sign in sign up
<<
Home , All Together Now, Hunter Davies, Nicholas Schaffner, Roy Carr, The Beatles Experience, Things We Said Today

, Culture and Identity

Series Editors Steve Clark Graduate School Humanities and Sociology University of Tokyo Bunkyo-ku , Tokyo , Japan

Tristanne Connolly Department of English St Jerome’s University Waterloo , Ontario, Canada

Jason Whittaker School of English & Journalism University of Lincoln Lincoln , Lincolnshire, Pop music lasts. A form all too often assumed to be transient, commer- cial and mass-cultural has proven itself durable, tenacious and continually evolving. As such, it has become a crucial component in defi ning vari- ous forms of identity (individual and collective) as infl uenced by factors such as nation, class, gender, ethnicity, location/situation, and historical period. Pop Music, Culture and Identity investigates the implications of this greatly enhanced status. Particular attention will be paid to issues such as the iconography of celebrity, the ever-expanding archive, the nature of the performance-event, the parameters of generational memory, and the impact of new technologies on global marketing. In particular, the series aims to highlight interdisciplinary approaches and incorporate the informed testimony of the fan alongside a challenging diversity of aca- demic methodologies.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14537 Kenneth Womack • Katie Kapurch Editors New Critical Perspectives on

Things We Said Today Editors Kenneth Womack Katie Kapurch Wayne D. McMurray School Department of English of Humanities & Social Sciences Texas State University Monmouth University San Marcos West Long Branch Texas New Jersey USA USA

Pop Music, Culture and Identity ISBN 978-1-137-57012-3 ISBN 978-1-137-57013-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-57013-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016939269

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identifi ed as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub- lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London For L.A. Wilson (1942–2015)

PREFACE: HOW DID THEY DO IT?

Walter J. Podrazik

There is a short path to Beatles fandom. Listen. Enjoy. For scholars, there is then the far more circuitous journey the pleasure of that initial musical company inspires. Searching for an understanding of what just happened. What touched us? Why did it work? Why does it still work? When it comes to the Beatles the puzzle is captured in a pair of decep- tively simple queries: How did they do it? How do they still do it? New Critical Perspectives on the Beatles: brings together a range of thinkers about the band, including respected writers, researchers, musicians, and academics. They are, in short, a gathering of kindred spirits. As we consider the Beatles’ impact more than fi fty years later, it would be a mistake to suggest that fi ve decades’ distance has been necessary to engage in critical exchanges. In fact, the quest for understanding the how and why of the Beatles began practically at the moment of arrival of the Fab Four. At fi rst, the discussions in 1964 were generational. Adults/parents were simply attempting to understand what the kids (their children) saw in the raucous, long-haired group. Very quickly, though, , Paul McCartney, , and established their individual

