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Revolution in the Head: The Beatles Records and the Sixties
'No book has taken us closer to the music of the Beatles' Tony Parsons 'Consistently brilliant' SUNDAY TIMES 'Essential' Q The Beatles achievement was so dazzling, so extraordinary, that few have questioned it. Agreement that they were far and away the best pop group ever is all but universal. And nowhere is the spirit of the Sixties - both in its soaring optimism and its drug-spirited introspection - more perfectly expressed than in the Beatles' music. Taking all the elements which combined to create each song as it was captured on vinyl - the songwriting process, the stimuli of contemporary pop hits and events, the evolving input from each of the Four, the brilliant innovations pulled off in the studio and, ultimately, the twisting grip of psychedelic drugs - the Beatles are pinpointed, record by record, in precise and fascinating detail against the backdrop of that vibrant era.
387 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1994
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May 27, 2009
There's a generalised kneejerk cultural reaction against the Beatles by some members of the popular music audience and it's quite understandable. What a pain in the ass to have the giant four-headed shadow of the perfect pop monster forever looming over today's epigones, like looking up out of your window in the fresh morning of your youth and in the clear blue sky someone has skywritten "we did it first, we did it bigger, and we did it better" every fooking day. Then all these books pour forth from the world's publishers every year detailing the Beatles' every last chord change and every last wife and every last fart and every last wife's fart. And then the whole thing gets revived every ten years, or so it seems, like the last time there was all that Anthology endlessness culminating with that giant book which wasn't a coffee table book at all because it was bigger than most coffee tables and took several Beatle fans to lift. That's because they've all got so old and saggy and wasted muscled and superannuated - how many Beatle fans does it take to change a lightbulb? Around 18 because they're all so old and enervated and gasping for breath, and they'd probably need a stairlift to do it, the one Led Zep will use to take them all to heaven, and good riddance.
So someone needed to set right down and put their shoulder to the cds and their nose to the keyboard and get down on paper why the above may be understandable but it's also substanceless. And it was Ian MacDonald. I'm very glad he wrote this book otherwise I might have had to, and I couldn't have done it a tenth as good because he actually knows what he's talking about. This is the one necessary Beatle book, the only one, the rest is gossip.
So someone needed to set right down and put their shoulder to the cds and their nose to the keyboard and get down on paper why the above may be understandable but it's also substanceless. And it was Ian MacDonald. I'm very glad he wrote this book otherwise I might have had to, and I couldn't have done it a tenth as good because he actually knows what he's talking about. This is the one necessary Beatle book, the only one, the rest is gossip.
January 14, 2010
FANTASTIC. You can actually read a paragraph or two a day, because it's basically a long list of Beatles tracks with all the details of how/when/why each one was recorded. I always thought they cut an album and then hung out for a while, but hells bells, their whole catalog now seems like one long continuous spew of music. And MacDonald's tone thru most of this is decidedly NOT reverential. I confess some annoyance when he called While My Guitar Gently Weeps a "lazily strummed throwaway" or something. Ouch. He's totally respectful of the good stuff, but there's absolutely no hero worship here: if it's fluff he'll call it fluff, and if McCartney did a crappy bass track he'll tell you so. I found this incredibly refreshing: for once you get a real critic's perspective and not just a fog of reverential prose. And as another reviewer pointed out, the footnotes are often even more interesting than the main text.
I still haven't read every page, and I just got a revised edition for xmas which has even cooler introductory stuff--the whole book is a marvel of social, cultural, and music criticism.
I still haven't read every page, and I just got a revised edition for xmas which has even cooler introductory stuff--the whole book is a marvel of social, cultural, and music criticism.
May 6, 2008
I'd really like to give this book 3 1/2 stars, and need to point out that this reading follows my consumption in the summer of 2007 of Lewissohn (Chronicles), Hertsgaard (A Day in the Life, Turner (A Hard Day's Write), and the incomparable Pollack (whose work on the Beatles can be found online at http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/D...). I think this covers the landscape of serious, published track-by-track analyses of the Beatles' output circa 2008 and would like therefore to propose a hierarchy of reads/summary of each (after considering the Ian MacDonald).
First, in treating MacDonald, I should say that it has been critically regarded by many (including Pollack) as THE definitive musicological treatment, I suspect in large part because it was the first to attempt something so grandiose in scale (MacDonald assigns each track a number for later reference 1-186 in chronological order by date of first recording session, with inserts for recordings of covers, though his book stops short of separately numbering initially unreleased takes and bootlegs). That such a work had to wait until 1994 to see the light of day should come as little surprise, given that it took 30+ years for EMI to enlist the services of Lewissohn to carefully catalogue, confirm, and assure the release of everything worthwhile and otherwise that the Beatles recorded. The difference between Lewissohn and MacDonald is the difference between historical reportage (including track and take numbering, timing, and edits, full session credits, etc.) and a critical analysis (including references to Fluxus, the New Left, and Marx).
MacDonald beefs up Revolution in the Head by including a 37 page doctoral dissertation on how the legacy of the past is to screw up the present (more on this below), and a browsable-but-unreadable 70 page chart that considers the Beatle’s 7-year recording history alongside current and cultural events a la Timetables of History. Still and all, the meat of MacDonald’s book, and that for which it is surely best known, is this track-by-track analysis (the length of each vignette depend partly on how important/influential MacDonald regards the track in question – the widely panned, but admired “Revolution 9” gets 4 ½ pages – and partly how much it speaks to him – “Blue Jay Way” gets less than ¼ page. That’s surely his prerogative, but readers be warned… there is no attempt here at consistent criticism. To read MacDonald is to enjoy the rantings of a highly-educated blogger.
There are plenty of intriguing observations here, for example, in his argument that Lennon’s “I Am the Walrus” is “a song of self-definition amounting to a manifesto,… defensive to the point of desperation.” (p. 215) Or in his statement that McCartney’s “Why Don’t We Do it in the Road?” sans Lennon’s participation was successful retaliation for being similarly excluded from “Revolution 9.” However, these are somewhat counterbalanced by the occasional ponderous comment. MacDonald is generally not a Harrisong fan, panning “Here Comes the Sun” as “a little too faux-naif to appeal to those lacking the requisite sweet tooth,” “Something,” a song that even Frank Sinatra went ga-ga over, by saying the maturity of “Sinatra’s version… is incongruous with what are, in truth, callow sentiments,” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” as evincing “a dull grandiosity predictive of the simplified stadium music of the Seventies and Eighties.” - pp. 285, 278, and 242, respectively.
Not that you expect to universally share any critic’s taste. But what to make of the painful lit-crit babble prologue: “As late products of the spiritual crisis Western civilization has been undergoing since the inception of the scientific outlook, the Beats were part of a venerable historical succession. The ‘death of God’, with its concomitant loss of both a moral reference-point and our ancient faith in personal immortality, began percolating down into society from its origins among scientific scholars around four hundred years ago. As its influence spread,… [blah, blah, blah]… the late 18th-century Sturm und Drang and Gothic movements,… the Symbolists and Surrealists… [yadda, yadda, yadda].” ��� p. 6?
Or worse, what to do with a conclusion that could reasonably lead one to believe that the author is the kind of jerk who simply considers the music he grew up with superior to everything since? From page 299, “[W]hen examining the following Chronology of Sixties pop, readers are aware that they are looking at something on a higher scale of achievement than today’s – music which no contemporary artist could claim to match in feeling, variety, formal invention, and sheer out-of-the-blue inspiration…. [t]he same can be said of other musical forms – most obviously classical and jazz…” In one snooty blow MacDonald appears ready to dismiss the heydays of Waters and Gilmour, Page and Plant, Zappa, Simon, Springsteen, Gabriel, Bono, Edge, and Clayton, and etc., to say nothing of Marsalis, Parsons, Reich, Adams, Sondheim, Xenakis, and on and on, likewise unwilling to contemplate the possible coming of the Bela Flecks, Sufjan Stevenses, and Greenwoods and Yorkes, etc.
So, in a nutshell, my hierarchy of Beatlesology. Read:
(1) Hertsgaard – overlooks some tracks here and there in favor of the big-album picture, but generally captures the music and the biography.
(2) Pollack – every bit as thorough as MacDonald (arguably more so with the luxury of coming later), digs into structure, form, and chord progressions, albeit with the breezy, informal quality that befits a blog.
(3) Lewissohn – or skim, actually. Full of intriguing trivia that nonetheless sheds light on not only the genesis of the Beatles’ recordings, but their relative import and influence makes this an extremely readable reference book.
(4) MacDonald – take a pass, or else simply pick out vignettes on those tracks which have piqued your curiosity.
(5) Turner – literary exegesis of lyrics the majority of which its authors gave acknowledged short shrift. Amusing trivia and too rare insight to be worth the bother except as a companion to the Hertsgaard.
Or just put the tracks on your iPod and hit shuffle. At the end of the day, that’s still the best way to appreciate the music.
First, in treating MacDonald, I should say that it has been critically regarded by many (including Pollack) as THE definitive musicological treatment, I suspect in large part because it was the first to attempt something so grandiose in scale (MacDonald assigns each track a number for later reference 1-186 in chronological order by date of first recording session, with inserts for recordings of covers, though his book stops short of separately numbering initially unreleased takes and bootlegs). That such a work had to wait until 1994 to see the light of day should come as little surprise, given that it took 30+ years for EMI to enlist the services of Lewissohn to carefully catalogue, confirm, and assure the release of everything worthwhile and otherwise that the Beatles recorded. The difference between Lewissohn and MacDonald is the difference between historical reportage (including track and take numbering, timing, and edits, full session credits, etc.) and a critical analysis (including references to Fluxus, the New Left, and Marx).
MacDonald beefs up Revolution in the Head by including a 37 page doctoral dissertation on how the legacy of the past is to screw up the present (more on this below), and a browsable-but-unreadable 70 page chart that considers the Beatle’s 7-year recording history alongside current and cultural events a la Timetables of History. Still and all, the meat of MacDonald’s book, and that for which it is surely best known, is this track-by-track analysis (the length of each vignette depend partly on how important/influential MacDonald regards the track in question – the widely panned, but admired “Revolution 9” gets 4 ½ pages – and partly how much it speaks to him – “Blue Jay Way” gets less than ¼ page. That’s surely his prerogative, but readers be warned… there is no attempt here at consistent criticism. To read MacDonald is to enjoy the rantings of a highly-educated blogger.
There are plenty of intriguing observations here, for example, in his argument that Lennon’s “I Am the Walrus” is “a song of self-definition amounting to a manifesto,… defensive to the point of desperation.” (p. 215) Or in his statement that McCartney’s “Why Don’t We Do it in the Road?” sans Lennon’s participation was successful retaliation for being similarly excluded from “Revolution 9.” However, these are somewhat counterbalanced by the occasional ponderous comment. MacDonald is generally not a Harrisong fan, panning “Here Comes the Sun” as “a little too faux-naif to appeal to those lacking the requisite sweet tooth,” “Something,” a song that even Frank Sinatra went ga-ga over, by saying the maturity of “Sinatra’s version… is incongruous with what are, in truth, callow sentiments,” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” as evincing “a dull grandiosity predictive of the simplified stadium music of the Seventies and Eighties.” - pp. 285, 278, and 242, respectively.
