WHO COULD ASK FOR MORE:
RECLAIMING THE BEATLES
An Overview And Guide To The Chapters
…When asked by a journalist whether the group intended
writing any anti-war songs, John - without a moment’s hesitation - replied
tartly that ALL their songs were anti-war songs. These songs articulated both
the immense fear that lay just beneath the surface of the supposedly carefree
times they were living through and the ecstatic conflagration of sexual
hysteria and primal, pagan consciousness that characterised those times; nowhere
more so, perhaps, than in the final resonating chord of Sgt. Pepper’s A Day In
The Life which fuses orgasm, the annihilation of the ego in the LSD experience and the
ultimate, unspeakable cataclysm of the Bomb itself in one explosive moment…
Who Could Ask For More? is both an in-depth study of
The Beatles’ songs and an often oblique commentary on their life and times.
Identifying the constant fear of an imminent nuclear holocaust as the spark for
the huge social changes of the decade, I have sought to ‘reclaim’ The
Beatles from the tendency to position them within a fake ‘sixties nostalgia’
industry. He emphasises that their music represents …the quintessential
expression of the sexual, social and cultural revolutions of the 1960s… and
that it constitutes …a coherent act of resistance against the paranoid,
repressed, ‘uptight’ culture they had grown up in…Combining analysis of
their words and music with fictionalised sequences depicting key episodes in
their career, the book provides a unique insight into an artistic and cultural
phenomenon whose effects still resonate strongly many decades after the group
broke up. The extraordinary evolution of their art is discussed in relation to
the musical context of their day, with particular emphasis on the influence of
50s rock and roll and 60s soul music.
The book shows
how The Beatles hit upon a world-conquering musical ‘formula’ which offered an
ecstatic release for the dormant repressed sexuality of the early 60s, how
their encounter with Bob Dylan was the catalyst for their swift metamorphosis
from ‘teen idols’ to ‘countercultural icons’ and how they reinvented notions of
what rock music could achieve in a series of classic albums from
Rubber Soul
(1965) to
Abbey Road (1969). The significance of their encounters
with drugs and religion is considered in detail, as is the way they handled
both the media and their own huge, unprecedented level of celebrity. There are
discussions of their most complex and brilliant songs such as
Yesterday,
Nowhere Man, Eleanor Rigby, Strawberry Fields Forever, A Day In The Life, I
Am The Walrus, Happiness Is A Warm Gun and
Hey Jude, demonstrating
how they learned to express their newly awakened poetic sensibilties within an
astonishingly wide range of musical styles, creating work which expressed with
great potency the key social, political and psychological concerns of the day.
Even a song as apparently ‘innocent’ as Paul’s
When I’m Sixty Four is
shown to have a subtle subversive meaning in the context of the commentary on
the tragic defects of the ‘straight world’ which forms the main theme of the
group’s masterpiece
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. As the author
writes,
…The Beatles’ best music seduces listeners with its
sensual qualities and ravishes them with its potent, inexhaustible energy,
while challenging them to see the world with new, unblinkered eyes…
CHAPTER ONE: EVERYTHING THAT YOU WANT
This chapter
outlines the influence of the major figures of ‘50s rock’n’roll on The Beatles,
including Elvis, Chuck Berry and Little Richard. It also explains how The
Beatles fused these influences with their love of the harmonic techniques of
contemporary soul music to create the ‘ecstatic’ style of their early singles which
made them world famous. I’ve also speculated as to exactly why this ‘ecstatic’
style appealed so much to teenage girls, and why The Beatles’ early style so
potently symbolises the sexual revolution of the 1960s...
CHAPTER TWO: NO TIME FOR TRIVIALITIES
Here I’ve
dealt with The Beatles’ transitional phase in the HARD DAYS’ NIGHT, BEATLES FOR
SALE and HELP albums, giving particular attention to how their encounter with
Bob Dylan (and those funny cigarettes he passed them!) jumpstarted the group onto
a bumpy but often inspirational journey from pop stardom to contemporary
artistry. Other inspirations such as the soul music from the Stax label are also discussed. And we hear how YESTERDAY emerged into Paul's dream consciousness as 'Scrambled Eggs'...
CHAPTER THREE: JUST A STATE OF MIND
This section
includes an in depth look at the seminal RUBBER SOUL and REVOLVER albums,
discusses the influence of LSD on the group’s collective psyche and explains
how George Martin dealt with John’s request to get hundreds of chanting Tibetan
monks into the studio. I've examined how the group became increasingly concerned with becoming 'studio artists' concerned with tailoring each song's production and arrangement appropriately. Here we also see the effects of John’s infamous ‘Bigger
Than Jesus’ speech, delivered ‘in his own words’…
CHAPTER FOUR: NOTHING IS REAL
The focus here
is on the group’s meisterwerk SGT. PEPPER and attendant and subsequent single
releases like STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER, PENNY LANE and I AM THE WALRUS, which are examined in detail here. I’ve felt for some time that Sgt. Pepper has been critically
misunderstood over the last few years. In my view it IS a concept album,
focused on the 1960s generation gap.
Beneath the bright surfaces of many of its songs lies a dark, scary conceit which stretches towards a kind of humble terror in the overwhelming finale of A DAY IN THE LIFE.Even the apparently harmless ‘When I’m Sixty Four’ harbours subversive undercurrents…
CHAPTER FIVE: THE MOVEMENT YOU NEED
From HEY JUDE
to THE WHITE ALBUM: The Beatles reinvent themselves yet again as everyband …
singing songs and stories of ‘the great comedown’ with amazing virtuosity, from
soppy ballads to silly reggae singalongs to screaming death blues to
avant-garde dreamscapes. The effects of the group's involvement with the Maharishi and transcendental meditation is also examined, especially with regard to its effect on songs like ACROSS THE UNIVERSE and SEXY SADIE. I've also looked at how many of their songs began to have increasingly autobiographical undercurrents, as tensions within the group began to rise.
CHAPTER SIX: NOTHING YOU CAN DO THAT CAN’T
BE DONE
1969…the final
burn-out. The Beatles bow out in a storm of guitars, graceful melodies and half-finished recordings. The
attempt to get ‘back to basics’ that became the LET IT BE album and the final
defiant tour-de-force of ABBEY ROAD are put under the microscope. We end with a ghostly reappearance…
READ EXTRACTS FROM
THE BOOK HERE
FOLLOW THE LINK AND SCROLL DOWN TO READ:
DYLAN MEETS THE BEATLES
A fictionalised account of The Beatles' first meeting with Bob Dylan in late 1964
STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER AND PENNY LANE (PART ONE)
John, Freddie and Julia: childhood torment
STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER AND PENNY LANE (PART TWO)Analysis of these 'autobiographical' songs
HEY JUDEWas it about John? Or Paul? Or me or you?
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MORE EXTRACTS TO COME SOON!!!
PLEASE LEAVE ANY COMMENTS BELOW OR WRITE DIRECTLY TO ME
AT: chris@chrisgregory.org