To truly understand how The Beatles came to write the songs featured on The White Album you really should watch the documentary The Beatles and India. Because during their longish sojourn on the Subcontinent, staying with the guru du jour, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, from February through April 1968 was ground zero for the album.

In fact, 19 of the songs on The White Album came directly from that experience after they went to do a Transcendental Meditation course (Donovan and a few other celebrities were also along for the ride) at Rishikesh in India.

The documentary, made in 2021, is a kind of Rosetta stone that helps us decode and understand what for some of us is the greatest album of all time.

Some may disagree with that but with all due respect, they’d be wrong. The great Jann Wenner, Rolling Stone magazine’s founder and publisher described it as “the best album they have ever released”. But I would go further.

Of course, The White Album is not the title of this album. It is simply called The Beatles and that is in raised lettering on the white cover.

It came out in November 1968 but it is still a potent force in contemporary music through its influence on a generation. Now here’s some good news for fans – The White Album Concert is coming to Brisbane on September 21 when four of Australia’s most respected rockers will play it from beginning to end. All the songs in order they promise.

I love these album shows and I’ve seen a few of them. Vince Jones’ masterful concerts playing the songs of two of Van Morrison’s classic albums, Astral Weeks and Moon Dance stand out. I saw that at QPAC a few years back.

The White Album Concert is next level. It first went on the road in 2009 and then it toured again in 2014 and 2018.

The Fab Four in this forthcoming Brisbane gig will do what The Beatles never did. They will play the songs live. The Beatles had tired of touring by the time they got to The White Album. This Fab Four play it live all the way through with the backing of a 17-piece rock orchestra led by musical director Rex Goh. This will be a quasi-religious experience for some of us.

Growing up as a Beatles fanatic, three classic albums dominated my young life and stand out like satori, spiritual enlightenment. Revolver, which came out in 1966 was the album that changed the band’s direction. Then came Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967 which was completely unique. How could you possibly top that?

With a little incidental help from the Maharishi, they managed to the following year. Not that they were that impressed with the Maharishi by the end of their stay (they felt he was using them to boost his profile) but that Indian sojourn was the inspiration for some great songs.

The White Album Concert features Chris Cheney of The Living End, Phil Jamieson of Grinspoon, Tim Rogers of You Am I and Josh Pyke. Now that’s a Fab Four right there.

Chris Cheney points out that they are not doing a tribute show or impersonating The Beatles. This is not Vegas. (Okay it is Bris Vegas).

“We’re bringing what we do in our own bands and our own careers to the show,” Cheney says. “This is not us pretending to be The Beatles.”

Tim Rogers says they want to pay homage to the album and The Beatles but not with too much reverence.

“We want to reinterpret it but not be disrespectful,” Rogers says. “But then also thinking that rock ‘n roll is about being disrespectful.”

John Lennon couldn’t have said it better.

If you can watch The Beatles and India doco before the concert it would help (the archival footage is mind blowing for Beatles fans) but even afterwards it will help fill in some of the backstory.

My favorite little episode in the film is about Dear Prudence, written and sung by Lennon, a classic from the album. The Prudence in question was the sister of actress Mia Farrow, Prudence Farrow and Prudence was pretty serious about her meditation but The Beatles wanted her to come out of her room, stop meditating and hang out with them.

Hence the line … “Dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play?”

Sexy Sadie was originally entitled Maharishi and was a song critical of him but The Beatles changed the title and the words to avoid a libel suit.

The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill was inspired by an American who went hunting while everyone else was meditating.

In fact, The Beatles wrote more than 30 songs while they were in India.

John Lennon himself said “we wrote about thirty new songs between us. Paul must have done about a dozen. George says she got six and I wrote fifteen.”

The bulk of them ended up on The White Album but others found their way onto Abbey Road and later solo albums. A song called Child of Nature turned into Jealous Guy on Lennon’s Imagine album and a couple of songs written in India featured on Paul McCartney’s first solo album, McCartney, in 1970 not long after the band broke up.

The songs were composed in a rudimentary fashion with only an acoustic guitar for accompaniment. Not long after their Indian trip, in May 1968 they went into the famous Abbey Road Studios in London to start recording the album and sessions lasted until mid-October with the album released late the following month.

The variety of styles on The White Album is staggering … everything from music hall to ballads to heavy rock including Helter Skelter which was, I think, a punk prototype.

This was a driving, chaotic song and one that mass murderer Charles Manson infamously took sick inspiration from. He used the title to indicate an apocalyptic race war that he predicted. Actually, the track just refers to a funfair slide but Manson saw it encapsulating his unhinged prophecies. He also believed the songs on The White Album included a number of coded messages. And maybe some of them do but not the sort of messages Manson imagined. Like family, I guess you can’t choose your fans.

The White Album in Concert is on at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre on September 21.

whitealbumconcert.com