Not that you expect to universally share any critic’s taste. But what to make of the painful lit-crit babble prologue: “As late products of the spiritual crisis Western civilization has been undergoing since the inception of the scientific outlook, the Beats were part of a venerable historical succession. The ‘death of God’, with its concomitant loss of both a moral reference-point and our ancient faith in personal immortality, began percolating down into society from its origins among scientific scholars around four hundred years ago. As its influence spread,… [blah, blah, blah]… the late 18th-century Sturm und Drang and Gothic movements,… the Symbolists and Surrealists… [yadda, yadda, yadda].” ��� p. 6?
Or worse, what to do with a conclusion that could reasonably lead one to believe that the author is the kind of jerk who simply considers the music he grew up with superior to everything since? From page 299, “[W]hen examining the following Chronology of Sixties pop, readers are aware that they are looking at something on a higher scale of achievement than today’s – music which no contemporary artist could claim to match in feeling, variety, formal invention, and sheer out-of-the-blue inspiration…. [t]he same can be said of other musical forms – most obviously classical and jazz…” In one snooty blow MacDonald appears ready to dismiss the heydays of Waters and Gilmour, Page and Plant, Zappa, Simon, Springsteen, Gabriel, Bono, Edge, and Clayton, and etc., to say nothing of Marsalis, Parsons, Reich, Adams, Sondheim, Xenakis, and on and on, likewise unwilling to contemplate the possible coming of the Bela Flecks, Sufjan Stevenses, and Greenwoods and Yorkes, etc.
So, in a nutshell, my hierarchy of Beatlesology. Read:
(1) Hertsgaard – overlooks some tracks here and there in favor of the big-album picture, but generally captures the music and the biography.
(2) Pollack – every bit as thorough as MacDonald (arguably more so with the luxury of coming later), digs into structure, form, and chord progressions, albeit with the breezy, informal quality that befits a blog.
(3) Lewissohn – or skim, actually. Full of intriguing trivia that nonetheless sheds light on not only the genesis of the Beatles’ recordings, but their relative import and influence makes this an extremely readable reference book.
(4) MacDonald – take a pass, or else simply pick out vignettes on those tracks which have piqued your curiosity.
(5) Turner – literary exegesis of lyrics the majority of which its authors gave acknowledged short shrift. Amusing trivia and too rare insight to be worth the bother except as a companion to the Hertsgaard.
Or just put the tracks on your iPod and hit shuffle. At the end of the day, that’s still the best way to appreciate the music.
August 12, 2020
Remember the scene in Dead Poets Society where Robin Williams asks his students to rip pages out of a book that explains how to measure the quality of poetry? Well, Revolution in the Head is exactly the kind of book that Robin Williams would have a ball ripping to pieces as it tries to measure the musical quality of each track of the Beatles in a scientific way. It comes across as cold, academic and elitist, which is ironically quite the opposite of what The Beatles represented. There is none of the spontaneous joy, cool insanity and fun that The Beatles stand for.
There is of course nothing wrong with this approach if this is your preference but even so the book falls short. Its selection of evidence where there are controversies seems questionable and somewhat McCartney biased. In fact, Paul McCartney himself had issues with the book as it tends to overinterpret songs and assigns hidden motives behind the song writing when there were none. Paul McCartney has expressed his issues in interviews with Pitchfork and Rolling Stone.
If you want to give it a go, do keep in mind that most of this book is the author’s personal opinion disguised as objective fact. If instead you want truly well-researched material on the band, I can strongly recommend checking out some of Mark Lewisohn’s books.
There is of course nothing wrong with this approach if this is your preference but even so the book falls short. Its selection of evidence where there are controversies seems questionable and somewhat McCartney biased. In fact, Paul McCartney himself had issues with the book as it tends to overinterpret songs and assigns hidden motives behind the song writing when there were none. Paul McCartney has expressed his issues in interviews with Pitchfork and Rolling Stone.
If you want to give it a go, do keep in mind that most of this book is the author’s personal opinion disguised as objective fact. If instead you want truly well-researched material on the band, I can strongly recommend checking out some of Mark Lewisohn’s books.
June 15, 2016
I first received this book as a birthday present from my Dad, three years ago. It was one of the best presents I’ve ever gotten.
That summer, I devoured it. What a perfect excuse to go through The Beatles’ repertoire, song by song, listening to them with new and sharpened ears. It was a revelation. I had heard that music hundreds of times. Yet, with MacDonald guiding me, the songs seemed so new. He just hears things. I thought I had receptive ears, but his ears are monstrous. He rips into the songs—pointing out errors, quirks, influences, instruments—opening up a whole new world.
It is strange what books become touchstones in our lives. It is somewhat embarrassing that this is one of those for me. For months, I was haunted by MacDonald’s voice. When I would reflect, I would hear his opinions and phrases echoing through my mind. In many ways, this was very depressing, for MacDonald is an acute cultural as well as music critic. His reflections on the course of history, the ways that technology is changing our lives, and the progress of art are extraordinary, even if you disagree with him. He was convinced, and managed to convince me, that Western culture was in a precipitous decline. This strikes me as somewhat dramatic now, but it’s a fun read anyway. It just goes to show how powerful was The Beatles’ music that it could attract a mind of this caliber.
There is something momentous about his prose. Not only is it erudite and precise, but also direct and forceful. This goes to show that education need not enervate your writing. Often, MacDonald’s pronouncements on particular songs or trends sounded like the very voice of God judging a sinner. His learning is so wide that he often seems omniscient. The most intimate of personal details and the broadest of cultural trends both figure in his analyses. He then manages to distill these complex thoughts down to just a few sentences—sentences that stick in your mind like the Sermon on the Mount.
My, how I’m going on. I must have read this book at a very sensitive age (not to mention that its subject is my absolute favorite music).
I’m writing this now because I’ve been given the opportunity to go through The Beatles’ oeuvre once more, in a graduate class. Although this book was never assigned, I couldn’t help but return to it. Turning from the dry theoretical discussions in Everett’s The Beatles as Musicians to this slim, well-organized, beautifully written book was always a relief. The writing was just as potent as I remembered it. And MacDonald's arguments, even if less convincing this time around, are always interesting. I can’t imagine a better book on The Beatles. Or, for that matter, on any music.
That summer, I devoured it. What a perfect excuse to go through The Beatles’ repertoire, song by song, listening to them with new and sharpened ears. It was a revelation. I had heard that music hundreds of times. Yet, with MacDonald guiding me, the songs seemed so new. He just hears things. I thought I had receptive ears, but his ears are monstrous. He rips into the songs—pointing out errors, quirks, influences, instruments—opening up a whole new world.
It is strange what books become touchstones in our lives. It is somewhat embarrassing that this is one of those for me. For months, I was haunted by MacDonald’s voice. When I would reflect, I would hear his opinions and phrases echoing through my mind. In many ways, this was very depressing, for MacDonald is an acute cultural as well as music critic. His reflections on the course of history, the ways that technology is changing our lives, and the progress of art are extraordinary, even if you disagree with him. He was convinced, and managed to convince me, that Western culture was in a precipitous decline. This strikes me as somewhat dramatic now, but it’s a fun read anyway. It just goes to show how powerful was The Beatles’ music that it could attract a mind of this caliber.
There is something momentous about his prose. Not only is it erudite and precise, but also direct and forceful. This goes to show that education need not enervate your writing. Often, MacDonald’s pronouncements on particular songs or trends sounded like the very voice of God judging a sinner. His learning is so wide that he often seems omniscient. The most intimate of personal details and the broadest of cultural trends both figure in his analyses. He then manages to distill these complex thoughts down to just a few sentences—sentences that stick in your mind like the Sermon on the Mount.
My, how I’m going on. I must have read this book at a very sensitive age (not to mention that its subject is my absolute favorite music).
I’m writing this now because I’ve been given the opportunity to go through The Beatles’ oeuvre once more, in a graduate class. Although this book was never assigned, I couldn’t help but return to it. Turning from the dry theoretical discussions in Everett’s The Beatles as Musicians to this slim, well-organized, beautifully written book was always a relief. The writing was just as potent as I remembered it. And MacDonald's arguments, even if less convincing this time around, are always interesting. I can’t imagine a better book on The Beatles. Or, for that matter, on any music.
October 2, 2024
Whenever a list of best books about The Beatles appears some titles are immovable: Hunter Davies' early biography, Jann Wenner's Lennon Remembers, Michael Braun's vigorous (and sadly out of print) Love Me Do. This book seems to stand among the tallest. It seems revered as much a work of cultural history as music criticism. ('In a hundred years' time, books such as MacDonald's will be crucial texts for anybody who wants to understand what British post-war culture was about' - Jonathan Coe.)
At first glance the spell is hard to account for. It isn't the memoir of an ace journalist that tagged along for the ride, with the era's electric charge still sizzling in his veins. The book is a string of small essays - some no longer than a paragraph - covering the group's songs in chronological order, with a few extra bits to sandwich between the meat of the text. The back section is modelled on the timelines used in the Everyman world classic series (one column on the band's releases, another on world history at the time). By all rights the result should have been as dry as snuff.
It isn't. MacDonald brings the same passion and intelligence to the Fab Four that William Empson brought to poetry.
On the band's early cover of 'Twist and Shout', MacDonald writes of 'Starr's tremendous hammering drums - his best playing on the album - are crucial to what is, in effect, a prototype of the "heavy metal" idiom, the group self-transformed into a great battering machine', an 'eruptive performance'. 'You're Going to Lose that Girl', unlike 'most of the Help! material, stands the test of time' - the 'explosive release sparks the others into a powerful performance.'
MacDonald isn’t afraid to butcher sacred cows. 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' is 'poorly thought out', idly circling on 'melodic eddies' with a 'clodhopping shift'. The presiding spirit of 'All You Need is Love' is ’self-indulgence’ and he thinks the song deserves every cynical joke made at its expense.
Before reading, I made a mental note of all the Beatles tunes I liked best to see how many met with MacDonald's approval. 'Ticket to Ride', 'Eleanor Rigby', 'Help!', 'Helter Skelter' and Yesterday' all did; 'Dizzy Miss Lizzy', 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' and 'Honey Pie' ('smarmy pointlessness') did not. This doesn't bother me and nor should it. Favourite songs remain favourites regardless of other people's opinions, often because something personal has been unlocked by a song's little key.
