul is Dead conspiracy theory, when fans claimed that when the track was reversed, they could hear "Paul is dead man, miss him, miss him, miss him".

"Blackbird" features McCartney solo, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar. According to Lewisohn, the ticking in the background is a metronome, but Emerick recalls capturing the sound via a microphone placed beside McCartney's shoes. The birdsong on the track was taken from the Abbey Road sound effects collection, and was recorded on one of the first EMI portable tape recorders.

Harrison wrote "Piggies" as an attack on greed and materialism in modern society. His mother and Lennon helped him complete the lyrics. Thomas played harpsichord on the track, while Lennon supplied a tape loop of pigs grunting.

"Rocky Raccoon" evolved from a jam session with McCartney, Lennon and Donovan in Rishikesh. The song was taped in a single session, and was one of the tracks that Martin felt was "filler" and put on only because the album was a double.

"Don't Pass Me By" was Starr's first solo composition for the band; he had been toying with the idea of writing a self-reflective song for some time, possibly as far back as 1963. It went by the working titles of "Ringo's Tune" and "This Is Some Friendly". The basic track consisted of Starr drumming while McCartney played piano. Martin composed an orchestral introduction to the song but it was rejected as "too bizarre" and left off the album. Instead, Jack Fallon played a bluegrass fiddle part.

McCartney wrote "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?" in India after he saw two monkeys copulating in the street and wondered why humans were too civilised to do the same. He played all the instruments except drums, which were contributed by Starr. The simple lyric was very much in Lennon's style, and Lennon was annoyed not to be asked to play on it. McCartney suggested it was "tit for tat" as he had not contributed to "Revolution 9".

McCartney wrote and sang "I Will", with Lennon and Starr accompanying on percussion. In between numerous takes, the three Beatles broke off to busk some other songs. A snippet of a track known as "Can You Take Me Back?" was put between "Cry Baby Cry" and "Revolution 9", while recordings of Cilla Black's hit "Step Inside Love" and a joke number, "Los Paranoias", were released on Anthology 3.

"Julia" was the last track to be recorded for the album and features Lennon on solo acoustic guitar, which he played in a style similar to McCartney's on "Blackbird". This is the only Beatles song on which Lennon performs alone. It is a tribute to his mother, Julia Lennon, who was killed in 1958 in a road accident when Lennon was 17, and the lyrics deal with the loss of his mother and his relationship with Ono, the "ocean child" in the lyrics. Ono helped with the lyrics, but the song was still credited to Lennon-McCartney as expected.

### Side three

According to McCartney, the authorship of "Birthday" was "50–50 John and me, made up on the spot and recorded all on the same evening". He and Lennon were inspired to write the song after seeing the first UK showing of the rock 'n' roll film The Girl Can't Help It on television, and sang the lead vocal in the style of the film's musical star, Little Richard. After the Beatles taped the track, Ono and Pattie Harrison added backing vocals.

Lennon wrote "Yer Blues" in India. Despite meditating and the tranquil atmosphere, he still felt unhappy, as reflected in the lyrics. The style was influenced by the British Blues Boom of 1968, which included Fleetwood Mac, Cream, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Jeff Beck and Chicken Shack. The backing track was recorded in a small room next to the Studio 2 control room. Unusually for a Beatles recording, the four-track source tape was edited directly, resulting in an abrupt cut-off at 3'17" into the start of another take (which ran into the fadeout).

McCartney wrote "Mother Nature's Son" in India, and worked on it in isolation from the other members of the band. He performed the track solo alongside a Martin-scored brass arrangement.

"Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey" evolved from a jam session and was originally untitled. The final mix was sped up by mixing the tape running at 43 hertz instead of the usual 50. Harrison claimed the title came from one of the Maharishi's sayings (with "and my monkey" added later).

"Sexy Sadie" was written as "Maharishi" by Lennon shortly after he decided to leave Rishikesh. In a 1980 interview, Lennon acknowledged that the Maharishi was the inspiration for the song: "I just called him 'Sexy Sadie'."

"Helter Skelter" was written by McCartney and was initially recorded in July as a blues number. The band performed the initial takes live and included long passages during which they jammed on their instruments. Because these takes were too long to practically fit on an LP, the song was shelved until September, when a new, shorter version was made. By all accounts, the session was chaotic, but nobody dared suggest to any of the Beatles that they were out of control. Harrison reportedly ran around the studio holding a flaming ashtray above his head, "doing an Arthur Brown". The stereo version of the LP includes almost a minute more music than the mono, which culminates in Starr famously shouting "I've got blisters on my fingers!" Cult leader and mass murderer Charles Manson was unaware that the term helter skelter is British English for a spiral slide found on a playground or funfair, and assumed the track had something to do with hell. This was one of the tracks that led Manson to believe the album had coded messages referring to apocalyptic war, and led to his movement of the same name.

The final song on side three is Harrison's "Long, Long, Long", part of a chord progression he took from Bob Dylan's "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands". MacDonald describes the song as Harrison's "touching token of exhausted, relieved reconciliation with God" and considered it to be his "finest moment on The Beatles". The recording session for the basic track was one of the longest the Beatles ever undertook, running from the afternoon of 7 October through the night until 7 am the next day. McCartney played Hammond organ on the track, and an "eerie rattling" effect at the end was created by a note causing a wine bottle on top of the organ's Leslie speaker to resonate.

### Side four

"Revolution 1" was the first track recorded for the album, with sessions for the backing track starting on 30 May. The initial takes were recorded as a possible single, but as the session progressed, the arrangement became slower, with more of a laid-back groove. The group ended the chosen take with a six-minute improvisation that had further overdubs added, before being cut to the length heard on the album. The brass arrangement was added later.

