There are few records in history as acclaimed or as iconic as The Beatles’ 1968 self-titled offering, also known as the White Album. Armed with a minimalistic cover and a tracklisting full of tender future favourites, from ‘Dear Prudence’ to ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, the album would go on to become one of the most successful in the band’s catalogue. But that didn’t mean that John Lennon was happy with every song that made it onto the final cut.
The White Album had a lengthy but largely stellar track-listing. There was a good mix of tunes contributed by each member of the central duo, Lennon and Paul McCartney, and even a couple of songs added by the less prolific songwriters in the group, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. There were simple, sad songs like ‘Blackird’ and heavier, more complex offerings like ‘Helter Skelter’. But there was one track that Lennon compared to a piece of trash.
After ending side two with Lennon’s ode to his late mother, ‘Julia’, the band kicked off side three with a tone-shift. The rocking and rolling ‘Birthday’ served as the opener to the second LP, a jubilant attempt to appear on birthday party playlists for years to come. “They say it’s your birthday, we’re gonna have a good time,” McCartney sang in the first verse, “I’m glad it’s your birthday, happy birthday to you.”
Though the song featured an endearing rock and roll soundtrack, adorned with tambourines and handclaps to exacerbate the festivities, it didn’t contain quite as much lyrical depth as some of the other offerings on the White Album. Perhaps this was because Lennon and McCartney had only penned the song when they were already in the studio.
“‘Birthday’ was written in the studio. Just made up on the spot,” Lennon recalled in a 1980 interview, as quoted in All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono by David Sheff. “I think Paul wanted to write a song like ‘Happy Birthday Baby,’ the old ‘50s hit. But it was sort of made up in the studio. It was a piece of garbage.”
The song certainly wasn’t their best work, and it didn’t stand up to the levels of quality they displayed across the runtime of the White Album. Though there were a couple of other flops — McCartney’s ‘Rocky Raccoon’, for example — the record was largely a display of the band’s songwriting prowess.
Harrison had demonstrated his talents with a pen on the melancholic ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, Lennon had show off his talent for double-edged innuendos on ‘Happiness Is A Warm Gun’, and McCartney had created an all-time classic in ‘Blackbird’. Perhaps the out-of-place nature of tracks like ‘Birthday’ undermined these efforts, a piece of garbage amidst endless sonic gold.
But it seems that Lennon wouldn’t have even been happy with the record if ‘Birthday’ had been exempted. “As I said, I’m not satisfied with any individual or Beatles album,” he continued to comment, “There’s too many fill-ins and padding. I like the inspired stuff, not the created, clever stuff. But I do like Pepper for what it is. I like The White Album for what it is, and I like Revolver and I like Rubber Soul.”
While the White Album may have been a more seamless record without the inclusion of ‘Birthday’, it didn’t stop critics and audiences from lauding the album in their masses, and its exclusion still wouldn’t have pleased Lennon.