vii viii W. PODRAZIK identities, cemented by the documentary-like feature fi lm A Hard Day’s Night . Even more striking, the four matured and developed in public with amazing speed, changing the tone of discussion to a fascination at their continued and sustained accomplishments through the 1960s. There was no shortage of media coverage through touring days and feature fi lms, psychedelic imagery in the Summer of , peace anthems, hallucinogens, meditation, love, marriage, luscious pure studio produc- tions, and their sudden, public, rancorous breakup in 1970. By 1971 each of the Beatles was well into a solo career, in the pro- cess creating an instant sense of nostalgia for their group recordings. Simultaneously the desire to put that history and its accomplishments into perspective began to emerge. That’s where I came into the story in my fi rst forays into Beatles research. At Northwestern University, I had just met my future writ- ing partner Harry Castleman and we quickly established ourselves at the school’s radio station (WNUR) as the Beatles experts. When there was a Beatles question, people turned to us. In response, we found ourselves constantly learning something new, and realizing how much we did not yet know. Much to our annoyance. This was a pre–Internet world. A pre-personal computer world. A pre- digital recording world. A pre-personal video recording of any kind world. Information on television fl ickered and was gone. Stories in print were hid- den in stacks of newspapers and magazines, just daring you to fi nd them. Repeatedly, to the general public, seemingly straightforward informa- tion about the Beatles proved surprisingly elusive, despite some seven years of nonstop media coverage of the group to that point. The embarrassingly simple question of naming the fi rst Beatles record led either to a confi dently inaccurate answer or to a pleasant shrug. What were their number one hits? (Weren’t they all ?) Locating all the in the group’s offi cial canon was a challenge, matched only by naming all the songs in the offi cial canon. Even the group’s own US company (Capitol, which distributed ) had a mixed record on capturing historical detail back then. Its discography sheets that accompanied the pair of 1973 compilations (the red-sleeve-packaged 1962–1966 and the blue-sleeve-packaged 1967–1970 ) identifi ed the “A Hard Day’s Night” as being from Help! In that early 1970s era, John, Paul, George, and Ringo themselves were also otherwise focused, ready to take the conversation to another level as PREFACE: HOW DID THEY DO IT? ix fl ourishing solo artists. The past was then, they were now. Yet at the same time they were regularly referencing their legacy, overtly and obliquely, in songs and interviews. Lennon famously “trash-talked” the Beatles experience in the 1971 “Lennon Remembers” interview. Musically he sent barbs directly toward McCartney in “How Do You Sleep?” on Imagine , while Paul needled John’s public posturing with “” on Ram . Harrison lamented the group’s ongoing legal entanglements with his “Sue Me Sue You Blues” on Living in the Material World , while Ringo in “Early 1970” (the fl ip of the “It Don’t Come Easy” single) sang about wanting to play with all three. As a result, the Beatles story in the years after their break-up was deeply embedded in the public consciousness, but in a fractured mosaic of images, musical riffs, moments in world history, and personal memory hooks. In that early 1970s era, despite all the published stories about the Beatles, fi nding anything on the shelf going beyond a surface press release level was challenging. Yes, there was the authorized 1968 Hunter Davies Beatles biography, but not only did that end just past the Sgt. Pepper era, its treatment of their discography was almost perfunctory, even though records were how most people knew them. The musical story was there, but with limited context available for indi- viduals to add to their own warm associations with their favorite Beatles releases. Those connections keyed Beatles hits to their own lives, but it was essentially a different Beatles story for everyone. To better appreciate the group’s narrative, it seemed important to cap- ture facts that could be applied to anyone’s observations, putting them into some manageable, quantifi able form. With that goal in mind, my fi rst personal Beatles research project set a simple goal: track every week’s chart movement of every Beatles single (group and solo) released in the since 1964. Here the resources were accessible and on the local Northwestern University library shelves: bound volumes of Billboard magazine. Armed with those, speculation and fuzzy memories yielded to straightforward facts. Castleman and I used that research to promote his 10-week Beatles radio series on WNUR. Reaction to those facts and fi gures was remarkable. Listeners welcomed this informative roadmap to history. There was more to come two years later. As our send-off on departing the station, Harry and I hosted a sev- enteen-hour live radio history of the Beatles. x W. PODRAZIK