McCartney wrote "Honey Pie" as a pastiche of the 1920s' flapper dance style. The opening section had the sound of an old 78 RPM record overdubbed while Martin arranged a saxophone and clarinet part in the same style. Lennon played the guitar solo on the track, but later said he hated the song, calling it "beyond redemption".

"Savoy Truffle" was named after one of the types of chocolate found in a box of Mackintosh's Good News, which Clapton enjoyed eating. The track featured a saxophone sextet arranged by Thomas, who also played keyboards. Harrison later said that Derek Taylor helped him finish the lyrics.

Lennon began writing "Cry Baby Cry" in late 1967 and the lyrics were partly derived from the tagline of an old television commercial. Martin played harmonium on the track.

"Revolution 9" evolved from the overdubs from the "Revolution 1" coda. Lennon, Harrison and Ono added further tape collages and spoken word extracts, in the style of Karlheinz Stockhausen. The track opens with an extract of a piano theme from a Royal Schools of Music examination tape, and climaxes with Ono saying "if you become naked". Ono was heavily involved in the production, and advised Lennon on what tape loops to use. McCartney was out of the country at the time and did not contribute to the track, and was reportedly unhappy that it was included. He had led similar tape experiments such as "Carnival of Light" in January 1967. The track has attracted both interest and disapproval from fans and critics over the years.

Lennon wrote "Good Night" as a lullaby for his son Julian, and wanted Starr to sing it. The early takes featured just Lennon on acoustic guitar and Starr singing. Martin scored an orchestral and choral arrangement that replaced the guitar in the final mix, and also played the celesta.

### Singles

"Hey Jude" was recorded at the end of July 1968 during the sessions for The Beatles but was issued separately as a single nearly three months before the album's release. This was the first release on Apple Records and ultimately the band's most successful single in the US. The B-side, "Revolution", was a different version of the album's "Revolution 1". Lennon wanted the original version of "Revolution" to be released as a single, but the other three Beatles objected that it was too slow. Instead, the single featured a new, faster version, with heavily distorted guitar and an electric piano solo by Nicky Hopkins.

The convention in the British music industry at the time was that singles and albums were distinct entities and should not duplicate songs. But although no singles were taken from The Beatles in Britain or America, "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" backed with "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" was released in other markets. The single was a commercial success in Australia (where it spent five weeks at number one on the Go-Set chart), Japan, Austria and Switzerland.

### Unreleased material

Some songs the Beatles were working on individually during this period were revisited for inclusion on their subsequent albums, while others were released on the band members' solo albums. According to the bootlegged album of the demos made at Kinfauns, the latter of these two categories includes Lennon's "Look at Me" and "Child of Nature" (eventually reworked as "Jealous Guy"); McCartney's "Junk"; and Harrison's "Not Guilty" and "Circles". In addition, Harrison gave "Sour Milk Sea" to the singer Jackie Lomax, whose recording, produced by Harrison, was released in August 1968 as Lomax's debut single on Apple Records. Lennon's "Mean Mr. Mustard" and "Polythene Pam" were used in the medley on Abbey Road the next year.

The Lennon composition "What's the New Mary Jane" was demoed at Kinfauns and recorded formally (by Lennon, Harrison and Ono) during the 1968 album sessions. McCartney taped demos of two compositions at Abbey Road – "Etcetera" and "The Long and Winding Road" – the last of which the Beatles recorded in 1969 on Let It Be. The Beatles versions of "Not Guilty" and "What's the New Mary Jane" and a demo of "Junk" were released on Anthology 3.

"Revolution (Take 20)", a previously uncirculated recording, surfaced in 2009 on a bootleg. This ten-minute take was later edited and overdubbed to create two separate tracks: "Revolution 1" and the avant-garde "Revolution 9".

## Release

### Packaging

The Beatles was issued on 22 November 1968 in Britain and three days later in the US. It was the third album to be released by Apple Records, following Harrison's Wonderwall Music and Lennon and Ono's Two Virgins. The record was referred to as "the White Album" immediately upon release.

Pop artist Richard Hamilton designed the record sleeve in collaboration with McCartney. Hamilton's design was in stark contrast to Peter Blake's vivid cover art for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and consisted of a plain white sleeve. The band's name, in Helvetica, was crookedly blind embossed slightly below the middle of the album's right side. Later vinyl record releases in the US showed the title in grey printed (rather than embossed) letters. Each copy of the record featured a unique stamped serial number, "to create", in Hamilton's words, "the ironic situation of a numbered edition of something like five million copies". The first four numbered copies were given to the members of the band, making number 0000005 the first copy sold publicly; in 2008, it was purchased for £19,201 on eBay. In 2015, Ringo Starr's copy, number 0000001, sold for a world record \$790,000 at auction.

The sleeve included a poster comprising a montage of photographs, with the lyrics of the songs on the back, and a set of four photographic portraits taken by John Kelly. The photographs for the poster were assembled by Hamilton and McCartney, who sorted them in a variety of ways over several days before arriving at the final result.

During production, the album had the working title of A Doll's House. This was changed when the English progressive rock band Family released the similarly titled Music in a Doll's House earlier that year.