We should never sneer at the phrase 'I may not know much about art, but I know what I like' - not least because that is all our opinions can ever amount to. If that seems self-evident to us, it positively gnaws away at MacDonald. 'Cultural relativism' he declares primly, is 'rot' that has 'gutted' music and doomed it to 'catastrophic decline.' Anyone who disagrees with him ‘betrays an inability to distinguish between living expression and the creative equivalent of Frankenstein's monster.'
On the contrary, it reveals that we have a humility that MacDonald lacks. Furthermore, it helps us avoid a blatant contradiction - admitting all taste is opinion, while also serving up your own as unassailable proof to the contrary. MacDonald pays lip service to the notion ('such matters are subjective'), but only in the same way a Creationist pays lip service to science. This remedial blunder lies behind all the book’s worst parts; they disfigure an otherwise fascinating account.
At first glance the spell is hard to account for. It isn't the memoir of an ace journalist that tagged along for the ride, with the era's electric charge still sizzling in his veins. The book is a string of small essays - some no longer than a paragraph - covering the group's songs in chronological order, with a few extra bits to sandwich between the meat of the text. The back section is modelled on the timelines used in the Everyman world classic series (one column on the band's releases, another on world history at the time). By all rights the result should have been as dry as snuff.
It isn't. MacDonald brings the same passion and intelligence to the Fab Four that William Empson brought to poetry.
On the band's early cover of 'Twist and Shout', MacDonald writes of 'Starr's tremendous hammering drums - his best playing on the album - are crucial to what is, in effect, a prototype of the "heavy metal" idiom, the group self-transformed into a great battering machine', an 'eruptive performance'. 'You're Going to Lose that Girl', unlike 'most of the Help! material, stands the test of time' - the 'explosive release sparks the others into a powerful performance.'
MacDonald isn’t afraid to butcher sacred cows. 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' is 'poorly thought out', idly circling on 'melodic eddies' with a 'clodhopping shift'. The presiding spirit of 'All You Need is Love' is ’self-indulgence’ and he thinks the song deserves every cynical joke made at its expense.
Before reading, I made a mental note of all the Beatles tunes I liked best to see how many met with MacDonald's approval. 'Ticket to Ride', 'Eleanor Rigby', 'Help!', 'Helter Skelter' and Yesterday' all did; 'Dizzy Miss Lizzy', 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' and 'Honey Pie' ('smarmy pointlessness') did not. This doesn't bother me and nor should it. Favourite songs remain favourites regardless of other people's opinions, often because something personal has been unlocked by a song's little key.
We should never sneer at the phrase 'I may not know much about art, but I know what I like' - not least because that is all our opinions can ever amount to. If that seems self-evident to us, it positively gnaws away at MacDonald. 'Cultural relativism' he declares primly, is 'rot' that has 'gutted' music and doomed it to 'catastrophic decline.' Anyone who disagrees with him ‘betrays an inability to distinguish between living expression and the creative equivalent of Frankenstein's monster.'
On the contrary, it reveals that we have a humility that MacDonald lacks. Furthermore, it helps us avoid a blatant contradiction - admitting all taste is opinion, while also serving up your own as unassailable proof to the contrary. MacDonald pays lip service to the notion ('such matters are subjective'), but only in the same way a Creationist pays lip service to science. This remedial blunder lies behind all the book’s worst parts; they disfigure an otherwise fascinating account.
January 7, 2024
In Revolution in the Head, MacDonald goes through every Beatles track one-by-one and provides commentary that ranges from musical to lyrical to biographical to sociological. He writes anything from a single paragraph about "Blue Jay Way" to a five-page essay about "Tomorrow Never Knows." He can get pretty deep into the musical end of things, talking about key changes and parallel minors and the Mixolydian mode. Thanks to my recent guitar playing, some of this made more sense than it might have otherwise. I particularly liked MacDonald's discussion of "surprises" in the Beatles' music, which shed light on why some small moments are so good. About "I Saw Her Standing There," he says: "...his high C below the chorus (Woo!) is as startling in its E major key-context as it was in 1963."
The song descriptions come together (no pun intended) into a whole that that traces the Beatles’ career from the raw excitement of their early years, though the psychedelic middle ‘60s, to their more tumultuous final albums. MacDonald relates the groups’ trajectory to that of the decade, showing the ways that they influenced events and were carried along by them. Probably because MacDonald has no official connection with the Beatles, he presents a much harsher picture of the group’s eventual breakup than many other popular sources, and I found that part of the book legitimately distressing.
Even with its song-by-song structure, the book is quite readable all the way through. MacDonald’s style is dense with information, but still accessible. He can be quite funny too. (A favorite footnote: “Some sources ascribe the tambourine to Lennon, but this is unlikely in view of his notoriously poor sense of rhythm and the arcane subtitles of decent tambourine playing.”) Really my only frustration was that it is so dense with details and analysis that it was impossible to really absorb it all in a single reading. I tried to mitigate this somewhat by listening to each album before reading about its songs, but it was still too much. That said, I think this book will make a great reference if I’m thinking about individual songs in the future.
The song descriptions come together (no pun intended) into a whole that that traces the Beatles’ career from the raw excitement of their early years, though the psychedelic middle ‘60s, to their more tumultuous final albums. MacDonald relates the groups’ trajectory to that of the decade, showing the ways that they influenced events and were carried along by them. Probably because MacDonald has no official connection with the Beatles, he presents a much harsher picture of the group’s eventual breakup than many other popular sources, and I found that part of the book legitimately distressing.
Even with its song-by-song structure, the book is quite readable all the way through. MacDonald’s style is dense with information, but still accessible. He can be quite funny too. (A favorite footnote: “Some sources ascribe the tambourine to Lennon, but this is unlikely in view of his notoriously poor sense of rhythm and the arcane subtitles of decent tambourine playing.”) Really my only frustration was that it is so dense with details and analysis that it was impossible to really absorb it all in a single reading. I tried to mitigate this somewhat by listening to each album before reading about its songs, but it was still too much. That said, I think this book will make a great reference if I’m thinking about individual songs in the future.
January 9, 2023
The Frankfurt school meets the Beatles, but without any of the good writing or social insight. There's plenty to appreciate about the level of detail in the song-by-song treatments, but all potential good will is obliterated by the unbearable unctuousness of the style. This is particularly true in the the opening 40-page pop-sociological take on 'the sixties,' which contains some of the purplest prose you'll ever find, and is characterized by sweeping claims that seem to emerge entirely out of the author's subjective experience but which are presented as obvious and incontrovertible truths.
The defining feature of The Beatles is the nearly-universal sense of happiness they provoke. Which makes it seriously bizarre that one of the canonical books about them is such a towering pile of smarm.
The defining feature of The Beatles is the nearly-universal sense of happiness they provoke. Which makes it seriously bizarre that one of the canonical books about them is such a towering pile of smarm.
January 10, 2013
A life-changing book. I'm not exaggerating-- it changed the way I listen to music. Brilliant not only as an examination of the Beatles' songs but also the culture of the 1960s and the state of popular music since. Whether one agrees with MacDonald's conclusions or not (chiefly that pop music has steadily declined in quality since the late 60s), they're always exceedingly well-formulated and eloquently argued.
December 24, 2018
The author offers commentary on every song in the Beatles catalog, and it doesn't seem as though he liked more than a handful of them. The saving grace of this book is that it provides a bit of interesting information here and there, but in general the author, like many critics, comes across as a pompous ass.
August 11, 2024
"Don't you know that you can count me out? (In?)"
- "Revolution 1" [album version]
Considered a seminal work of Beatles history and criticism, Ian MacDonald's Revolution in the Head is really two or three books fused a little awkwardly into one.
The first section, "Fabled Foursome, Disappearing Decade," is a long polemical essay arguing, as far as I could understand, that the real legacy of the '60s was not a shift towards collectivist politics or inclusive social mores, but rather a more individualized "revolution in the head" which substituted the pursuit of personal pleasure and self-discovery for the traditional, communal functions of Church and State. In this way, MacDonald posits, the "radical" '60s in fact paved the way for the kind of self-serving libertarianism which would culminate a couple decades later in the ascendance of Reagan, Thatcher, and their ilk. While intermittently compelling, the prose in this section is badly bloated and the conclusions far too sweeping to be taken very seriously. Ironically, I get the feeling the Beatles themselves were a late and slightly haphazard addition to the piece; they're mentioned only sporadically, and their only real bearing on MacDonald's larger argument is that the trajectory of their career serves as a handy microcosm of the '60s as a whole. Certainly not a novel conclusion now, and probably not in 1994 either. (A missed opportunity, since the Beatles' handful of more overtly political songs—the anti-wealth tax anthem "Taxman," the ode to the status quo "Revolution"—would actually seem to affirm MacDonald's thesis.)
The second section is a chronological catalog of every song the Beatles ever recorded, or at least every one MacDonald had access to at the time of his writing. (Since there are few things more dreary than reading descriptions of pop songs you don't actually know, I decided to focus on the entries for songs I could readily call to mind—which, in fairness, was still probably about 85% of them.) Notes about the composition and recording history are interspersed with MacDonald's own unvarnished critical takes, and your appreciation of this part will depend largely on whether you enjoy these opinionated dissections of some of the most beloved pop songs of all time or find them inappropriate in a book which also presents itself as a sort of reference text. I was mostly able to get on board, though it probably helped that MacDonald seems to share my general conception of the respective roles and talents of the three songwriting Beatles: Paul as the true musical genius and definitive late-career leader of the band, if also somewhat domineering and given to schmaltz and "granny music" (in John's famous phrase) when left to his own devices; John as the necessary id to Paul's ego, an emotion-driven songwriter whose raw candor was integral to the band's appeal, even as his willfulness and susceptibility to personalities, ideologies, and mind-altering substances often made him as much of a liability as an asset to the group; and George as a distant third, capable of transcendent moments but lacking the innate abilities of his senior bandmates and too preoccupied with grumbling social commentary and his own inward spiritual journey to compete with their more universal charms.
It was nice to see a respected music critic giving McCartney his due in an era when Lennon-worship was still the norm, and I admit I took some perverse pleasure in his almost complete dismissal of Harrison as a songwriter, given that pro-George revisionism has reached a fever pitch lately in fan spaces. ("Long Long Long" and "Something" are the only two George songs MacDonald has anything more than passing praise for; incidentally the former is also my favorite of his Beatles-era works.) MacDonald also manages to turn what could be (and, okay, occasionally still is) a mere numbing inventory of recordings into a reasonably engaging narrative of the band's musical evolution and decline. On the other hand, the continuous nitpicking can get dispiriting after awhile, and MacDonald's complete disdain for anything with a harder rock influence shuts him off from what I and many other fans would consider some of their best late material. (He trashes "Helter Skelter," "I Want You / She's So Heavy," and even "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" on the grounds that they're more rock than pop; how the rock 'n' roll of their earlier career fits into this schema was never quite clear to me.) The level of detail also fluctuates wildly depending on his personal interest in a given track, and, whatever my own biases, it's not hard to detect a double standard in his treatment of pieces he likes versus those he doesn't, particularly when George Harrison is involved. (The random snatches of a radio broadcast of King Lear in "I Am the Walrus" are "fortuitous"; a similarly-deployed interpolation in "It's All Too Much" is "meaningless.")
