Back for 50th-anniversary reissue, Beatles White album is still inspiring

It is the sprawling mixture of music and ideas on the record that makes is so fascinating, especially in hindsight

For an LP with a plain white cover, the Beatles eponymous ninth studio album – more commonly referred to as the “White Album” – has generated a mass of symbolism since its release 50 years ago in November 1968.

With its glossy all-white gatefold cover, black inner sleeves and portraits of the Fab Four hidden inside the sleeve, the influence of the White Album can be traced across a huge range of cultural artefacts. For example, the author of New Journalism, Joan Didion, named her study of the end of the 1960s dream, The White