### Sales

In the UK, The Beatles debuted at number one on 7 December 1968 and spent seven weeks at the top of the UK charts (including the entire competitive Christmas season), until it was replaced by the Seekers' Best of the Seekers on 25 January 1969, dropping to number 2. However, the album returned to the top spot the following week, spending an eighth and final week at number 1. The album was still high in the charts when the Beatles' follow-up album, Yellow Submarine, was released, which reached number 3. In all, The Beatles spent 22 weeks on the UK charts, far fewer than the 149 weeks for Sgt. Pepper. In September 2013, after the British Phonographic Industry changed their sales award rules, the album was declared as having gone platinum, meaning sales of at least 300,000 copies.

In the US, the album achieved huge commercial success. Capitol Records sold over 3.3 million copies of The Beatles to stores within the first four days of the album's release. It debuted at number 11 on 14 December 1968, jumped to number 2, and reached number 1 in its third week on 28 December, spending a total of nine weeks at the top. In all, The Beatles spent 215 weeks on the Billboard 200. The album has sold over 12 million copies in the US alone and according to the Recording Industry Association of America, The Beatles is the Beatles' most-certified album, at 24-times platinum.

## Critical reception

### Contemporary reviews

On release, The Beatles gained highly favourable reviews from the majority of music critics. Others bemoaned its length or found that the music lacked the adventurous quality that had distinguished Sgt. Pepper. According to the author Ian Inglis: "Whether positive or negative, all assessments of The Beatles drew attention to its fragmentary style. However, while some complained about the lack of a coherent style, others recognized this as the album's raison d'être."

In The Observer, Tony Palmer wrote: "If there is still any doubt that Lennon and McCartney are the greatest songwriters since Schubert", the album "should surely see the last vestiges of cultural snobbery and bourgeois prejudice swept away in a deluge of joyful music making". Richard Goldstein of The New York Times considered the double album to be "a major success" and "far more imaginative" than Sgt. Pepper or Magical Mystery Tour, due to the band's improved songwriting and their relying less on the studio tricks of those earlier works. In The Sunday Times, Derek Jewell hailed it as "the best thing in pop since Sgt. Pepper" and concluded: "Musically, there is beauty, horror, surprise, chaos, order. And that is the world; and that is what The Beatles are on about. Created by, creating for, their age." Although he dismissed "Revolution 9" as a "pretentious" example of "idiot immaturity", the NME's Alan Smith declared "God Bless You, Beatles!" to the majority of the album. Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone called it "the history and synthesis of Western music", and the group's best album yet. Wenner contended that they were allowed to appropriate other styles and traditions into rock music because their ability and identity were "so strong that they make it uniquely theirs, and uniquely the Beatles. They are so good that they not only expand the idiom, but they are also able to penetrate it and take it further."

Among the less favourable critiques, Time magazine's reviewer wrote that The Beatles showcased the "best abilities and worst tendencies" of the Beatles, as it is skilfully performed and sophisticated, but lacks a "sense of taste and purpose". William Mann of The Times opined that, in their over-reliance on pastiche and "private jokes", Lennon and McCartney had ceased to progress as songwriters, yet he deemed the release to be "The most important musical event of the year" and acknowledged: "these 30 tracks contain plenty to be studied, enjoyed and gradually appreciated more fully in the coming months." In his review for The New York Times, Nik Cohn considered the album "boring beyond belief" and said that over half of its songs were "profound mediocrities". In a 1971 column, Robert Christgau of The Village Voice described the album as both "their most consistent and probably their worst", and referred to its songs as a "pastiche of musical exercises". Nonetheless, he ranked it as the tenth best album of 1968 in his ballot for Jazz & Pop magazine's annual critics poll.

### Retrospective assessments

In a 2003 appraisal of the album, for Mojo magazine, Ian MacDonald wrote that The Beatles regularly appears among the top 10 in critics' "best albums of all time" lists, yet it was a work that he deemed "eccentric, highly diverse, and very variable [in] quality". Rob Sheffield, writing in The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), said that its songs ranged from the Beatles' "sturdiest tunes since Revolver" to "self-indulgent filler". He derided tracks including "Revolution 9" and "Helter Skelter", but said that picking personal highlights was "part of the fun" for listeners. Writing for MusicHound in 1999, Guitar World editor Christopher Scapelliti described the album as "self-indulgent and at times unlistenable" but identified "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" and "Helter Skelter" as "fascinating standouts" that made it a worthwhile purchase.

According to Slant Magazine's Eric Henderson, The Beatles is a rarity among the band's recorded works, in that it "resists reflexive canonisation, which, along with society's continued fragmentation, keeps the album fresh and surprising". In his review for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine said that because of its wide variety of musical styles, the album can be "a frustratingly scattershot record or a singularly gripping musical experience, depending on your view". He concludes: "None of it sounds like it was meant to share album space together, but somehow The Beatles creates its own style and sound through its mess."

Among reviews of the 2009 remastered album, Neil McCormick of The Daily Telegraph found that even its worst songs work within the context of such an eclectic and unconventional collection, which he rated "one of the greatest albums ever made". Writing for Paste, Mark Kemp said The Beatles had been wrongly described as "three solo works in one (plus a Ringo song)", saying it "benefits from each member's wildly different ideas" and offers "two of Harrison's finest moments". In his review for The A.V. Club, Chuck Klosterman wrote that the album found the band at their best and rated it "almost beyond an A+". In retrospect, Christgau wrote in 2020 that while he still found the album "somewhat scattered", he nevertheless considers it worthy of a "high A minus".