Drawing on the available resources at the time, we peppered our narra- tive with special features and playful juxtapositions. Knowing that most peo- ple had never heard the notorious John and Yoko Two Virgins album, we quietly slipped that in as a “musical bed” while describing the cover art … then brought the volume up full blast for about thirty seconds (triggering listener calls that shared, off air, frank opinions on what they were hearing). Though grounded in the facts (as we knew them at the time) there was a liberated looseness to talking about the Beatles in that era. The canon was not an inviolate artifact, forever etched in stone. All four were still active solo artists and group material continued to sell well. (Those Red and Blue “greatest hits” albums were both big chart hits in 1973.) Fans generally assumed that sooner rather than later all four would appear on some record together again. They were hugely successful pop music practitioners, but ultimately still a part of the instantly disposable world of pop culture ephemera. Not on a par with other subjects accepted as “worthy” of academic consideration. In fact, back in 1963 in the UK, an attempt to elevate discussion of Beatles music in the London Times had been met with amused skepticism when the paper’s critic applied such terms as “Aeolian cadence” to the discussion of . Ten years later, in 1973, English music critic Wilfrid Mellers likewise went straight for the highbrow in his Twilight of the Gods book, applying a thoughtful but very technical analysis to Beatles music. Such observations seemed to get ahead of a necessary foundation of more basic nuts and bolts data which could then help to anchor further theoretical musings. Following our time at Northwestern, Harry Castleman and I decided to set down our marker and help bridge that information gap. We applied research principles of primary sourcing, verifi cation, fi eld work, and open- ness to ferreting out information from every possible avenue. The notes from our radio special formed the basis for that project, which became our inaugural Beatles book— , subtitled “the fi rst complete Beatles discography.” At fi rst glance, this was a book of lists. On closer examination it actually embodied a much deeper apprecia- tion of what might be discovered in collecting Beatles records by quietly applying a thoughtful context. Early in our radio days we had embraced a distinctive approach to the straightforward task of listing the contents of each Beatles album and single. Apart from simultaneous releases (a single extracted from a com- panion album), we defi ned an appearance of a song after its initial issuing PREFACE: HOW DID THEY DO IT? xi as a “reissue” and listed it in ALL CAPS so that it stood out on the album and single song listings. We layered an additional element to this tracking by regarding US and UK market releases as part of the same interconnected world. That was a major departure from how the music business in both countries treated the group. We further defi ned reissues in that international light and used the visual typographical shortcut to clarify the complicated business-driven cherry-picking of songs per market, focusing on what was old, what was new, what was held back, and what sneaked in early. Such considerations cast a new light on such US albums as Beatles VI , Yesterday … and Today , and the non-soundtrack UK versions of A Hard Day’s Night and Help! There was more. Refl ecting our deep involvement in a wide variety of musical genres, we redefi ned what a “complete” Beatles collection would include, building beyond the expected group and solo record releases. All Together Now encompassed all the recordings that we could document in which one or more of the Beatles appeared as a producer, contributing writer, or guest performer. We dubbed that category “The Beatles for others.” We also had developed an appreciation for the other end of the inspira- tion track: what we called “The Beatles from others.” Thanks to our radio station record library and deep disc collections by fellow DJs, we had been able to track down many of the original releases that led to cover versions by the Beatles. To all that we added notes about Beatles bootlegs circulating at the time, most drawn from the sessions for the /Let It Be project as well as British radio appearances. Rather than regard these as “records” we treated them as part of their artistic timeline, whose details we extracted from a variety of sources, including British music industry publications from the 1960s and 1970s. Before we formally embarked on writing All Together Now , we had probably three-quarters of the information in hand. To complete the proj- ect to our satisfaction, however, we needed to push further. No doubt each of the scholars contributing essays to this collection will concur on the next step and the importance of the resources and dedicated staffs at libraries, universities, and other research institutions. All waiting to help but, in that pre–Internet 1970s era, there was one major impediment: you had to be there. The Beatles story may have started in Liverpool, , but from my US researcher’s perspective, that journey truly began at the fl agship xii W. PODRAZIK branch of the Chicago public library, continued through the popular cul- ture collection at Bowling Green, Ohio, and found its richest returns in City and Washington, DC. There was an invaluable collection of international record release catalogs at the Branch of the New York Public Library. Washington offered the National Archives and, best of all, the United States Library of Congress, the bricks-and-mortar, desk-and-card catalog precursor to the Internet. The Library of Congress is where song copyrights for the USA are registered (back in the 1970s still on individual catalog cards). Years. Publishers. Pseudonyms. Want to fi nd out which McCartney–Wings song authorships credited simply as “McCartney” were really “Paul and Linda McCartney” and which were “Paul McCartney” only? It was there in black and white as part of the registration process. Publications housed at the Library of Congress spanned the globe and the decades. Billboard magazine not just from the rock era, but going back to sheet music sales days. Not just Variety and , but an international archive, including bound volumes of British publications New Musical Express (NME), Disc , and going back to the Age. These trade papers served as documents of their era, providing the full, original context of the story. Not scanned. Not tweaked. Not cleaned up. Using all of these publications, we soon fi lled in the nitty-gritty statistics we needed. We also became well prepared for follow-up in-person conver- sations and analysis on specifi c points, able to approach with confi dence such fi gures as Mal Evans and Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. In that research-rich environment we completed our take on the Beatles story. All Together Now arrived in 1975 alongside such works as The Beatles: An Illustrated Record (a 1975 British-based news clipping and record guide) by Roy Carr and Tony Tyler, and The Beatles Forever (1977) by New Yorker Nicholas Schaffner, whose insightful and poetic prose success- fully wove together the strands of art, history, and fandom. None of these were strictly biography. Instead, each in its own way sought to fi ll in the fact gaps, building a Beatles information foundation that would serve to aid and inspire further conversation, research, and writing. All of that has now moved from the analog 1970s to the hyperlinked contemporary digital age in which so many institutions are as close as your computer. The group and its infl uence have been fully embraced as PREFACE: HOW DID THEY DO IT? xiii academic subjects that transcend their “humble” pop beginnings and are deemed worthy of serious historical, social, and aesthetic study. There are new voices and veteran observers all still applying the disci- plines of thoughtful research in pursuit of fresh insights and long-term perspectives. New Critical Perspectives on the Beatles: Things We Said Today has gathered some of the best. People of all ages, in all disciplines, from all backgrounds. Each united in pursuit of answers to those two simple questions: How did they do it? How do they still do it?