The final section includes a meticulously detailed timeline of '60s releases, a distinctly kids-these-days rant about the state of popular music in the '90s, and various glossaries and indices. I skipped all this.
So, like I said, a weird chimaera of a book, probably too encyclopedic for most casual fans, too inconsistent for obsessives, and partisan enough to put off both. As someone who falls somewhere between the two poles, with a high tolerance for hot takes and trivia, I found it an absorbing if ultimately slightly exhausting way to spend a few reading days. Let's say 2.5 stars for the opening essay, 4 for the catalog of songs, no rating for the back matter, and 3 overall.
- "Revolution 1" [album version]
Considered a seminal work of Beatles history and criticism, Ian MacDonald's Revolution in the Head is really two or three books fused a little awkwardly into one.
The first section, "Fabled Foursome, Disappearing Decade," is a long polemical essay arguing, as far as I could understand, that the real legacy of the '60s was not a shift towards collectivist politics or inclusive social mores, but rather a more individualized "revolution in the head" which substituted the pursuit of personal pleasure and self-discovery for the traditional, communal functions of Church and State. In this way, MacDonald posits, the "radical" '60s in fact paved the way for the kind of self-serving libertarianism which would culminate a couple decades later in the ascendance of Reagan, Thatcher, and their ilk. While intermittently compelling, the prose in this section is badly bloated and the conclusions far too sweeping to be taken very seriously. Ironically, I get the feeling the Beatles themselves were a late and slightly haphazard addition to the piece; they're mentioned only sporadically, and their only real bearing on MacDonald's larger argument is that the trajectory of their career serves as a handy microcosm of the '60s as a whole. Certainly not a novel conclusion now, and probably not in 1994 either. (A missed opportunity, since the Beatles' handful of more overtly political songs—the anti-wealth tax anthem "Taxman," the ode to the status quo "Revolution"—would actually seem to affirm MacDonald's thesis.)
The second section is a chronological catalog of every song the Beatles ever recorded, or at least every one MacDonald had access to at the time of his writing. (Since there are few things more dreary than reading descriptions of pop songs you don't actually know, I decided to focus on the entries for songs I could readily call to mind—which, in fairness, was still probably about 85% of them.) Notes about the composition and recording history are interspersed with MacDonald's own unvarnished critical takes, and your appreciation of this part will depend largely on whether you enjoy these opinionated dissections of some of the most beloved pop songs of all time or find them inappropriate in a book which also presents itself as a sort of reference text. I was mostly able to get on board, though it probably helped that MacDonald seems to share my general conception of the respective roles and talents of the three songwriting Beatles: Paul as the true musical genius and definitive late-career leader of the band, if also somewhat domineering and given to schmaltz and "granny music" (in John's famous phrase) when left to his own devices; John as the necessary id to Paul's ego, an emotion-driven songwriter whose raw candor was integral to the band's appeal, even as his willfulness and susceptibility to personalities, ideologies, and mind-altering substances often made him as much of a liability as an asset to the group; and George as a distant third, capable of transcendent moments but lacking the innate abilities of his senior bandmates and too preoccupied with grumbling social commentary and his own inward spiritual journey to compete with their more universal charms.
It was nice to see a respected music critic giving McCartney his due in an era when Lennon-worship was still the norm, and I admit I took some perverse pleasure in his almost complete dismissal of Harrison as a songwriter, given that pro-George revisionism has reached a fever pitch lately in fan spaces. ("Long Long Long" and "Something" are the only two George songs MacDonald has anything more than passing praise for; incidentally the former is also my favorite of his Beatles-era works.) MacDonald also manages to turn what could be (and, okay, occasionally still is) a mere numbing inventory of recordings into a reasonably engaging narrative of the band's musical evolution and decline. On the other hand, the continuous nitpicking can get dispiriting after awhile, and MacDonald's complete disdain for anything with a harder rock influence shuts him off from what I and many other fans would consider some of their best late material. (He trashes "Helter Skelter," "I Want You / She's So Heavy," and even "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" on the grounds that they're more rock than pop; how the rock 'n' roll of their earlier career fits into this schema was never quite clear to me.) The level of detail also fluctuates wildly depending on his personal interest in a given track, and, whatever my own biases, it's not hard to detect a double standard in his treatment of pieces he likes versus those he doesn't, particularly when George Harrison is involved. (The random snatches of a radio broadcast of King Lear in "I Am the Walrus" are "fortuitous"; a similarly-deployed interpolation in "It's All Too Much" is "meaningless.")
The final section includes a meticulously detailed timeline of '60s releases, a distinctly kids-these-days rant about the state of popular music in the '90s, and various glossaries and indices. I skipped all this.
So, like I said, a weird chimaera of a book, probably too encyclopedic for most casual fans, too inconsistent for obsessives, and partisan enough to put off both. As someone who falls somewhere between the two poles, with a high tolerance for hot takes and trivia, I found it an absorbing if ultimately slightly exhausting way to spend a few reading days. Let's say 2.5 stars for the opening essay, 4 for the catalog of songs, no rating for the back matter, and 3 overall.
July 7, 2012
Beatles fan? Stop worrying about why Paul's barefoot on the "Abbey Road" cover ("28IF! Ooooh!") and get this into your life now. There's some hard sledding at the top, with a long-ish essay on how the group's music changed the culture. MacDonald's main point is that the music was a revolution in the head in more ways than one - specifically, that The Beatles used a lot of drugs to create some truly innovative music (and, he argues, some truly sloppy lyrics - a point that becomes depressingly persuasive by book's end). Then, it's on to the songs. All of them, and you'll probably never hear them the same way again. Granted, if you don't remember chord theory and triplets from piano class, some of the passages may be unintelligible. But there's at least one brilliant nugget on every page, which can be honestly said of very few books. Best of all? He's not a partisan to any of The Beatles, loving and teasing each in equal measure. Again, that's a rare find in a book about the world's most famous rock group.
February 2, 2015
If you ever wondered how the Beatles crafted their tunes, this is the book for you.
I enjoyed its detail and some of the musical analysis. The author is sparing with his praise and blunt with criticism, which I enjoyed. The way he dressed down some of the tracks in particular had me laughing out loud (although that was not the author's intention.)
I found this book difficult to read straight through. It is long and drags in many points. As a musician, I appreciated some of the musical analysis but sometimes it gets poncy, and I found myself thinking, "Oh come on man, it's rock and roll! Chill out!"
This book is clearly for Beatles nerds or music nerds. Being both, I found it overall pleasant, but would not recommend it for everybody.
It also loses one star for my e-copy having a table of contents and glossary that are faulty. The best way to read this book is to just listen to The Beatles and when a track grabs your interest, pick up the book and learn a bit more. However, the broken links make this very laborious and unpleasant.
Until this is fixed, I'd recommend a picking up a hard copy.
I enjoyed its detail and some of the musical analysis. The author is sparing with his praise and blunt with criticism, which I enjoyed. The way he dressed down some of the tracks in particular had me laughing out loud (although that was not the author's intention.)
I found this book difficult to read straight through. It is long and drags in many points. As a musician, I appreciated some of the musical analysis but sometimes it gets poncy, and I found myself thinking, "Oh come on man, it's rock and roll! Chill out!"
This book is clearly for Beatles nerds or music nerds. Being both, I found it overall pleasant, but would not recommend it for everybody.
It also loses one star for my e-copy having a table of contents and glossary that are faulty. The best way to read this book is to just listen to The Beatles and when a track grabs your interest, pick up the book and learn a bit more. However, the broken links make this very laborious and unpleasant.
Until this is fixed, I'd recommend a picking up a hard copy.
November 27, 2022
This is actually a re-read, this book was one that I longed to find whenever I got into the Beatles and never seemed to find (though it occurs to me now that I could've just ordered it online, I never thought to do so). I found it a few years back and really enjoyed it, and decided to revisit it recently because I needed some Beatles literature in my life.
"Revolution In the Head" is the Beatles song-by-song, by music critic Ian MacDonald. It's fair to say that this is one of the most fun Beatles books out there, because it looks at each song from the Beatles' career and breaks down each track, sometimes in exacting, illuminating prose, and sometimes in a sentence or two. Chances are, you will find many of his judgments either spot-on or off-the-mark, depending on which song he's talking about. I found plenty to disagree with him about ("Come Together" is the worst song in the Beatles' canon, to my way of thinking; this is the hill that I choose to die on), but I enjoyed it immensely nonetheless. If you're a Beatles fan, and you love talking about their actual music, this book will be right up your alley.
"Revolution In the Head" is the Beatles song-by-song, by music critic Ian MacDonald. It's fair to say that this is one of the most fun Beatles books out there, because it looks at each song from the Beatles' career and breaks down each track, sometimes in exacting, illuminating prose, and sometimes in a sentence or two. Chances are, you will find many of his judgments either spot-on or off-the-mark, depending on which song he's talking about. I found plenty to disagree with him about ("Come Together" is the worst song in the Beatles' canon, to my way of thinking; this is the hill that I choose to die on), but I enjoyed it immensely nonetheless. If you're a Beatles fan, and you love talking about their actual music, this book will be right up your alley.
July 5, 2014
You would've thought that I'd like this book, but it was a slog. I like it for its accumulation of facts--there's really no other book that's so detailed about who plays what on what song (and I find that McCartney plays some of my favorite and some of my least favorite Beatles guitar solos). Were I able to appreciate music theory, I would revel in which songs use the Mixolydian mode and so forth; as it is, it's cool to see how musically experimental they were. And the details that Macdonald accumulates from the other Beatles books collect some things I've missed--though citing The Lives of John Lennon as gospel truth annoys me.
My main problem with it is that Macdonald wants this book to be about the sixties, too, and, when called upon to speculate, speculates large. So everything Beatles gets tied into everything sixties, especially when it fits together well, or well enough. I'll give him the influence of the Beatles through Beatlemania and the release of Sergeant Pepper, as well as the importance given to the activities of the Beatles by the media and by the counterculture. However, he goes a little far:
Oh? I find the socio-political analysis a rather awkward fit with most of the discussion of the Beatles songs, and definitely ruled by Macdonald's own theories. He hates drugs, especially LSD--which is fine--but lets his hatred of it cloud his interpretation of songs until he's saying things like: "["Doctor Robert"] can be heard as a rebellious message from Lennon's subconscious concerning the trustworthiness of 'Doctor' Timothy Leary." His dislike of Yoko Ono and avant-garde art and Lennon's occasionally impenetrable lyrics lead him to blame the Beatles for creating art open to misinterpretation by psychopaths--and at one point, he suggests that writing meaningless songs led directly to the Manson family and to Lennon's own murder (see his entry on "Glass Onion").
