{"id":1632,"date":"2011-10-03T01:52:07","date_gmt":"2011-10-03T01:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arpjournal.com\/?p=1632"},"modified":"2011-10-09T21:50:17","modified_gmt":"2011-10-09T21:50:17","slug":"revolution-in-the-head-the-beatles-records-and-the-sixties-third-revised-edition-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arpjournal.com\/asarpwp\/revolution-in-the-head-the-beatles-records-and-the-sixties-third-revised-edition-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Revolution In The Head: The Beatles Records And The Sixties (Third Revised Edition)"},"content":{"rendered":"

An unapologetically revisionist, meticulously researched appraisal of The Beatles\u2019 recorded canon and its place in the cultural milieu of the 1960\u2019s.<\/h3>\n

If one had a mind to, the path from Liverpool to London could likely be paved with the seemingly endless array of tomes that discuss, deconstruct and dissect the formidable output of The Beatles, arguably the most revered and imitated group in the history of popular music.\u00a0 The Fab Four have inspired a seemingly endless array of titles that examine every aspect of the band and its legacy, that not surprisingly run the gamut: amazingly detailed discographies like Bob Spitz\u2019s The Beatles on Apple Records <\/em>and \u00a0The <\/em>Beatles Solo on Apple Records\u2014<\/em>not to mention his exhaustive and perceptive titular biography; Mark Lewisjohn\u2019s seminal look at the band\u2019s studio process, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions; <\/em>memoirs by their gifted support personnel (such as Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording The Music Of The Beatles <\/em>by Geoff Emerick); hatchet jobs such as Albert Goldman\u2019s muckraking The Lives Of John Lennon<\/em>; and of course The Beatles\u2019 own auto-hagiography, Anthology<\/em>.<\/p>\n

However, if one had to choose a single book that provides the clearest assessment of The Beatles\u2019 achievement (along with sober-minded deflating of some of the band\u2019s most popular numbers) Revolution In The Head: The Beatles Records And The Sixties <\/em>by the late Ian MacDonald would be a strong candidate.\u00a0 A former New Musical Express<\/em> editor, as well as a musician, composer and producer, MacDonald applies the rigor inherent in each of these disciplines, and holds The Beatles to very high critical standards, indeed.\u00a0 Examining every known recording by the band (including the infamous thirteen-plus minute long \u201cCarnival of Light\u201d) he analyzes each track in terms of the contributions by each writer, melodic approaches taken in its composition, lyrical development, instrumentation and recording technique. He also peers inside the state of mind of each track\u2019s composer(s), offering sometimes surprising but always well-thought out and supportable evaluations of how these states of mind helped bring each song into being.<\/p>\n

This is no dry musicological treatise.\u00a0 MacDonald was a gifted and colorful writer, deploying his analysis with a rapier wit and an admirable lack of hero-worship or rose colored nostalgia.\u00a0 Typical is his wry, yet dispassionate take on an early Beatles album track, \u201cAll My Loving\u201d:<\/p>\n

The innocence of early Sixties British pop is perfectly distilled in the eloquent simplicity of this number.\u00a0 Though never considered for a single, it drew so much radio-play and audience response that, in February 1964 EMI issued it as the title track of a best selling EP\u2026at this stage McCartney regarded Lennon as the leader of the group, a feeling more or less echoed by the record-buying public.\u00a0 With \u201cAll My Loving,\u201d he began t be seen as more of an equal with his partner.\u00a0 Meanwhile, The Beatles\u2019 rivals looked on amazed as songs of this commercial appeal were casually thrown away on LPs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What makes this book a truly engrossing read is that MacDonald has no pretention of neutrality regarding the relative merits of individual Beatles tracks.\u00a0 To MacDonald, much of their work takes its place amongst the greatest achievements in popular music (masterpieces like \u201cA Day In The Life,\u201d \u201cEleanor Rigby,\u201d \u201cStrawberry Fields Forever\u201d and \u201cPenny Lane\u201d are treated by the author as such); at the same time, many Beatles tracks\u2014including some of their most popular\u2014in MacDonald\u2019s view fail to live up to the high standards set by the artists themselves.<\/p>\n

Witness his withering appraisal of what many consider to be one of their great anthems, \u201cAll You Need Is Love\u201d:<\/p>\n

One of The Beatles’ least deserving hits, Lennon\u2019s \u201cAll You Need Is Love\u201d owes more of its standing to its local historical associations than to its inspiration, which, as with their other immediate post-Pepper<\/em> recordings\u2026is desultory.\u00a0 Thrown together\u2026the song is an inelegant structure in alternating bars of 4\/4 and 3\/4, capped by a chorus which\u2026consists largely of a single note\u2026The Beatles were now doing willfully substandard work: paying little attention to musical values and settling for lyric first-thoughts\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, taking issue with such judgments is part of what makes Revolution In The Head<\/em> such a compelling read.\u00a0 Even as one defers to the logic of his sometimes harsh, yet consistently supported estimations, many readers will find themselves quietly fuming over MacDonald\u2019s evisceration of a cherished track.\u00a0 One of this writer\u2019s favorites from 1969\u2019s Abbey Road, <\/em>\u201cI Want You (She\u2019s So Heavy),\u201d is not spared MacDonald\u2019s colorfully conflated dismembering of the song\u2019s conception and execution:<\/p>\n