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks are due to the many friends and colleagues who made this volume possible. The editors are particularly grateful to the support- ive and highly professional team at Palgrave, including Felicity Plester, Publisher and Global Head of Film, Culture, and Media Studies; Sophie Auld, Editorial Assistant, Film, Culture, and Media Studies; and Sneha Kamat Bhavnani, Editorial Assistant, Film, Culture, and Media Studies. At Monmouth University, we would like to thank Judy Ramos and Lynne Clay, as well as Nancy Mezey, Joe Rapolla, and Michael Thomas. We would also like to thank Penn State University’s Lori J. Bechtel- Wherry, Esther Benitez, Vincent Benitez, Kira Condee-Padunova, Jackie Edmondson, Michele Kennedy, Peter Moran, Cindy Royal, Jack Sinclair, Nancy Vogel, and Jerry Zolten. Finally, we are indebted to our Texas State University colleagues, including the organizers of the Therese Kayser Lindsey Literary Series, Tom Grimes, Daniel Lochman, and Michael Hennessy. Katie would like to extend personal thanks to Ken Womack, Jon Marc Smith, and her father, Thomas J. Kapurch, who fi rst introduced her to the magic of the Beatles. Ken would like to thank his wife Jeanine for her steadfast love and support.

xv

CONTENTS

1 Introduction: Making It New with the Beatles 1 Kenneth Womack

Part I The Beatles in/as History 11

2 Getting Better: The Beatles and the Angry Young Men 13 Matthew Schneider

3 Mystery Trips, English Gardens, and Songs Your Mother Should Know: The Beatles and British Nostalgia in 1967 31 Kathryn B. Cox

4 Blackbird Singing: Paul McCartney’s Romance of Racial Harmony and Post-Racial America 51 Katie Kapurch and Jon Marc Smith

Part II Artistry and the Beatles 75

5 Beatle Country: A Bluegrass ‘Concept Album’ from 1966 77 Laura Turner

xvii xviii CONTENTS

6 Spatial Counterpoint and the Impossible Experience of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band 95 Gabriel Lubell

7 “”: The Imagery of Pure Consciousness in Selected Beatles songs 119 Gayatri Devi

8 George Harrison and the Infl uence of American Popular Song 139 David Thurmaier

Part III Fandom and the Beatles 157

9 The Beatles Christmas Records… Unwrapped: A Closer Look at the Fan Club Discs 159 Tony Paglia

10 “She Said She Said”: How Women Have Transformed from Fans to Authors in Beatles History 179 Kit O’Toole