Good on music, bad on words. Great reference book on song details--interpretation better elsewhere.
My main problem with it is that Macdonald wants this book to be about the sixties, too, and, when called upon to speculate, speculates large. So everything Beatles gets tied into everything sixties, especially when it fits together well, or well enough. I'll give him the influence of the Beatles through Beatlemania and the release of Sergeant Pepper, as well as the importance given to the activities of the Beatles by the media and by the counterculture. However, he goes a little far:
"Come Together" is the key song of the turn of the decade, isolating a pivotal moment when the free world's coming generation rejected established wisdom, knowledge, ethics, and behaviour for a drug-inspired relativism which has since undermined the intellectual foundations of Western culture.
Oh? I find the socio-political analysis a rather awkward fit with most of the discussion of the Beatles songs, and definitely ruled by Macdonald's own theories. He hates drugs, especially LSD--which is fine--but lets his hatred of it cloud his interpretation of songs until he's saying things like: "["Doctor Robert"] can be heard as a rebellious message from Lennon's subconscious concerning the trustworthiness of 'Doctor' Timothy Leary." His dislike of Yoko Ono and avant-garde art and Lennon's occasionally impenetrable lyrics lead him to blame the Beatles for creating art open to misinterpretation by psychopaths--and at one point, he suggests that writing meaningless songs led directly to the Manson family and to Lennon's own murder (see his entry on "Glass Onion").
Good on music, bad on words. Great reference book on song details--interpretation better elsewhere.
February 6, 2017
This is my third time through this book and the first time that it, written in the early 90s, has seemed dated to me. MacDonald writes thoughtfully and only occasionally technically about each officially released Beatles song (this was written before the Anthology releases, so that information is lacking). He is guilty of propagating false information (for example, he repeats the old line that the original title of "Tomorrow Never Knows" was "The Void," which it wasn't) and makes some unsupported and incorrect guesses (e.g. the unreleased "Los Paranoios" wasn't an early version of "Sun King"--something he was unlikely to know until Anthology 3 appeared in 1996, two years after this was published), and, oddly, uses Goldman's questionable Lennon scholarship as a primary biographical source.
However, those are really small quibbles. Overall, this was and is a superb compendium of Beatles information. No music lover's library should be without it.
However, those are really small quibbles. Overall, this was and is a superb compendium of Beatles information. No music lover's library should be without it.
February 19, 2021
4.5 stars. This track-by-track analysis of the Beatles' entire recording career is never less than completely gripping. Watching the band move from "Love Me Do" to "Let It Be" over the course of roughly seven years and 544 pages puts the arc of the group's musical achievement into perspective. You know how the story ends, but you want to keep reading, partly for MacDonald's superb prose and his insights into each song but also because he uses the Beatles' discography as a reflection of the decade in which they thrived. I don't always agree with his judgements on the songs (mostly I do), and he is subtly hard on McCartney (his praise often feels grudging), but this is the best literary expression of the Beatles' legacy that I've had the pleasure to read. [ Note: make sure you read the latest edition. ]
June 18, 2023
The best thing about this book has more to do with how it makes the reader think about things (music, songwriting, art, the 1960s) than with what it actually says. Which is not to say that what is says is insubstantial. To the contrary, the book—an essay on every song written or recorded by the Beatles—is a fascinating and intelligent read, covering the odyssey that was the Beatles’ musical output, the inspirations that prompted them to greatness, and their numerous successes and failures.
Indeed, the perceived failures are one of the more interesting parts, as much of the group’s catalogue contains sacred cows that do need to be deflated. “Run for your life,” is fairly abhorrent. “All You Need is Love” is pretty vacuous. And god bless George Harrison, but a lot of his songs are super boring, although there is praise given to late-Harrison songs like “I Me Mine,” “For You Blue,” and, to a lesser extent, “Something” (none of which suffer from the dirge-like progressions appearing in songs like “Blue Jay Way”).
The successes are easy to guess—the band’s musical apex (at least in MacDonald’s view) is “A Day in the Life,” and it is hard to argue with that. He also correctly praises “Strawberry Fields,” “Elenore Rigby,” and “Penny Lane,” and I defy anyone to not have a tear in their eye when reading MacDonald’s account of “You Never Give Me Your Money.”
Not to say that everything MacDonald wrote convinced me. The implication John was somehow responsible for crazy people finding violent or destructive meanings in his lyrics seems dangerous and indefensible. He is unfairly hard on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “Lucy in the Sky,” “Helter Skelter,” and much of the Help! album, while giving some faint praise to “Hey Bulldog,” “I want you (she’s so heavy)” and “Within You, Without You.” And although his four-page essay on “Revolution #9” successfully placed the audio-experiment into context so I could appreciate it more, I’m still not going to put it on a mix-tape.
But that doesn’t matter, does it? After all, what MacDonald likes or doesn’t like shouldn’t affect what the reader appreciates. Like any critic or reviewer, you are going to quibble with his assertions (and reader be warned: He IS going to unceremoniously dismiss some of your personal favorites). As another reviewer wrote, to read this is to read the “rantings of a highly-educated blogger.” But the fact that MacDonald is highly educated and has devoted so much thought to this aids the reader’s appreciation of music that years and years of cultural osmosis may have numbed. Indeed, one of the more enjoyable aspects of the book was to go back and re-listen to certain songs with a new ear. Sometimes MacDonald had a point, sometimes I found that I was correct all along.
The fact is, if you are a Beatles fan, you should read this book. Some of it is esoteric—MacDonald talks at length about the melodic progressions, lyrical development, instrumentation choices, and recording techniques used on each track. Some of it is less academic, as he also discusses the various contributions by each member, the states of mind they were in, and how those factors helped create each song. And it doesn’t shy away from the cracks in the façade, being fairly critical of both John and Paul’s attitudes and actions during the later half of the group. (Paul comes across as much more sympathetic, although still kind of an annoying school marm). But much of it is just a great reminder of why the music is so wonderful, and why this group—which continues to generate so much joy—was so much greater than the sum of its individual parts.
Indeed, the perceived failures are one of the more interesting parts, as much of the group’s catalogue contains sacred cows that do need to be deflated. “Run for your life,” is fairly abhorrent. “All You Need is Love” is pretty vacuous. And god bless George Harrison, but a lot of his songs are super boring, although there is praise given to late-Harrison songs like “I Me Mine,” “For You Blue,” and, to a lesser extent, “Something” (none of which suffer from the dirge-like progressions appearing in songs like “Blue Jay Way”).
The successes are easy to guess—the band’s musical apex (at least in MacDonald’s view) is “A Day in the Life,” and it is hard to argue with that. He also correctly praises “Strawberry Fields,” “Elenore Rigby,” and “Penny Lane,” and I defy anyone to not have a tear in their eye when reading MacDonald’s account of “You Never Give Me Your Money.”
Not to say that everything MacDonald wrote convinced me. The implication John was somehow responsible for crazy people finding violent or destructive meanings in his lyrics seems dangerous and indefensible. He is unfairly hard on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “Lucy in the Sky,” “Helter Skelter,” and much of the Help! album, while giving some faint praise to “Hey Bulldog,” “I want you (she’s so heavy)” and “Within You, Without You.” And although his four-page essay on “Revolution #9” successfully placed the audio-experiment into context so I could appreciate it more, I’m still not going to put it on a mix-tape.
But that doesn’t matter, does it? After all, what MacDonald likes or doesn’t like shouldn’t affect what the reader appreciates. Like any critic or reviewer, you are going to quibble with his assertions (and reader be warned: He IS going to unceremoniously dismiss some of your personal favorites). As another reviewer wrote, to read this is to read the “rantings of a highly-educated blogger.” But the fact that MacDonald is highly educated and has devoted so much thought to this aids the reader’s appreciation of music that years and years of cultural osmosis may have numbed. Indeed, one of the more enjoyable aspects of the book was to go back and re-listen to certain songs with a new ear. Sometimes MacDonald had a point, sometimes I found that I was correct all along.
The fact is, if you are a Beatles fan, you should read this book. Some of it is esoteric—MacDonald talks at length about the melodic progressions, lyrical development, instrumentation choices, and recording techniques used on each track. Some of it is less academic, as he also discusses the various contributions by each member, the states of mind they were in, and how those factors helped create each song. And it doesn’t shy away from the cracks in the façade, being fairly critical of both John and Paul’s attitudes and actions during the later half of the group. (Paul comes across as much more sympathetic, although still kind of an annoying school marm). But much of it is just a great reminder of why the music is so wonderful, and why this group—which continues to generate so much joy—was so much greater than the sum of its individual parts.
October 5, 2012
I've read a lot of books about The Beatles. I have an entire shelf devoted to them. And I can say without hesitation that this is the best of them all.
The band's songs are addressed in chronological order, based on the date they began recording -- a strategy deemed "a fallacy" by the similarly detailed song-by-song appreciation Tell Me Why: The Beatles: Album By Album, Song By Song, The Sixties And After. But while this decision takes the songs out of the order in which the band chose to present them, it encourages a great deal of insight and unexpected connections: between the songs themselves (I'd never noticed, for instance, the pervasive influence of Indian drones on so many of their '65-'66 songs, stretching all the way back to "Ticket to Ride") and between the Beatles and the '60s art and culture happening at the same time. MacDonald illuminates an unexpected connection on nearly every page.
There are insights here that I can't believe I've never come across before, so seemingly obvious are they after he shares them. Naming Lennon's musical tendencies "horizontal" (limited melodic and harmonic motion from one moment to the next) and McCartney's "vertical" (melodic leaps and unexpected intervals) is a simple thing, but it immediately deepens one's understanding of their collaboration.
This book also has the sadly rare quality of being fair to (while sometimes critical of) all four members, instead of embracing the cliche of John as genius, Paul as corny showman, and George and Ringo as junior partners. It doesn't put the band on a pedestal either, instead elucidating the many ways they were influenced by peers while at the same time being influential themselves. Even if you don't agree with MacDonald's assessment of every song -- I certainly didn't -- the unvarnished tone and expert insight on display here are unmatched.
The band's songs are addressed in chronological order, based on the date they began recording -- a strategy deemed "a fallacy" by the similarly detailed song-by-song appreciation Tell Me Why: The Beatles: Album By Album, Song By Song, The Sixties And After. But while this decision takes the songs out of the order in which the band chose to present them, it encourages a great deal of insight and unexpected connections: between the songs themselves (I'd never noticed, for instance, the pervasive influence of Indian drones on so many of their '65-'66 songs, stretching all the way back to "Ticket to Ride") and between the Beatles and the '60s art and culture happening at the same time. MacDonald illuminates an unexpected connection on nearly every page.