In 2000, The Beatles was voted number 5 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums. Three years later, Rolling Stone ranked it at number 10 on the magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, a position it maintained in the 2012 revised list. On the 40th anniversary of the album's release, the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano wrote that it "remains a type of magical musical anthology: 30 songs you can go through and listen to at will, certain of finding some pearls that even today remain unparalleled". In 2011, Kerrang! placed the album at number 49 on a list of "The 50 Heaviest Albums Of All Time". The magazine praised the guitar work in "Helter Skelter". The album was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. In September 2020, Rolling Stone ranked The Beatles at number 29 on its new list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Based on such rankings, Acclaimed Music listed it as the number 13 album in the site's all-time ranking.

Giles Martin, son of George Martin and supervisor of the 2018 50th Anniversary remix, stated that, contrary to the prevailing view of The Beatles, he does not believe it was recorded by a band about to implode. He said he came to this conclusion after listening to all the demos and session tapes in preparation for the remix.

## Cultural responses

The release coincided with public condemnation of Lennon's treatment of Cynthia, and of his and Ono's joint projects, particularly Two Virgins. The British authorities similarly displayed a less tolerant attitude towards the Beatles, when London Drug Squad officers arrested Lennon and Ono in October 1968 for marijuana possession, a charge that he claimed was false.

### Lyrical misinterpretations

The album's lyrics progressed from being vague to open-ended and prone to misinterpretation of authorial intention, such as "Glass Onion" (e.g., "the walrus was Paul") and "Piggies" ("what they need's a damn good whacking"). In the case of "Back in the U.S.S.R.", the words were interpreted by Christian evangelist David Noebel as further proof of the Beatles' compliance in a Communist plot to brainwash American youth. According to MacDonald, the counterculture of the 1960s analysed The Beatles above and beyond all of the band's previous releases. Lennon's lyrics on "Revolution 1" were misinterpreted with messages he did not intend. In the album version, he advises those who "talk about destruction" to "count me out". Lennon then follows the sung word "out" with the spoken word "in". At the time of the album's release – which followed, chronologically, the up-tempo single version of the song, "Revolution" – that single word "in" was taken by the radical political left as Lennon's endorsement of politically motivated violence, which followed the May 1968 Paris riots. However, the album version was recorded first.

Charles Manson first heard the album not long after it was released. Manson may have found hidden meanings in songs from earlier Beatles albums, but, according to Vincent Bugliosi in The Beatles, Manson allegedly interpreted prophetic significance in several of the songs, including "Blackbird", "Piggies" (particularly the line "what they need's a damn good whacking"), "Helter Skelter", "Revolution 1" and "Revolution 9", and interpreted the lyrics as a sign of imminent violence or war. He and other members and associates of the Manson family repeatedly listened to it, and he allegedly told them that it was an apocalyptic message predicting an uprising of oppressed races, drawing parallels with chapter 9 of the Book of Revelation.

### New Left criticism

Further to the betrayal they had felt at Lennon's non-activist stance in "Revolution", New Left commentators condemned The Beatles for its failure to offer a political agenda. The Beatles themselves were accused of using eclecticism and pastiche as a means of avoiding important issues in the turbulent political and social climate. Jon Landau, writing for the Liberation News Service, argued that, particularly in "Piggies" and "Rocky Raccoon", the band had adopted parody because they were "afraid of confronting reality" and "the urgencies of the moment". Like Landau, many writers among the New Left considered the album outdated and irrelevant; instead, they heralded the Rolling Stones' concurrent release, Beggars Banquet, as what Lennon biographer Jon Wiener terms "the 'strong solution,' a musical turning outward, toward the political and social battles of the day".

### Popular music and postmodernism

Sociologists Michael Katovich and Wesley Longhofer write that the album's release created "a collective appreciation of it as a 'state-of-the-art' rendition of the current pop, rock, and folk-rock sounds". The majority of historians categorise The Beatles as postmodern, emphasising aesthetic and stylistic features of the album; Inglis, for example, lists bricolage, fragmentation, pastiche, parody, reflexivity, plurality, irony, exaggeration, anti-representation and "meta-art", and says that it "has been designated as popular music's first postmodern album". Authors such as Fredric Jameson, Andrew Goodwin and Kenneth Womack instead situate all of the Beatles' work within a modernist stance, based either on their "artificiality" or their ideological stance of progress through love and peace. Scapelliti cites The Beatles as the source of "the freeform nihilism echoed ... in the punk and alternative music genres". In his introduction to Rolling Stone's list of the "100 Greatest Beatles Songs", Elvis Costello comments on the band's pervasive influence into the 21st century and concludes: "The scope and license of the White Album has permitted everyone from OutKast to Radiohead to Green Day to Joanna Newsom to roll their picture out on a broader, bolder canvas."

In early 2013, the Recess Gallery in New York City's SoHo neighbourhood presented We Buy White Albums, an installation by artist Rutherford Chang. The piece was in the form of a record store in which nothing but original pressings of the LP was on display. Chang created a recording in which the sounds of one hundred copies of side one of the LP were overlaid.

## Reissues

Tape versions of the album did not feature a white cover or the numbering system. Instead, cassette and 8-track versions (issued on two cassettes/cartridges in early 1969) contained cover artwork that featured high contrast black and white (with no grey) versions of the four Kelly photographs. These two-tape releases were both contained in black outer cardboard slipcase covers embossed with the words The Beatles and the outline of an apple in gold print. The songs on the cassette version of The Beatles are sequenced differently from the album, in order to equalise the lengths of the tape sides. Two reel-to-reel tape releases of the album were issued, both using the monochrome Kelly artwork. The first, issued by Apple/EMI in early 1969, packaged the entire double-LP on a single tape, with the songs in the same running order as on the LPs. The second release, licensed by Ampex from EMI in early 1970 after the latter ceased manufacture of commercial reel-to-reel tapes, was issued as two separate volumes, and sequenced the songs in the same manner as on the cassette version. The Ampex reel tape version of The Beatles has become desirable to collectors, as it contains edits on eight tracks not available elsewhere.