11 Crying, Waiting, Hoping: The Beatles, Girl Culture, and the Melodramatic Mode 199 Katie Kapurch

12 Revolution 2.0: Beatles Fan Scholarship in the Digital Age 221 Jeffrey Roessner CONTENTS xix

Part IV Teaching and Writing the Beatles 241

13 The Beatles in the Classroom: John, Paul, George, and Ringo Go to College 243 Punch Shaw

14 The John Lennon Series and “Factional” Narrative Biography 263 Jude Southerland Kessler

Index 279

NOTES ON EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS

Editors Kenneth Womack is the Dean of the Wayne D. McMurray School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Monmouth University, where he also serves as Professor of English. He is the author or editor of numerous books, including Long and Winding Roads: The Evolving Artistry of the Beatles (2007), The Cambridge Companion to the Beatles (2009), and The Beatles Encyclopedia: Everything Fab Four (2014). Womack is also the author of three award-winning novels, including John Doe No. 2 and the Dreamland Motel (2010), The Restaurant at the End of the World (2012), and Playing the Angel (2013). He serves as the editor of Interdisciplinary Literary Studies: A Journal of Criticism and Theory and as the co-editor of the English Association’s Year’s Work in English Studies .

Katie Kapurch is Assistant Professor of English at Texas State University. Her publications include chapters in the edited anthologies Genre, Reception, and Adaptation in the Twilight Series (2012) and Girls’ Literacy Experiences In and Out of School: Learning and Composing Gendered Identities (2013). Her articles have also appeared in the Journal of Lesbian Studies , Children’s Literature Association Quarterly , and Neo-Victorian Studies . Kapurch is the author of a forthcoming monograph, Victorian Literature in the Twenty-First Century: Jane Eyre, Twilight, and the Mode of Excess in Girl Culture (Palgrave Macmillan 2016).

xxi xxii NOTES ON EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS

Contributors Kathryn B. Cox is a doctoral candidate in historical at the University of Michigan, where she received the Glenn McGeoch Memorial Scholarship in 2009 for excellence in teaching. Her dissertation is entitled “‘What Happened to the Post-War Dream?’: Nostalgia, Trauma, and Affect in 1960s and 1970s British Rock.” She has given presentations of her research at several international confer- ences, including the SongArt Performance Research Group at the University of London in 2012; the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, US Branch, in 2013, 2014, and 2015; the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, Benelux Branch, in 2015; and the International Beatles Conference in 2014.

Gayatri Devi is Associate Professor of English and Women and Gender Studies at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania. Her co-edited anthology Humor in Middle Eastern Cinema (2014) studied the aesthetic and ideological functions of the humor modality in select Middle Eastern fi lms. Her writings on Middle Eastern and South Asian literatures and women’s studies have appeared in scholarly jour- nals and anthologies including the Dictionary of Middle Eastern Cinema , Wiley Companion to German Cinema , World Literature Today , North Dakota Quarterly , Edebiyat , and Subaltern Vision .

Jude Southerland Kessler is a historiographer and the author of The John Lennon Series , a proposed nine-volume narrative history of Lennon’s life. To date, the series includes Shoulda Been There (October 1940–December 1961), Shivering Inside (December 1961–May 1963), and (May 1963–March 1964). Her fourth volume, Should’ve Known Better (March 1964–December 1965), will be released in 2017. Kessler is the host of The John Lennon Hour radio program and has served as the Beatles at the Ridge Authors’ and Artists’ Symposium Chairperson since 2012.

Gabriel Lubell is a composer, music scholar, and astronomer with research expe- rience in the areas of stellar populations and galaxy morphology. In addition to his work on the Beatles, he has written about issues of sound, space, and aesthetics in the music of Mozart and Schubert. His original compositions have been per- formed throughout the USA, in Italy, and in Sweden, and his debut album of chamber music, Studies in Light and Sound , was released in 2014. He currently serves as visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Knox College.

