Culture moved fast in the second half of the 1960s, and the Beatles too went from a heartthrob boy band to a more contemplative, expansive sound. The Summer of Love produced their Sargent Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band at the same time as they attained worldwide popularity with the first performance broadcast out by satellite. Internally they were more divided: George Harrison felt he was being overshadowed by Paul McCartney; John Lennon insisted on including Yoko Ono in the production sessions; Ringo Starr left the group for a while, then came back. The result of all this was a double record much more eclectic than anything they had done previously. Fans flocked to it all the same.

On this day, December 28, in 1968 the Beatles White Album, as it unofficially came to be known (officially it was just called The Beatles) went to #1 on the Billboard charts, where it would remain until March of the following year.

Part of the inspiration for the album came from the Beatles’ meeting with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The group was just coming off their psychedelic phase and their experiments with LSD led them to a search for a more universal view. George Harrison had gotten to know the yogi at a lecture the previous year, and thought transcendental meditation could bring the same experience as the drugs. The chance to “get away from it all,” Lennon later recalled, led to some of his best work on the album.