There are insights here that I can't believe I've never come across before, so seemingly obvious are they after he shares them. Naming Lennon's musical tendencies "horizontal" (limited melodic and harmonic motion from one moment to the next) and McCartney's "vertical" (melodic leaps and unexpected intervals) is a simple thing, but it immediately deepens one's understanding of their collaboration.
This book also has the sadly rare quality of being fair to (while sometimes critical of) all four members, instead of embracing the cliche of John as genius, Paul as corny showman, and George and Ringo as junior partners. It doesn't put the band on a pedestal either, instead elucidating the many ways they were influenced by peers while at the same time being influential themselves. Even if you don't agree with MacDonald's assessment of every song -- I certainly didn't -- the unvarnished tone and expert insight on display here are unmatched.
August 8, 2016
I’ve spent most of my life around radio and music and the artists of the 60s and 70s just mean more to me all the time. I listen to and love music from all eras, and constantly listen to as much new music as possible. It might even be that we’re again entering a unique cultural period that could produce music like that specifically of ’65-’75. But as Macdonald expertly shows through his examination of The Beatles' songs, there was a perfect storm of culture, politics, inspiration, social issues and musical evolution that collided with The Beatles and this particular time period to make them the greatest pop act in history. The guys themselves certainly aren’t the most talented to ever come along, but it was all these things together that made them what they were. Given the technology around music and music distribution, combined with entertainment technology generally, it’s hard to say if we could ever have one artist or group that could attain this level of significance again. It’s a constant debate whether or not music has lost its quality over the years – in the end of course there’s a lot of subjectivity involved. This book is not just for the Beatles fan, but for those interested in music history generally as there’s a good deal of context here.
Want to read
May 12, 2008I'm interested because MacDonald writes: "Like the Rolling Stones, Led Zeplin and other pop rock artists of the time, The Beatles became fascinated by the multi-instrumentalist Scottish folk duo, "The Incredible String Band," whose album "The 5,000 Spirits " emerged in 1967 as an acoustic equivalent of The Beatles own "Sgt. Pepper" album. The duo Robin Williamson and Mike Heron, at the height of their creativity, were amongst the most imaginative of British songwriters." Revolution probably won' go into enough detail on this subject but I'm extremely pleased he has made it official for the unconverted.
October 26, 2023
This gloriously blends an objective and thoroughly academic look at each and every released Beatles song with the author's often very witty and pithy personal put downs.
Slowly reading and savouring this book, (listening to not only the Beatles' songs but the other contemporary acts he mentions that I was not so familiar with), I felt like I was spending time with an incredibly erudite friend with a profitable sideline in biting observations.
I did not agree with all his opinions and I can see why this book would not be for everyone, but it was a very fulfilling read and has changed the way I listen to some songs.
Slowly reading and savouring this book, (listening to not only the Beatles' songs but the other contemporary acts he mentions that I was not so familiar with), I felt like I was spending time with an incredibly erudite friend with a profitable sideline in biting observations.
I did not agree with all his opinions and I can see why this book would not be for everyone, but it was a very fulfilling read and has changed the way I listen to some songs.
July 2, 2013
Stumbles at the final hurdle
This book was more than just an excellent account of The Beatles' recorded output, but a telling historical document of the Sixties in general: the sociological factors coming into the decade, the increasing cultural divide between the old and new generations, the political upheaval on both sides of the Atlantic and the lasting impact of these consequences are dealt with in the introduction alone. This is by far not the sole reason MacDonald should be commended for taking on this gargantuan project. His contributions to the most discussed pop group in history are manifold: the chronological account of the evolution of pop music in relation to drug culture being most prominent, and demonstrated convincingly through The Beatles' musical stages; in particular the introduction of LSD being not only the pivot for the group into their psychedelic era, but perhaps that of the social outlook of the entire twentieth century. That the author manages this without seeming contrived or oversimplified is astonishing.
Coming into Revolution In The Head as a fairly casual fan of the band (having listened to all of their studio albums from Rubber Soul onwards; Revolver and Abbey Road being my favourites), and being a fan of music culture and musicology MacDonald's insights were to this reader revealatory. The text's main body, which spans the entirety of The Beatles' back catalogue released through Parlophone/EMI in the order they were recorded (and stopping off at many unreleased numbers) takes the Four down to microscopic levels of scrutiny. As such I was relieved to find MacDonald's critical eye extremely clear: virtually entirely free of apology or sentimentality, and eager to draw attention to flaws in the most popular and critically lauded songs and albums. The result makes The Beatles on the whole seem a tad overrated: on many occasions it is made clear that the group could have easily imploded at any moment beyond 1966, usually reigned back in by the increasingly amiable McCartney (until now I've leaned towards Lennon as the superior of the two; this book has forced me to readopt my position considerably). Against this stands the author's extended musings on key songs ("Tomorrow Never Knows", "A Day In The Life"); successfully counteracting the seemingly endless cover versions in the early section, and half-paragraph dismissals (not entirely unfairly) of the fruits of the "Get Back" sessions towards its close; and re-establishing the genuine merit of The Beatles' reverence.
Unfortunately this is where I and MacDonald must part ways. This may only seem like a small quip of what would otherwise easily pass as a 5-star book (because it really is), but the six page "Note To Chronology" section that gives way to an extended timeline of The Beatles' career, the UK pop chart, political and cultural events seriously damages the author's astute, balanced account of popular music he had up until this point. As if from nowhere MacDonald launches into a post-Adornian tirade on the quality (or, as he clearly believes, lack thereof) of anything recorded beyond 1970, particularly music of the Nineties (Revolution In The Head was originally published in 1998, shortly after the release of the Anthology series and the Britpop "movement" beginning c. 1993). This book offers plenty of examples where MacDonald's personal biases are put to constructive use; however this section is ill-conceived, out of step with the rest of the book, and offers nothing in terms of enjoyment or education to the reader. It's actually quite embarrassing to see such a capable music critic reduce himself to curmudgeonly blanket statements ("rap, at its best, being a dazzling combination of street-doggerel and vocal drum-solo"), or, by the author's own admission unnecessary attempts at tastemaking like the following:
"All that matters is that, when examining the following Chronology of Sixties pop, readers are aware that they are looking at something on a higher scale of achievement than today's [...] [O]nly the soulless or tone-deaf will refuse to admit any decline at all."
Regardless even I am ready to admit that Revolution In The Head is a fantastic and hugely enjoyable read, one that I would recommend to anyone with an interest in musicology or Sixties counterculture (particularly drug culture). I'm very much looking forward to going back to those records with a more attentive ear. If I were to read it again I would stop prior to the unfortunate "Note To Chronology" - no harm done!
This book was more than just an excellent account of The Beatles' recorded output, but a telling historical document of the Sixties in general: the sociological factors coming into the decade, the increasing cultural divide between the old and new generations, the political upheaval on both sides of the Atlantic and the lasting impact of these consequences are dealt with in the introduction alone. This is by far not the sole reason MacDonald should be commended for taking on this gargantuan project. His contributions to the most discussed pop group in history are manifold: the chronological account of the evolution of pop music in relation to drug culture being most prominent, and demonstrated convincingly through The Beatles' musical stages; in particular the introduction of LSD being not only the pivot for the group into their psychedelic era, but perhaps that of the social outlook of the entire twentieth century. That the author manages this without seeming contrived or oversimplified is astonishing.
Coming into Revolution In The Head as a fairly casual fan of the band (having listened to all of their studio albums from Rubber Soul onwards; Revolver and Abbey Road being my favourites), and being a fan of music culture and musicology MacDonald's insights were to this reader revealatory. The text's main body, which spans the entirety of The Beatles' back catalogue released through Parlophone/EMI in the order they were recorded (and stopping off at many unreleased numbers) takes the Four down to microscopic levels of scrutiny. As such I was relieved to find MacDonald's critical eye extremely clear: virtually entirely free of apology or sentimentality, and eager to draw attention to flaws in the most popular and critically lauded songs and albums. The result makes The Beatles on the whole seem a tad overrated: on many occasions it is made clear that the group could have easily imploded at any moment beyond 1966, usually reigned back in by the increasingly amiable McCartney (until now I've leaned towards Lennon as the superior of the two; this book has forced me to readopt my position considerably). Against this stands the author's extended musings on key songs ("Tomorrow Never Knows", "A Day In The Life"); successfully counteracting the seemingly endless cover versions in the early section, and half-paragraph dismissals (not entirely unfairly) of the fruits of the "Get Back" sessions towards its close; and re-establishing the genuine merit of The Beatles' reverence.
Unfortunately this is where I and MacDonald must part ways. This may only seem like a small quip of what would otherwise easily pass as a 5-star book (because it really is), but the six page "Note To Chronology" section that gives way to an extended timeline of The Beatles' career, the UK pop chart, political and cultural events seriously damages the author's astute, balanced account of popular music he had up until this point. As if from nowhere MacDonald launches into a post-Adornian tirade on the quality (or, as he clearly believes, lack thereof) of anything recorded beyond 1970, particularly music of the Nineties (Revolution In The Head was originally published in 1998, shortly after the release of the Anthology series and the Britpop "movement" beginning c. 1993). This book offers plenty of examples where MacDonald's personal biases are put to constructive use; however this section is ill-conceived, out of step with the rest of the book, and offers nothing in terms of enjoyment or education to the reader. It's actually quite embarrassing to see such a capable music critic reduce himself to curmudgeonly blanket statements ("rap, at its best, being a dazzling combination of street-doggerel and vocal drum-solo"), or, by the author's own admission unnecessary attempts at tastemaking like the following:
"All that matters is that, when examining the following Chronology of Sixties pop, readers are aware that they are looking at something on a higher scale of achievement than today's [...] [O]nly the soulless or tone-deaf will refuse to admit any decline at all."
Regardless even I am ready to admit that Revolution In The Head is a fantastic and hugely enjoyable read, one that I would recommend to anyone with an interest in musicology or Sixties counterculture (particularly drug culture). I'm very much looking forward to going back to those records with a more attentive ear. If I were to read it again I would stop prior to the unfortunate "Note To Chronology" - no harm done!
May 6, 2024
Music appreciation in the head
I am rating this book three stars rather than two primarily because Ian Macdonald obviously put a lot of time and effort into assembling this book. He undoubtedly possesses an extensive knowledge of music theory and terminology. However, this musical erudition lies as a barrier between the reader and the immediacy of the experience of hearing the music of the Beatles. Before reading this book, I had no idea what a mixolydian scale is. I'm reminded of the 'aeolian cadence' remark made by a music scholar early in the Beatles' career concerning "Not a Second Time". I'm also reminded of the quote, attributed to various people that 'writing about music is like dancing about architecture'. Macdonald's title 'revolution in the head' is very revealing as it indicates that he is primarily experiencing the Beatles' music in the head rather than the heart. However, the enduring resonance of the Beatles and a primary reason why they are still imprinted in the consciousness of millions of people is that quality of heart-centered joy and beauty that seems to elude Macdonald too much to draw him out of his head, with very few exceptions.