Sexually addicted to [Yoko Ono], he was helplessly dependent, a predicament grindingly explicit in his chord sequence: the sickening plunge from E7 to B flat 7; the augmented A that drags his head up to make him go through it all again; the hammering flat ninth that collapses, spent on the song\u2019s insatiable D minor arpeggio\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Out and out rock <\/em>Beatles, this is the antithesis of their light pop touch and another of their attempts in the new heavy style\u2026earnest in concept, it is, in the end, bathetic in effect\u2026all told [it] is a bold lunge at something seriously adult which, perhaps doomed by its own desperation, doesn\u2019t quite come off.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yet, for every sacrifice of a Beatles sacred cow, there are surprisingly idiosyncratic favorable assessments of some of their less appreciated work.\u00a0 Harrison\u2019s \u201cWithin You, Without You,\u201d frequently derided by many devotees as a boring indulgence in Indian instrumentation and philosophical blather, a \u201cblot on a classic LP,\u201d (Sgt. Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band)<\/em> is given a refreshingly revisionist assessment by MacDonald:<\/p>\n

\u2026this ambitious essay in cross-cultural fusion and meditative philosophy has been dismissed with a yawn by almost every commentator since it first appeared\u2026[yet] \u201cWithin You Without You\u201d is central to the outlook that shaped Sgt. Pepper<\/em>\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Stylistically, it is the most distant departure from the staple Beatles sound in their discography\u2014and an altogether remarkable achievement for someone who had been acquainted with Hindustani classical music for barely eighteen months.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While such song-by-song analysis take up the lion\u2019s share of Revolution In The Head<\/em> (and are in fact the most absorbing aspect of the book), the Introduction<\/em> provides a necessary cultural overview that that provides the sociological component alluded to in the books title.\u00a0 MacDonald means to use the Beatles musical canon to illuminate the importance and impact of the decade in which their work was created.\u00a0 Political upheaval, the rise of the drug culture, changing sexual mores and cultural shifts are seen by MacDonald as being mirrored in the Beatles work, forming a sort of self-propagating loop.\u00a0 Not only did the Beatles reflect the world around them, but they also influenced it like no other pop band before or since.\u00a0 In MacDonald\u2019s words:<\/p>\n

The Sixties seem like a golden age to us because, relative to now, they were\u2026now radically disunited, we live dominated by and addicted to gadgets, our raison d\u2019\u00eatre<\/em> and sense of community unfixably broken\u2026far away from us on the other side of the sun-flooded chasm of the Sixties\u2014where, courtesy of scientific technology, The Beatles can still be heard singing their buoyant, poignant, hopeful love-advocating songs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Making this volume even more useful to scholars of popular music, and a boon to younger fans and students, is the books final section, \u201cChronology: The Sixties\u201d which provides a very helpful timeline of signal moments in the Beatles career and how they coincided with key events in UK Pop, Current Affairs, and Trends in Culture.\u00a0 It is instructive and fascinating, for example, to be reminded the recording of what many consider The Beatles’ finest moment, the 1966 album Revolver<\/em>, was concurrent with Bob Dylan\u2019s controversial Royal Albert Hall Concert with The Hawks (later The Band), that in the same time frame Chairman Mao declared the beginning of the brutal Cultural Revolution, and the same year also saw the release of Thomas Pynchon\u2019s Crying of Lot 49<\/em> and William Burroughs\u2019s Junkie.<\/em><\/p>\n

Finally, a handy glossary of the technical and musical terms used in the body of the book brings Revolution In The Head<\/em> to its conclusion.<\/p>\n

Taken as a whole, MacDonald\u2019s examination of the Beatles’ recorded work and what it represented in its own time remains one of the most cohesive and coherent critiques of their oeuvre in pop music literature.\u00a0 Making clear what he regards as the band’s strengths and weaknesses (to the author, they were peerless pop composers and musicians, somewhat less inspiring when they attempted harder material\u2014\u201cHelter Skelter\u201d for example is skewered mercilessly) as well as the triumphs and foibles of the era in which they were\u00a0 created, MacDonald provides a first rate understanding of what the Beatles did along with why and how they did it.\u00a0 And it makes for a revealing, vibrant, and fascinating (if occasionally vexatious) read as well. \u00a0Highly recommended.<\/p>\n

Publication Details<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Revolution In The Head: The Beatles Records And The Sixties (Third Revised Edition)
\n<\/strong>Ian MacDonald
\nVintage Press, 2009
\nISBN: 978-0805042450
\n(Kindle version available online from Amazon.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Taken as a whole, MacDonald\u2019s examination of the Beatles’ recorded work and what it represented in its own time remains one of the most cohesive and coherent critiques of their oeuvre in pop music literature. Making clear what he regards as the bands strengths and weaknesses as well as the triumphs and foibles of the era in which they were created, MacDonald provides a first rate understanding of what the Beatles did along with why and how they did it. And it makes for a revealing, vibrant, and fascinating (if occasionally infuriating) read as well. Highly recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[100,114,105],"class_list":["post-1632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles-editorials-provocations","tag-beatles","tag-popular-culture","tag-recommended-reading","author-eddie-ashworth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arpjournal.com\/asarpwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arpjournal.com\/asarpwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arpjournal.com\/asarpwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arpjournal.com\/asarpwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arpjournal.com\/asarpwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1632"}],"version-history":[{"count":41,"href":"https:\/\/www.arpjournal.com\/asarpwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1669,"href":"https:\/\/www.arpjournal.com\/asarpwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1632\/revisions\/1669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arpjournal.com\/asarpwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arpjournal.com\/asarpwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arpjournal.com\/asarpwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}