Kit O’Toole is a Chicago-based freelance writer and blogger who has written about rock, jazz, and R&B for over 20 years. She is the author of Michael Jackson FAQ (2015) and Songs We Were Singing: Guided Tours Through the Beatles’ NOTES ON EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS xxiii

Lesser-Known Tracks (2015). Her work has appeared in such print publications as Showcase Chicago and Goldmine . She is a longtime contributing editor for Beatlefan magazine. As a blogger, O’Toole writes for Something Else Reviews , Blinded by Sound , and Cinema Sentries , and previously served as a music editor for Blogcritics . She received her EdD in instructional technology from Northern Illinois University.

Tony Paglia is a licensed clinical social worker who serves as a personal counselor and a disability services coordinator at Penn State University’s Shenango Campus. He is a lifelong enthusiast of the music of the 1950s and 1960s. In February 2014, he was a panelist at Penn State Altoona’s International Beatles Celebration.

Walter J. Podrazik is an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is a co-author of ten books including three volumes on the Beatles’ record releases (All Together Now , The Beatles Again , and The End of the Beatles ), a contributing editor for Beatlefan magazine, and a panel discussion moderator for the annual Chicago staging of The Fest for Beatles Fans. His other books include multiple works on television, most recently Watching TV (3rd ed., 2016), a season-by-season chronicle of the medium. Podrazik serves as television curator for the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago.

Jeffrey Roessner is the dean of arts and humanities and Professor of English at Mercyhurst University, where he leads classes in contemporary literature and workshops in creative writing. He is the co-editor of Write in Tune: Contemporary Music in Fiction (2014), and has published essays on Peter Ackroyd, Angela Carter, Jeanette Winterson, and the Beatles. His recent work also includes articles on rock mockumentaries, the post-confessional lyricism of R.E.M., and protest music in the wake of 9/11. Along with his academic writing, he has authored a book on songwriting, Creative Guitar: Writing and Playing Rock Songs with Originality .

Matthew Schneider is Professor of English and the associate dean of the David R. Hayworth College of Arts and Sciences at High Point University. His book The Long and Winding Road from Blake to the Beatles (Palgrave Macmillan 2008) traces the Beatles phenomenon to its deep roots in British Romanticism. His essays on nineteenth-century British literature, literary theory, and Biblical exegesis have appeared in Dalhousie Review , European Romantic Review , Poetics Today , Legal Studies Forum , and Symbiosis .

Punch Shaw is a journalist and educator from Fort Worth, Texas, who began his career as a music critic with a review of a George Harrison concert in 1974. For the last 25 years, he has been a frequent contributor to the arts pages of the Fort xxiv NOTES ON EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS

Worth Star-Telegram newspaper, writing a wide range of performing arts reviews and features. He has also taught a variety of courses for various departments at Texas Christian University on topics that have included fi lm history, basic journal- ism, and the Beatles and the 1960s.

Jon Marc Smith is a screenwriter and novelist, as well as Senior Lecturer in English at Texas State University. He researches and teaches literature and fi lm theory related to genre and narratology. Smith’s fi lm Dance with the One co-writ- ten with Smith Henderson, premiered at the SXSW Film Festival in 2010. He is currently working on a crime novel.

David Thurmaier is Associate Professor of Music Theory at the University of Missouri–Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance. His research interests include the music of Charles Ives and the Beatles, as well as the pedagogy of music theory. His most recent scholarship on these topics appears in American Music , Current Musicology , and Music Theory Online .

Laura Turner is currently working towards a doctorate in ethnomusicology at the University of Chicago. Her dissertation focuses on the music of the southern Appalachian region. She also holds BA and MA degrees in musicology from Oxford University. LIST OF TABLES

Table 5.1 The Beatles, “I’ve Just Seen a Face” 85 Table 5.2 Charles River Valley Boys, “I’ve Just Seen a Face” 86 Table 5.3 Beatle Country, track listing and US release dates of Beatles songs 88

xxv