During 1978 and 1979, for the album's tenth anniversary, EMI reissued the album pressed on limited edition white vinyl in several countries. In 1981, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (MFSL) issued a unique half-speed master variation of the album using the sound from the original master recording. The discs were pressed on high-quality virgin vinyl.

The album was reissued, along with the rest of the Beatles catalogue, on compact disc in 1987. Unlike other Beatles CDs in this reissue campaign, the discs for The Beatles featured solid black-on-white labels instead of the then-conventional black-on-transparent, and releases that packaged each disc into a separate jewel case (rather than a multi-disc "fatbox") sported white media trays rather than the typical dark gray. Like the original vinyl pressings, these CD copies also featured individually stamped numbers on the album's front cover (in this case on the cover of the booklet for the first disc). It was reissued again on CD in 1998 as part of a 30th anniversary series for EMI, featuring a scaled-down replication of the original artwork, including the top-loader gatefold sleeve. This was part of a reissue series from EMI that included albums from other artists such as the Rolling Stones and Roxy Music. It was reissued again in 2009 in a new remastered edition.

A remixed and expanded edition of the album was released in 2018 to celebrate its 50th anniversary.

## Track listing

All tracks written by Lennon–McCartney, except where noted. Lead singer credits per Castleman and Podrazik's 1976 book All Together Now.

### Original release

## Personnel

The Beatles

- John Lennon – lead, harmony and background vocals; acoustic, lead, rhythm and bass guitars; piano, Hammond organ, harmonium, Mellotron; harmonica, saxophone mouthpiece; extra drums (on "Back in the U.S.S.R.") and assorted percussion (tambourine, handclaps and vocal percussion), tapes, tape loops and sound effects (electronic and home-made)
- Paul McCartney – lead, harmony and background vocals; bass, acoustic, lead and rhythm guitars; acoustic and electric pianos, Hammond organ; assorted percussion (timpani, tambourine, cowbell, hand shake bell, handclaps, foot taps and vocal percussion); drums (on "Back in the U.S.S.R.", "Dear Prudence", "Wild Honey Pie" and "Martha My Dear"); recorder
- George Harrison – lead, harmony and background vocals; lead, rhythm, acoustic and bass guitars; Hammond organ (on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and "Savoy Truffle"); extra drums (on "Back in the U.S.S.R.") and assorted percussion (tambourine, handclaps and vocal percussion) and sound effects
- Ringo Starr – drums and assorted percussion (tambourine, bongos, cymbals, maracas and vocal percussion); piano and sleigh bell (on "Don't Pass Me By"); lead vocals (on "Don't Pass Me By" and "Good Night") and backing vocals (on "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill")

Guest musicians

- Yoko Ono – backing vocals, lead vocals and handclaps on "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill", backing vocals on "Birthday", speech, tapes and sound effects on "Revolution 9"
- Mal Evans – backing vocals and handclaps on "Dear Prudence", handclaps on "Birthday", trumpet on "Helter Skelter"
- Eric Clapton – lead guitar on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"
- Jack Fallon – violin on "Don't Pass Me By"
- Pattie Harrison – backing vocals on "Birthday"
- Jackie Lomax – backing vocals and handclaps on "Dear Prudence"
- John McCartney – backing vocals and handclaps on "Dear Prudence"
- Maureen Starkey – backing vocals on "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill"

Session musicians

- Ted Barker – trombone on "Martha My Dear"
- Leon Calvert – trumpet and flugelhorn on "Martha My Dear"
- Henry Datyner, Eric Bowie, Norman Lederman and Ronald Thomas – violin on "Glass Onion"
- Bernard Miller, Dennis McConnell, Lou Soufier and Les Maddox – violin on "Martha My Dear"
- Reginald Kilby – cello on "Glass Onion" and "Martha My Dear"
- Eldon Fox – cello on "Glass Onion"
- Frederick Alexander – cello on "Martha My Dear"
- Harry Klein – saxophone on "Savoy Truffle" and "Honey Pie"
- Dennis Walton, Ronald Chamberlain, Jim Chest and Rex Morris – saxophone on "Honey Pie"
- Raymond Newman and David Smith – clarinet on "Honey Pie"
- Art Ellefson, Danny Moss and Derek Collins – tenor sax on "Savoy Truffle"
- Ronnie Ross and Bernard George – baritone sax on "Savoy Truffle"
- Alf Reece – tuba on "Martha My Dear"
- The Mike Sammes Singers – backing vocals on "Good Night"
- Stanley Reynolds and Ronnie Hughes – trumpet on "Martha My Dear"
- Chris Shepard – stumpf fiddle on "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill"
- Tony Tunstall – French horn on "Martha My Dear"
- John Underwood and Keith Cummings – viola on "Glass Onion"
- Leo Birnbaum and Henry Myerscough – viola on "Martha My Dear"

Production

- George Martin – producer, executive producer; string, brass, clarinet, orchestral arrangements and conducting; piano on "Rocky Raccoon"
- Chris Thomas – producer; Mellotron on "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill", harpsichord on "Piggies", piano on "Long, Long, Long", electric piano, organ and saxophone arrangement on "Savoy Truffle"
- Ken Scott – engineer and mixer
- Geoff Emerick – engineer, speech on "Revolution 9"
- Barry Sheffield – engineer (Trident Studio)

## Charts

### Weekly charts

Original release

1987 reissue

2009 reissue

2018 reissue

### Year-end charts

### Decade-end charts

## Certifications and sales

BPI certification awarded only for sales since 1994.

