Revolution in the Head

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.

I wanted this particular book because it breaks the work of The Beatles down song by song in chronological order and gives details on when each was recorded, who played what, who wrote what parts (as far as can be ascertained), and so on. These are things I've curious about for years.

In addition, the author???in a lengthy but interesting introduction???floats the theses that the sixties and The Beatles are inextricably linked, that LSD sparked the cultural and societal changes of the latter half of that decade, and that the focus on new-found individualism and freedoms in the sixties ultimately led to the consumer culture of the nineties (when the first edition of this book was released). In appropriate places along the timeline he also discusses important events and turning points in the band's creative direction. Overall, this is great stuff and I recommend the book to anyone who wants some insight into the making of the music.

The author injects large doses of opinion into much of the text, letting us know which songs were brilliant and which were dreck. I found myself disagreeing as often as not, but, hey, it's his book. The main reason I didn't give the book five stars was that some of his statements on the psychology and motives of the major players were obviously made up out of whole cloth and made me wonder what else might have been fabricated. He's also got something against George Harrison's songs, only one of which he seems to feel is of any quality. So enjoy the book, but read it while wearing your critical thinking cap, as you should any piece of nonfiction.

I read the e-version of the book, which seems to have been scanned from the print, but not thoroughly proofread and there are potentially confusing typos throughout.