One of those exceptions occurs when he indulges in one passage of emotional expression when writing about Paul McCartney's brilliant opening to the concluding medley of 'Abbey Road', "You Never Give Me Your Money".
'To anyone who loves the Beatles, the bittersweet nostalgia of this music is hard to hear without a tear in the eye. Here, an entire era--the idealistic, innocent Sixties--is bravely bidden farewell."
More often than not he remains unmoved by gems such as "For No One", "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", and "Here Comes the Sun". These and many other tracks never measure up to the standard set by the exacting Mr. Macdonald.
Even the much-acclaimed forward, in which Macdonald tries to sum up the entirety of the musical cultural movements of the Sixties and conclude that they led inexorably to the decline of cultural civilization in the ensuing decades is an exercise in painting with a wide swath an entire era. I can’t fault him for ambition but I do think he lets himself get carried away with his theories.
I fully admit that I cannot be objective when discussing the Beatles and so I will have quibbles with anyone else's choice of the greatest or the least of the Beatles' songs. However, those personal preferences certainly didn't bother me in the following much more readable books on the Beatles than 'Revolution in the Head':
'A Day in the Life: The Music and Artistry of the Beatles' by Mark Hertsgaard
'The Beatles Recording Sessions: The Official Abbey Road Studio Session Notes 1962-1970’ by Mark Lewisohn
‘Meet the Beatles: A Cultural History of the Band that Shook Youth, Gender, and the World’ by Steven D. Stark
I would recommend any of the three books listed above before suggesting ‘Revolution in the Head’. Macdonald has a tendency throughout the entire book of stating opinions as fact and drawing conclusions of how/why John wrote this song in response to something Paul wrote or how Paul responded to something John did. I indulge in a bit of that myself but I try to avoid presenting my interpretation as historical fact. I understand Paul’s aversion to this book perfectly well. I know that he gets frustrated with people writing so many books interpreting what he and the other Beatles did or said when they weren’t there and couldn’t know what really happened. Paul’s dismissal was made in his characteristically diplomatic manner. I sense that John, however, would have hated a book like this and would have minced no words in delivering his ire. I also find it highly insulting and indefensible when he implies that John should not have been alarmed that a madman like Charles Manson would derive destructive meaning from his more convoluted lyrics or that another madman, Mark David Chapman’ would be driven to other destructive conclusions to the point where he determined to murder him.
If you want to perceive the Beatles’ body of work through an intellectual filter then, by all means, wade through this dense thicket of intellectual masturbation. However, if you want to understand the emotional power of the Beatles, whether you lived through the years in which they recorded or are approaching them from a later age, I’d recommend that you look elsewhere.
I am rating this book three stars rather than two primarily because Ian Macdonald obviously put a lot of time and effort into assembling this book. He undoubtedly possesses an extensive knowledge of music theory and terminology. However, this musical erudition lies as a barrier between the reader and the immediacy of the experience of hearing the music of the Beatles. Before reading this book, I had no idea what a mixolydian scale is. I'm reminded of the 'aeolian cadence' remark made by a music scholar early in the Beatles' career concerning "Not a Second Time". I'm also reminded of the quote, attributed to various people that 'writing about music is like dancing about architecture'. Macdonald's title 'revolution in the head' is very revealing as it indicates that he is primarily experiencing the Beatles' music in the head rather than the heart. However, the enduring resonance of the Beatles and a primary reason why they are still imprinted in the consciousness of millions of people is that quality of heart-centered joy and beauty that seems to elude Macdonald too much to draw him out of his head, with very few exceptions.
One of those exceptions occurs when he indulges in one passage of emotional expression when writing about Paul McCartney's brilliant opening to the concluding medley of 'Abbey Road', "You Never Give Me Your Money".
'To anyone who loves the Beatles, the bittersweet nostalgia of this music is hard to hear without a tear in the eye. Here, an entire era--the idealistic, innocent Sixties--is bravely bidden farewell."
More often than not he remains unmoved by gems such as "For No One", "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", and "Here Comes the Sun". These and many other tracks never measure up to the standard set by the exacting Mr. Macdonald.
Even the much-acclaimed forward, in which Macdonald tries to sum up the entirety of the musical cultural movements of the Sixties and conclude that they led inexorably to the decline of cultural civilization in the ensuing decades is an exercise in painting with a wide swath an entire era. I can’t fault him for ambition but I do think he lets himself get carried away with his theories.
I fully admit that I cannot be objective when discussing the Beatles and so I will have quibbles with anyone else's choice of the greatest or the least of the Beatles' songs. However, those personal preferences certainly didn't bother me in the following much more readable books on the Beatles than 'Revolution in the Head':
'A Day in the Life: The Music and Artistry of the Beatles' by Mark Hertsgaard
'The Beatles Recording Sessions: The Official Abbey Road Studio Session Notes 1962-1970’ by Mark Lewisohn
‘Meet the Beatles: A Cultural History of the Band that Shook Youth, Gender, and the World’ by Steven D. Stark
I would recommend any of the three books listed above before suggesting ‘Revolution in the Head’. Macdonald has a tendency throughout the entire book of stating opinions as fact and drawing conclusions of how/why John wrote this song in response to something Paul wrote or how Paul responded to something John did. I indulge in a bit of that myself but I try to avoid presenting my interpretation as historical fact. I understand Paul’s aversion to this book perfectly well. I know that he gets frustrated with people writing so many books interpreting what he and the other Beatles did or said when they weren’t there and couldn’t know what really happened. Paul’s dismissal was made in his characteristically diplomatic manner. I sense that John, however, would have hated a book like this and would have minced no words in delivering his ire. I also find it highly insulting and indefensible when he implies that John should not have been alarmed that a madman like Charles Manson would derive destructive meaning from his more convoluted lyrics or that another madman, Mark David Chapman’ would be driven to other destructive conclusions to the point where he determined to murder him.
If you want to perceive the Beatles’ body of work through an intellectual filter then, by all means, wade through this dense thicket of intellectual masturbation. However, if you want to understand the emotional power of the Beatles, whether you lived through the years in which they recorded or are approaching them from a later age, I’d recommend that you look elsewhere.
November 2, 2011
What a book.
Ian MacDonald has written the definitive book on the music of the Beatles, but more than that, he manages to put their music back in the context of 'The Sixties'. Every song The Beatles recorded is written about in the order that they began recording them. This gives the book a clear story to follow, from the tidal wave of Beatlemania, to the creative peaks of Revolver and Sgt. Pepper, to the slow decline as division and acrimony set in.
The book begins with a fairly heavyweight essay about The Sixties and The Beatles place within that decade, and the influence they had upon popular culture. MacDonald's arguments are well thought out and his reasoning sound. Truly the seeds of the modern world were sown in the Sixties, for good or ill. But his take on what those seeds grew into is quite refreshing and gives a different perspective on the legacy of that most turbulent decade.
Then we get into the meat of the book: the songs themselves. MacDonald writes fluently and revealingly about each song, who did what, the genesis and creative process, even down to an analysis of chord structures (which I must admit went a bit over my head, but will be enlightening to you muso's out there). What comes across is that The Beatles were a unit, four heads that made up one whole. Songs that we think of as 'Lennon' or 'McCartney' or even 'Harrison' turn out to have been much more collaborative affairs.
By following the order in which the songs were recorded, rather than released, we get a feel for how The Beatles changed over time. What comes across most is that, after Revolver (to my mind their best album), McCartney became the driving force, keeping the band going at times by risking alienating his bandmates. We also see that after Sgt. Pepper a drug-induced malaise set in and they lost focus. Though they would write great songs in the years after, they never again achieved the controlled focus of Revolver and Pepper, as they began taking longer and longer to work out songs in the studio, believing that everything they touched was gold. It wasn't (Maxwell's Silver Hammer anyone?).
The slow falling apart is documented through the sessions for The Beatles, Let it Be and Abbey Road. Half ideas and underwritten songs were polished in the studio and their albums became patchy affairs, with moments of genius. They could still work the magic when the mood took them, but they were pulling in different directions and inevitably the cracks became fissures, until they fell apart completely.
What this book does most of all though, is make you listen to the songs again with fresh ears. This is the enduring legacy of The Beatles: a decades worth of songs that are unmatched by any of their contemporaries or the pretenders who came after. The solo Beatles never reached these heights again because in this case, Four heads were better than One.
If you love The Beatles, read this book. If you only have a passing interest in them, read this book. If you think they are overrated and a bit rubbish, read this book, it will change your mind.
Very highly recommended. The best Beatles book ever.
Ian MacDonald has written the definitive book on the music of the Beatles, but more than that, he manages to put their music back in the context of 'The Sixties'. Every song The Beatles recorded is written about in the order that they began recording them. This gives the book a clear story to follow, from the tidal wave of Beatlemania, to the creative peaks of Revolver and Sgt. Pepper, to the slow decline as division and acrimony set in.
The book begins with a fairly heavyweight essay about The Sixties and The Beatles place within that decade, and the influence they had upon popular culture. MacDonald's arguments are well thought out and his reasoning sound. Truly the seeds of the modern world were sown in the Sixties, for good or ill. But his take on what those seeds grew into is quite refreshing and gives a different perspective on the legacy of that most turbulent decade.
Then we get into the meat of the book: the songs themselves. MacDonald writes fluently and revealingly about each song, who did what, the genesis and creative process, even down to an analysis of chord structures (which I must admit went a bit over my head, but will be enlightening to you muso's out there). What comes across is that The Beatles were a unit, four heads that made up one whole. Songs that we think of as 'Lennon' or 'McCartney' or even 'Harrison' turn out to have been much more collaborative affairs.
By following the order in which the songs were recorded, rather than released, we get a feel for how The Beatles changed over time. What comes across most is that, after Revolver (to my mind their best album), McCartney became the driving force, keeping the band going at times by risking alienating his bandmates. We also see that after Sgt. Pepper a drug-induced malaise set in and they lost focus. Though they would write great songs in the years after, they never again achieved the controlled focus of Revolver and Pepper, as they began taking longer and longer to work out songs in the studio, believing that everything they touched was gold. It wasn't (Maxwell's Silver Hammer anyone?).
The slow falling apart is documented through the sessions for The Beatles, Let it Be and Abbey Road. Half ideas and underwritten songs were polished in the studio and their albums became patchy affairs, with moments of genius. They could still work the magic when the mood took them, but they were pulling in different directions and inevitably the cracks became fissures, until they fell apart completely.
What this book does most of all though, is make you listen to the songs again with fresh ears. This is the enduring legacy of The Beatles: a decades worth of songs that are unmatched by any of their contemporaries or the pretenders who came after. The solo Beatles never reached these heights again because in this case, Four heads were better than One.