## Release history

## See also

- List of best-selling albums in the United States
- Karlheinz Stockhausen

1968 studio album by the Beatles

Albums produced by Chris Thomas (record producer)


R v Thomas

R v Thomas was an Australian court case decided in the Victorian Court of Appeal on 18 August 2006. It concerned the conviction in February 2006 of Joseph Thomas (nicknamed "Jihad Jack" in the media) on terrorism-related charges, specifically receiving funds from Al Qaeda. The appeal revolved around the admissibility of a confession Thomas made during an interrogation in Pakistan in 2003. The court found that the evidence, which was crucial to Thomas' convictions, was inadmissible because it had not been given voluntarily. The court accordingly quashed his convictions, but after further hearings ordered on 20 December 2006 that he be retried rather than acquitted.

## Background to the case

Joseph Thomas is an Australian citizen. On 23 March 2001 he left Australia and travelled by air to Pakistan, crossing into Afghanistan by land. For the next three months, he was alleged to have trained at the Al Farouq training camp near the city of Kandahar, before travelling to Kabul in July 2001. Over the next eighteen months or so, Thomas stayed in various Al Qaeda safe houses, and is alleged to have made contact with several Al Qaeda officials.

On 4 January 2003, Thomas was apprehended by Pakistani immigration officials at an airport in the city of Karachi, and taken into custody. Thomas had with him items including an Australian-issue passport, an airline ticket for travel to Indonesia, and about \$3,800 in cash. The passport, issued on 19 May 1993, had been tampered with, for the intention of concealing the details of Thomas' movements after his departure from Australia in 2001. He was blindfolded, and driven to an unknown location, where he was questioned for about two hours by two Pakistani men and two Americans.

He was questioned several times over the next few days, before being taken to another location, which Thomas described as "some sort of mansion house", where he was kept in a small cell for the next two weeks and questioned on a number of occasions. Initially he maintained a fabricated story, that he was a student who had been travelling in Pakistan, but he later revealed the truth, that he had been in contact with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. He said that he was motivated to change his story by several incidents, including one in which one of the Pakistani interrogators pulled on the collar of his hood, so as to strangle him, and incidents in which interrogators said that he would be electrocuted and executed. According to Thomas, he was then told that his cooperation was welcome and that he would be returned home.

After the two weeks, Thomas was blindfolded and shackled, and flown to Islamabad, where he remained in custody. There he was visited by an Australian consular representative, who later gave evidence that Thomas did not appear to have been maltreated, or denied food or water. However, the representative did testify that while Thomas was on the phone to his parents in Australia, he told them "I'm not going to Cuba" (referring to the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp), to which a Pakistani official replied, "No, that's not correct."

Between 25 January and 29 January, Thomas was interviewed four times by members of the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and by members of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), accompanied by Pakistani officials. During one of these interviews, a Pakistani official said to Thomas "we told you that you have to prove it... that you are not a terrorist... you have to prove it that you are an innocent man and why you are sitting here." Thomas was then transferred again, this time to the city of Lahore, where he was kept for another three weeks, and interrogated by Pakistani officials and an American official referred to as "Joe". This man suggested that Thomas return to Afghanistan with a recording device, to obtain information on Al Qaeda figures, a suggestion Thomas rejected because he feared he would be killed. Joe also threatened Thomas that he would be sent to Afghanistan where he would be tortured by having his testicles twisted, and implied that agents would be sent to Australia to rape Thomas' wife. Thomas was then returned to Islamabad.

On 8 March, Thomas was interviewed again by two members of the AFP, who had made special arrangements with the Pakistani Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to have the interview conducted pursuant to Australian law, particularly the requirements of the federal Evidence Act 1995 and Crimes Act 1914, so that admissible evidence could be gathered. ISI allowed the interview, but with a very limited timeframe, and did not allow Thomas to have access to legal advice. During this interview, Thomas made several self-incriminatory statements, which were key to his later convictions and the admissibility of which was the central issue in the appeal. In the statements, Thomas admitted that he had tampered with his passport to conceal the amount of time he had been in Pakistan, and also admitted that the money and airline ticket had been given to him by Tawfiq bin Attash, a high ranking Al Qaeda lieutenant involved with the 1998 United States embassy bombings and the USS Cole bombing. On 10 March, the AFP wrote again to the ISI, reiterating the requirements of the Australian legislation, and saying that "the admissibility of [the record of interview] in Australian Courts has been seriously compromised."

On 6 June 2003, Thomas was released from Pakistani custody, at which point he was deported to Australia. He spent nearly a year and a half subsequently living with his family in the Melbourne suburb of Werribee, Victoria, before he was arrested by the AFP on 18 November 2004 and charged with several federal offences, including one count of possessing a false passport (an offence under the Passports Act 1938), and one count of receiving funds from a terrorist organisation and two counts of providing resources to a terrorist organisation (offences under the Criminal Code Act 1995).

### Trial

Thomas was tried in the Supreme Court of Victoria. On 26 February, was found guilty of the passport charge and the receiving funds charge (although he was acquitted of the providing funds charges). He was later sentenced on 31 March, to a total of five years' imprisonment with a two-year non-parole period.

