Popular Music and Society: The Beatles as Musicians: the Quarry Men Through Rubber Soul

The Beatles as Musicians: The Quarry Men Through Rubber Soul Walter Everett Oxford UP, New York, 2001 452 pp.

Literature on the Beatles largely (but not exclusively) falls into three principal categories. There are chronologies of the group that set out to relate, in straightforward and uncontentious style, the significant events of the Beatles' story. There are musical commentaries, in which attempts are made to investigate the circumstances and characteristics of the group's songs. And there are critical analyses that seek to locate the Beatles, and the debates they provoked, within a wider industrial and commercial context.

Walter Everett seeks to combine strands of all three approaches in this, the first in his two-volume study of the group's musical output. (Somewhat confusingly, the second volume, The Beatles As Musicians: Revolver Through the Anthology was published first.) The rigor with which he accomplishes his task is reflected in the 100+ pages of appendices, notes, and references at the end of the book; it is a hugely detailed and meticulously researched project, whose complexity of inquiry may, ironically, be one of its drawbacks. The author readily admits that "two years' study of college-level music theory would be essential to following much of this book's theoretical discussion" (vii), and is well aware of the incongruity that lies in the application of such theory to the work of composers who themselves never relied on musical notation.

But, while he recognizes that many readers might be dissuaded from an exhaustive song-by-song, instrument-by-instrument analysis, which seems unnecessarily cerebral and 'abstract', he argues that such an account is not only desirable, but essential, if the remarkable evolution of the group's music--through its composing strategies, performance practices, and recording procedures--is to be fully appreciated. Just as the music of Mozart, Beethoven, and Joachim was constrained and shaped by the technological and musical opportunities of their times, so too the music of the Beatles needs to be located within its contemporaneous boundaries.

So what do we learn from this book? While not dismissing the familiar distinction within the Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership--John as the "intellectually inquisitive middle-class boy" (15) and Paul as the "sentimental, non-intellectual working-class craftsman" (16)--Everett is keen to extend those explanations that allow us to understand how a group that was primarily a cover band in the early years of its career was transformed into the most important force in twentieth-century popular music.

He asserts that one such factor was the advance in studio technology (from two-track to four-track) in 1963, which permitted the regular overdubbing of backing vocals and guitars, immediately and significantly enhancing the group's recorded "sound." Even more important--and this is the central plank of Everett's argument--was the Beatles' growing interest in instrumentation. For example, Harrison's acquisition of a Rickenbacker twelve-string in 1964, Lennon's introduction to the Gibson Epiphone Casino in 1965, and McCartney's consistent preference for the Hofner "Violin" Bass were not incidental choices, but factors that offered new possibilities to the recording and composing trajectories of the group, and many of its peers. As their confidence and ingenuity as vocalists, performers, and composers grew, their (diversified) choice of instruments both mirrored and contributed to the nature of the music they created. The early and "noisy" presence in the group's work of Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Carl Perkins gave way to music of fragility, vulnerability, and reflection; "rock" replaced rock and roll; and there was "far less emphasis on dramatic power, and a growing reliance on subtleties" (270).

The singular importance of Ringo Starr is fully acknowledged, too: "what sets him apart ... are the expressive and idiosyncratic 'fills' that often appear at structural points, defining endings of phrases and sections, or providing transitional impetus when necessary" (120-21). And the participation of George Martin is similarly highlighted, not just for his technical skills in the control booth but also for his instrumental contributions and musical suggestions: the Steinway grand on "You Really Got a Hold on Me" and "Money," the string quartet on "Yesterday," his decision to open "She Loves You" and "Can't Buy Me Love" with the chorus rather than the verse.

While all of the Beatles' repertoire from 1956 to 1965 is fully documented, Everett devotes particular attention to a discussion of the group's two most important songs in this period. Among other things, it is suggested that "She Loves You" (composed in a hotel room just around the corner from where I am now writing!) may have had its melodic and lyrical genesis in the Tony Hatch composition "Forget Him," recorded by Bobby Rydell in early 1963. And we learn that "I Want To Hold Your Hand" is, in fact, precisely what it is often called--the quintessential Beatles track--in that it possesses the lowest number of deviations from the standard phrase forms of all the group's A and B sides. In addition, it's satisfying to see Everett's correct identification of Rubber Soul's importance to the group's musical history, as the first Beatles album "made more to be thought about than danced to" (312).

While certainly not for the casual Beatles fan, this is a unique and valuable addition to a growing body of research which, in recent years, has sought to approach the study of objects of "popular" culture with methodologies formerly associated with the terrain of "high" culture, and which has, in passing, exposed the inherent weakness in trying to maintain a distinction between the two. Although the author's presentation of his research is at times a little cumbersome (are all those maps, diagrams, tables, and charts really necessary?), its detail and dedication are exemplary. The Beatles as Musicians is an important, revealing, and impressive guide to the music of the Beatles.

Ian Inglis

University of Northumbria at Newcastle, UK