If you love The Beatles, read this book. If you only have a passing interest in them, read this book. If you think they are overrated and a bit rubbish, read this book, it will change your mind.
Very highly recommended. The best Beatles book ever.
August 27, 2017
A game changer. There will, of course, never be a Revolution in the Head written about every band in existence, not even every good band or every important band, but MacDonald's writing, his attention to detail, and his obvious love of his subject matter will make you want to read similar books about every band you love - and in turn, it will probably make you never want to read another book about The Beatles again. None of them stack up.
Over the course of Revolution in the Head, Ian MacDonald goes bullet-point through every Beatles song, ever. Each track has at least one paragraph dedicated to it, with some of the most interesting ones given multiple pages; further writing is dedicated to an introductory essay on the importance of The Beatles to '60s culture and their impact on it since, and brief overviews are given to their studio albums (mostly contextual information - what was happening to both The Beatles, and music as a whole, when they were released, as well as a few relevant policial or newsworthy events). It's a basic format, and MacDonald takes advantage by doing the basics right; his feel for which songs deserve more analysis than others sometimes looks a little askew at first, but is always well-judged. Luckily for me personally, he saves his best and most expansive writing for my favourite Beatles songs, "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "Revolution #9" in particular. He's probably a little too effusive in his praise for the latter, but it becomes hard not to agree with him as you're reading what he says.
The sheer scope of this book, not just in the detail and the minutiae it takes in but also in the way it paints a fuller picture of The Beatles and their work than anybody else ever has (MacDonald is certainly not afraid to criticize them, which is both greatly appreciated and a vital reason why this book is so great), is breathtaking. As valuable as a bedtime read as it is an academic source, it's one of those works that everything else in its genre must be compared to. Just a brilliant, brilliant book.
Oh, and as a final point, I should probably address the perfectly sensible idea that you have to be a fan of The Beatles to enjoy reading this. There's some truth to it, in the sense that there's no point in forcing yourself to read it if you hate their music, but I enjoyed all of it and not only are there large swathes of The Beatles' back catalogue that I couldn't care less about (pretty much everything earlier than Help!, most of The White Album, the second side of Abbey Road, Let it Be and Sgt. Peppers in general), but there are songs they released that I actively despise ("Act Naturally", "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", "When I'm Sixty-Four", "Wild Honey Pie"). Yet still, I happily read about them - in fact, the book encouraged me to revisit a few tracks (memorably "Glass Onion"), because it just about convinced me that my opinion was probably wrong. It wasn't, but the fact that this book even has the power to make you doubt yourself is a hell of a recommendation.
Over the course of Revolution in the Head, Ian MacDonald goes bullet-point through every Beatles song, ever. Each track has at least one paragraph dedicated to it, with some of the most interesting ones given multiple pages; further writing is dedicated to an introductory essay on the importance of The Beatles to '60s culture and their impact on it since, and brief overviews are given to their studio albums (mostly contextual information - what was happening to both The Beatles, and music as a whole, when they were released, as well as a few relevant policial or newsworthy events). It's a basic format, and MacDonald takes advantage by doing the basics right; his feel for which songs deserve more analysis than others sometimes looks a little askew at first, but is always well-judged. Luckily for me personally, he saves his best and most expansive writing for my favourite Beatles songs, "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "Revolution #9" in particular. He's probably a little too effusive in his praise for the latter, but it becomes hard not to agree with him as you're reading what he says.
The sheer scope of this book, not just in the detail and the minutiae it takes in but also in the way it paints a fuller picture of The Beatles and their work than anybody else ever has (MacDonald is certainly not afraid to criticize them, which is both greatly appreciated and a vital reason why this book is so great), is breathtaking. As valuable as a bedtime read as it is an academic source, it's one of those works that everything else in its genre must be compared to. Just a brilliant, brilliant book.
Oh, and as a final point, I should probably address the perfectly sensible idea that you have to be a fan of The Beatles to enjoy reading this. There's some truth to it, in the sense that there's no point in forcing yourself to read it if you hate their music, but I enjoyed all of it and not only are there large swathes of The Beatles' back catalogue that I couldn't care less about (pretty much everything earlier than Help!, most of The White Album, the second side of Abbey Road, Let it Be and Sgt. Peppers in general), but there are songs they released that I actively despise ("Act Naturally", "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", "When I'm Sixty-Four", "Wild Honey Pie"). Yet still, I happily read about them - in fact, the book encouraged me to revisit a few tracks (memorably "Glass Onion"), because it just about convinced me that my opinion was probably wrong. It wasn't, but the fact that this book even has the power to make you doubt yourself is a hell of a recommendation.
February 22, 2017
I've long been interested in the details of The Beatles' music - who wrote what, how the chords work, how the tune is typical of its writer, what they were ripping off, how the arrangement evolved in the studio, and so on. This book rewarded my time with plenty of fresh observations along those lines.
Ian MacDonald presents his opinion on each recording as a firm fact, and although there's much I disagree with, it's oddly compelling to see some fine Beatles songs so confidently trashed or quickly dismissed. The wider organising principle, dividing the book around 'The Top', a two-album peak period, does seem to lead MacDonald too far in justifying the Beatles' career trajectory as he's set it out - learning it, nailing it and then failing at it - and he probably tries too hard not to concede too many 'top' earlier or later tracks. The writing is generally entertaining though, even at its most unkind or gushing.
I found the sociological views on the 60s, which I suppose are the serious thrust of the book, quite boring. MacDonald frames them better in the final 'Note on Chronology' than he does in any of the tangents elsewhere, but it's still rather curmudgeonly and narrow. This book is worthwhile more for its bold observations of The Beatles' musical vocab than it is for the familiar attempt to mythologise the 60s, someething I was probably more immune to having just read Simon Reynolds' excellent Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to its Own Past.
Ian MacDonald presents his opinion on each recording as a firm fact, and although there's much I disagree with, it's oddly compelling to see some fine Beatles songs so confidently trashed or quickly dismissed. The wider organising principle, dividing the book around 'The Top', a two-album peak period, does seem to lead MacDonald too far in justifying the Beatles' career trajectory as he's set it out - learning it, nailing it and then failing at it - and he probably tries too hard not to concede too many 'top' earlier or later tracks. The writing is generally entertaining though, even at its most unkind or gushing.
I found the sociological views on the 60s, which I suppose are the serious thrust of the book, quite boring. MacDonald frames them better in the final 'Note on Chronology' than he does in any of the tangents elsewhere, but it's still rather curmudgeonly and narrow. This book is worthwhile more for its bold observations of The Beatles' musical vocab than it is for the familiar attempt to mythologise the 60s, someething I was probably more immune to having just read Simon Reynolds' excellent Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to its Own Past.
December 27, 2019
Impressive piece of scholarship and cultural criticism. MacDonald definitely does not follow the party line and is not afraid to slaughter what he sees as sacred cows in The Mop Tops catalog and sometimes he comes out with, for me, astonishingly wrong-wrong-WRONG headed opinions but still, this is one of the finest books you will read about popular culture and pop music in general. Non-Beatle-interested parties may not care much about the main bulk of the book which discusses the Beatles' recordings in detail but the opening academic essay makes for great reading and is a pretty even-handed, non-biased socio-political account of the turbulent 1960's.
There are some very funny anecdotes too including one of the supposedly peace-loving hindu hippie George Harrison going mental in the studio because Yoko Ono took one of his chocolate biscuits without asking him beforehand...
The very basic assumptions of the book is that everything made today is artistically shit in comparison with what came beforehand, up to roughly the end of the the decade in question. Not an altogether original postulation perhaps but i can't say i disagree all that much.
There are some very funny anecdotes too including one of the supposedly peace-loving hindu hippie George Harrison going mental in the studio because Yoko Ono took one of his chocolate biscuits without asking him beforehand...
The very basic assumptions of the book is that everything made today is artistically shit in comparison with what came beforehand, up to roughly the end of the the decade in question. Not an altogether original postulation perhaps but i can't say i disagree all that much.
January 1, 2012
The story of the Beatles, told through analysis of their songs in the order they were recorded. This book is just wonderful. The format allows MacDonald to jump smoothly from keen observation of musical details to events of the day to tracing lyrical allusions to stark psychological insights. This is as close as we can possibly get to understanding the influences that pulled this group together and enabled them to record such amazing music.
A couple of warnings (which should definitely not stop you reading this book). First, MacDonald is highly opinionated, and is as eloquent in dismissing many Beatles tracks as mindless rubbish (notably Across the Universe) as he is in elevating others. There's a good chance your favourite track is not one of his favourites, especially if you're a George fan. Second, the overall tone is rather melancholy—while he obviously adores the music of the 60s, MacDonald takes a very pessimistic view of the social and political movements of the time, seeing in them the seeds of the selfish, ultra-materialistic culture of the 80s (and today). As the section titles imply, the book as a whole is a drug trip, coming down slowly and painfully in the second half.
A couple of warnings (which should definitely not stop you reading this book). First, MacDonald is highly opinionated, and is as eloquent in dismissing many Beatles tracks as mindless rubbish (notably Across the Universe) as he is in elevating others. There's a good chance your favourite track is not one of his favourites, especially if you're a George fan. Second, the overall tone is rather melancholy—while he obviously adores the music of the 60s, MacDonald takes a very pessimistic view of the social and political movements of the time, seeing in them the seeds of the selfish, ultra-materialistic culture of the 80s (and today). As the section titles imply, the book as a whole is a drug trip, coming down slowly and painfully in the second half.
May 21, 2013
If I had a dollar for every book I've read about The Beatles, I'd have retired long ago and would now be sitting in some sun-kissed armchair listening to my Beatles records on endless repeat. However, this work by Ian MacDonald is right at the very top of that very tall and ever-growing mountain of books about the Fab Four, on a par with the books of Mark Lewisohn.
It begins with a superb extended essay about the Sixties, and proceeds to a detailed analysis of every Beatles song. Later editions include more recent releases such as Live at the BBC and the three volumes of the Anthology. The Appendices include timelines of the Sixties and of the Beatles themselves.
A truly definitive book, exhaustively researched and indispensable for anyone who wishes to delve more deeply into the Beatles' recorded work.
My only slight gripe is that MacDonald seems to be somewhat dismissive of many of George Harrison's songs - but this should not detract from the overall excellence of this seminal book.
It begins with a superb extended essay about the Sixties, and proceeds to a detailed analysis of every Beatles song. Later editions include more recent releases such as Live at the BBC and the three volumes of the Anthology. The Appendices include timelines of the Sixties and of the Beatles themselves.
A truly definitive book, exhaustively researched and indispensable for anyone who wishes to delve more deeply into the Beatles' recorded work.
My only slight gripe is that MacDonald seems to be somewhat dismissive of many of George Harrison's songs - but this should not detract from the overall excellence of this seminal book.
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