With respect to the admissibility of the record of the 8 March interview, the trial judge (Justice Cummins) had instructed the jury that:

> "Normally, failure to avail an interviewee of [the right to legal access] would be fatal to the admission of a subsequent interview... However, the requirement is not absolute, nor can it be... it is not hollow to say that the suspect had the right to choose whether to proceed without that legal access. He had the right to choose not to answer, and wait for the legal bus which might never arrive, or to answer, in the legitimate aim of ultimate return to Australia. To say such a choice is no choice at all is revisionism."

In his assessment, the judge said that the AFP interviewers had conducted the interview "fairly and properly", and had not attempted to use Thomas' lack of legal representation to their favour.

The trial judge also concluded that Thomas had been properly informed of his right to silence, and had not been induced by the AFP officers to participate in the interview by offer of repatriation or any other reward. Ultimately he decided that Thomas had participated voluntarily in the interview, and that in the circumstances, Thomas' lack of legal advice should not make the record of the interview inadmissible.

## Arguments

Lex Lasry QC, on behalf of Thomas, argued that the trial judge had made several errors of law:

1. the trial judge should have found that the 8 March interview was not voluntary and hence inadmissible, and
2. even if it had been voluntary, the trial judge should have excluded it anyway on grounds of fairness or public policy.

Several other matters were also raised, relating to particular parts of the evidence (specifically, relating to the witness testimony of Yahya Goba, one of the Buffalo Six), but these matters had little bearing on the final outcome of the case, and were dealt with only briefly by the court. The central argument raised was that, with regard to all the circumstances, Thomas did not actually have a practical choice whether to speak or not.

The other main argument was an alternative argument, that if the court decided that the admissions were in fact voluntary, they should not have been admitted anyway on the basis that to do so would be unfair, because of factors including Thomas' lack of access to legal advice even where he had a right to obtain it, his vulnerability in the circumstances, and "the contamination of the record of interview by the previous joint team interrogations, and their potential or actual use as levers to remind the applicant of his earlier answers."

Two other parties sought to be involved in the case as amici curiae, Amnesty International (represented by former Federal Court Justice Ron Merkel), and the Victorian human rights advocacy group the Human Rights Law Resource Centre. However both their applications were rejected, because they could not assist the court in a way in which they could not otherwise be assisted, and their submissions were largely subsumed into submissions made by Lasry in any event.

## Judgment

In a unanimous decision, the three judges decided that the appeal should be allowed (more specifically, that leave to appeal should be granted and the appeal heard and allowed instanter – at once), on the basis that the 8 March 2003 interview was not voluntary and so was inadmissible, and by admitting it the trial judge had made an error of law resulting in a miscarriage of justice.

### Voluntariness of the interview

The court quoted from a 1948 judgment of future Chief Justice of Australia Owen Dixon, followed unanimously by the High Court of Australia in later decisions, in which he said that:

> "At common law a confessional statement made out of court by an accused person may not be admitted in evidence against him upon his trial for the crime to which it relates unless it is shown to have been voluntarily made. This means substantially that it has been made in the exercise of his free choice. If he speaks because he is overborne, his confessional statement cannot be received in evidence and it does not matter by what means he has been overborne. If his statement is the result of duress, intimidation, persistent importunity, or sustained or undue insistence or pressure, it cannot be voluntary. But it is also a definite rule of the common law that a confessional statement cannot be voluntary if it is preceded by an inducement held out by a person in authority and the inducement has not been removed before the statement is made..."

The court also noted a recent decision of its own, in which it had emphasised that the principles of evidence strike a balance between the rights of the individual and the rights of the state, and that:

> "On the one hand, there is an obvious need to bring to account those who have committed serious offences if the objectives of the criminal justice system are to be achieved and societal values vindicated, but, on the other, it cannot be forgotten that those values incorporate the rights of the individual and, in part define the nature of the relationship between the citizen and the community in which he or she resides."

The court considered that Thomas had been regularly informed by all those who had interrogated him that the degree to which he cooperated would determine what happened to him, and that given their position as authority figures, Thomas would have readily perceived that they had the ability to change his situation; indeed, none of the interviewers had done anything to dispel the idea that they would be able to help Thomas. The court also pointed out that even if actions such as showing Thomas photographs of his family and letters from them could not be said to be deliberately improper, as the trial judge seemed to indicate would be necessary to characterise them as inducements, there was no way that they could be interpreted by someone in Thomas' position, other than as indications that if he cooperated he would be reunited with his family. Particularly, after Thomas expressed happiness at seeing the photographs, one of the interviewers took them away, saying "[we] might give you another look at that later", comments which were "calculated, if not intended, to remind the applicant that he was dependent on his captors and interviewers for favours."

The court rejected the opinion of the trial judge that Thomas viewed the 8 March interview differently to the other interviews, which were concerned only with intelligence gathering. Rather, they emphasised how similar the interviews all were: "same place, same AFP personnel, same topics." They considered that the inducements offered in the previous interviews, and indeed the threats and intimidation in previous interviews by the American "Joe" and others, all "remained operative, their power undiminished" in 8 March interview.

Lastly, the court rejected the argument that the admissions were voluntary because Thomas knew he had a right to silence, because he did not have any practical opportunity to exercise the right. The court concluded that the trial judge had made an error by separating the interview from the circumstances, and that in the circumstances Thomas had no real choice whether to answer questions: "Even the threat 'Confess or be tortured' can be said to involve a choice, and a chance that torture may not be applied. But it could never be regarded as a free choice in the relevant sense."

Ultimately, the court found that the admissions were not given voluntarily, and so were not admissible.

### Discretion to exclude evidence

Although it was unnecessary to decide the alternative argument, the court addressed it briefly anyway. After considering previous cases on the issue, the court considered whether the Australian investigators acted fairly. They concluded that "only one course [was] properly open to the investigating officials in the light of the position taken by the Pakistani authorities. It was to acknowledge that no formal record of interview could be conducted so long as the applicant was in Pakistan since, as the investigating officials appreciated, any such interview would be unlawful, that is, would be contrary to Australian law."

The court also referred to a judgment of Justice McHugh of the High Court, in which he said that although there is some discretion as to whether evidence obtained where an interviewee does not have access to legal advice should be admitted or not, judges are not free to make the decision "by reference to general notions of fairness."

The court concluded that the trial judge had erred in not exercising his discretion to bar the evidence from being admitted, although it was not necessary to decide the point.

## Consequences

Thomas' original convictions were quashed, however before the final orders were made the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions sought to make a submission as to whether there should be a directed acquittal or whether there should be a retrial. The court heard brief arguments, then set aside the issue for a further hearing, to be held after the parties had made written submissions. The prosecution sought to introduce as evidence statements Thomas made in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for the Four Corners television program in February 2006.

The parties made submissions, and there was an oral hearing on 1 December 2006. All parties accepted that the relevant test to be applied was the test set out in the High Court case of DPP (Nauru) v Fowler, which sets out two preconditions for a retrial; the first requiring that the admissible evidence presented at trial be "sufficiently cogent" to support a conviction, the second requiring consideration of circumstances that would make it unjust to put the accused through a retrial. However this case had an unusual feature, namely that the evidence that the prosecution would seek to use at a retrial had not been available at the original trial, through no fault of the prosecution, since although the interviews had been taken at that time they had not been published. Ultimately all parties agreed that all evidence, not just evidence submitted in the original trial, should be considered when applying the first part of the Fowler test.

The court decided that it would be reasonably possible for a jury to convict Thomas based on the available evidence, so it then considered whether there were factors which would make a retrial unjust. Thomas' lawyer Lex Lasry argued that the delay in Thomas' prosecution (he was not arrested until seventeen months after he returned to Australia) and the extensive media coverage of the case meant it was unlikely Thomas would get a fair trial, and that a retrial would be an undue hardship on Thomas given that he has spent long periods in custody, mostly in solitary confinement, without conviction, which has led to him being diagnosed with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. The court was of the opinion that a fair trial was not impossible in these circumstances, and although the other factors were considered, the court ultimately decided that the circumstances did not preclude a retrial.

As such, the court ordered on 20 December 2006 that Thomas be retried. Thomas was then released on bail, with requirements to report three times a week and not to leave Australia. Thomas and his family were in court to hear the verdict, his mother crying and Thomas looking "more like a startled rabbit [than a terrorist]."

In the retrial in 2008 Thomas was found not guilty of the terrorism charges but was found guilty of a passport offence, which carries a maximum penalty of two years' imprisonment. Thomas had already served nine months. Justice Curtain ordered that Thomas be imprisoned for nine months but found he was free to go after taking into account time already served.

### Commentary

The decision was praised by civil libertarians. Former President of the Victorial Council of Civil Liberties, Robert Richter QC, said that the decision was important "because the pressure is to say, 'Well, do anything' if the case is said to be a terrorist case. That is unacceptable, the Court of Appeal has said it's unacceptable." University of Melbourne evidence law professor Andrew Palmer said that "I think that it was a little bit naive to think that they could interview somebody and gather admissible evidence... when that person was being held in conditions which were possibly oppressive... I don't really know what they were thinking."

The decision has also attracted criticism. Conservative columnist Piers Akerman said that the decision "has handed al-Qaeda, Jemaah Islamiyah and all other terrorist organisations a major victory and confirmed the adage the law is an ass." Akerman emphasised that information about Thomas (including the Four Corners interview) was already available in the public domain for the populace to make its own judgment, despite "judicial commands to juries to ignore material [which] may have some minor relevance in their petty fiefdoms."

Conservative Melbourne lawyer Peter Faris QC called for an appeal to the High Court or changes to the laws of evidence legislation, saying that "this case is bad law", alternatively suggesting that Thomas be handed over to Pakistan, since he stated that the evidence from the interview would in his opinion be admissible in a Pakistani court. Faris also argued that there was an issue of apparent bias arising with respect to the presiding judge in the appeal, Maxwell P, which could afford grounds for invalidating the appeal. Pakistani law of evidence does not permit a confession made to a police officer to be admitted into evidence. Faris argued that the apparent bias arose because of Maxwell's activities before his appointment to the Supreme Court of Victoria, including his membership of organisations including Amnesty International, his past presidency of Liberty Victoria, his past involvement with human rights law and advocacy against counter-terrorism laws. Faris drew a comparison with the House of Lords case which considered the extradition of Augusto Pinochet, which was overturned on appeal because of Lord Hoffman's failure to disclose his links to Amnesty International.

Because of the ongoing proceedings relating to whether Thomas should be acquitted or retried, neither the Government of Australia nor the Opposition commented immediately after the case, although Treasurer Peter Costello later said that anti-terrorism legislation did not need to be strengthened in the wake of the case, and Opposition foreign affairs spokesperson Kevin Rudd said that "What is plain from the events of yesterday is that the Government has bungled – and bungled badly – the prosecution of this case."

Gerard Henderson said that the case "highlights an emerging division within democracies" between civil liberties advocates on the one hand and "a democracy defence lobby, which maintains that radical Islamism poses a real and present danger to Western nations" on the other.

Australian terrorism trial