Hunter Davies, the only ever authorised biographer of the group, has produced the essential Beatles guide. Divided into four sections – People, Songs, Places and Broadcast and Cinema – it covers all elements of the band’s history and vividly brings to live every influence that shaped them. Illustrated with material from Hunter's remarkable private collection of artefacts and memorabilia, this is the definitive Beatles treasure.

Despite the enormous amount of writing devoted to the Beatles during the last few decades, the band's abiding intellectual and cultural significance has received scant attention. Using various modes of literary, musicological, and cultural criticism, the essays in Reading the Beatles firmly establish the Beatles as a locus of serious academic and cultural study. Exploring the group's resounding impact on how we think about gender, popular culture, and the formal and poetic qualities of music, the contributors trace not only the literary and musicological qualities of selected Beatles songs but also the development of the Beatles' artistry in their films and the ways in which the band has functioned as a cultural, historical, and economic product. In a poignant afterword, Jane Tompkins offers an autobiographical account of the ways in which the Beatles afforded her with the self-actualizing means to become less alienated from popular culture, gender expectations, and even herself during the early 1960s.

From Please Please Me to Abbey Road, this collection of essays tells the fascinating story of the Beatles – the creation of the band, their musical influences, and their cultural significance, with emphasis on their genesis and practices as musicians, songwriters, and recording artists. Through detailed biographical and album analyses, the book uncovers the background of each band member and provides expansive readings of the band's music. • Traces the group's creative output from their earliest recordings through their career • Pays particular attention to the social and historical factors which contributed to the creation of the band • Investigates the Beatles' unique enduring musical legacy and cultural power • Clearly organized into three sections, covering Background, Works, and History and Influence, the Companion is ideal for course usage, and is also a must-read for all Beatles fans

In the 1960s, The Beatles would address like no other musical act a radical shift in the cultural mindset of the late twentieth century. Through tools of “electric technology,” this shift encompassed the decline of visual modes of perception and the emergence of a “way-of-knowing” based increasingly on sound. In this respect, the musical works of The Beatles would come to resonate with and ultimately reflect Marshall McLuhan’s ideas on the transition into a culture of “all-at-once-ness”: a simultaneous world in which immersion in vibrant global community increasingly trumps the fixed viewpoint of the individual. By engaging with recording technologies in a way that no popular act had before, The Beatles opened up for exploration the acoustical space precipitated by this shift. In The Beatles and McLuhan: Understanding the Electric Age, scholar and musician Thomas MacFarlane examines how the incorporation of electric technology in The Beatles’ art would enhance their musical impact. MacFarlane surveys the relationship between McLuhan's ideas on the nature and effects of electric technology and The Beatles own engagement of that technology; offers analyses of key works from The Beatles' studio years, with particular attention paid to the presence of cultural metaphors embedded in the medium of multi-track recording; and collates these data to offer stunning conclusions about The Beatles’ creative process in the recording studio and its cultural implications. This work also features the first published transcriptions ever of the complete filmed conversation between John Lennon and Marshall McLuhan on their respective ideas, as well as an interview between MacFarlane and McLuhan’s son and executor, Michael McLuhan, on his father’s and the Beatles’ legacy. The Beatles and McLuhan will interest scholars and students of music and music history, recording technology, media studies, communications, and popular culture.

The Beatles came up in the rock and-and-roll era, when Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Elvis Presley defined cool. Their early shows were big beat bacchanals, the Brit interpretation of that crazy American sound. But it wasn't long before they were absorbing and creating more and more music – from folk to experimental, to psychedelia and hard rock, quite literally changing music forever and influencing hundreds of great bands in the process. This is the first book for music lovers that begins with the simple premise, “If you like the Beatles . . ., ” and takes off from there, digging into their influences and everything that came after them, opening up new doors for listeners looking for no-risk discs to expand their collection. Beginning with the Beatles' lesser-known roots in rockabilly and Tin Pan Alley, and working through American R&B, the British Invasion, California folk, and the Summer of Love, and to the great pop and rock bands of the '80s, '90s, and the 21st century, this is a must-have for anyone who likes the Beatles, which is...everyone.

Starting an undeniable revolution, the Beatles took pop culture by storm, shook up the recording industry, and provided a soundtrack for the lives of millions of American teenagers. No band would ever come close to the mania inspired by these four Liverpudlian exports. Brooke Halpin takes readers on a comprehensive tour behind the masterful instrumentation, timeless (yet sometimes mysterious) lyrics, and experimental recording techniques of the Beatles’ American releases from 1964 through 1970. Halpin explores the rock covers from which the four lads launched their careers; the original rock ‘n’ roll and love songs that fueled Beatlemania; the theatrical, psychedelic, world music, and orchestral elements which continually surprised audiences about the depths of the band’s talents, and the guest musicians whose contributions remain unknown to many listeners. Adding to the song analyses are personal vignettes to transport the reader back in time to experience the excitement of hearing the Beatles for the first time. Through their music, lyrics, and playful antics on stage and screen as well as in real life, the Beatles encapsulated the ups and downs of 1960s America. Halpin uncovers how the Beatles’ music continues to be relevant to today’s audiences, revealing little known facts and drawing exciting conclusions about the band, their eventual breakup, and their undiminished fame.

This condensed paperback encyclopedia documents the enduring cultural impact and musical legacy of the Beatles, providing readers with a one-stop resource to the Fab Four's compelling story and breadth of achievements. Legendary in music and popular culture, the Beatles were one of the most successful bands of all time. The collective achievements of the Fab Four affect a broad demographic that includes today's children, Millennials, Gen Xers, and Baby Boomers. This one-volume condensed paperback edition of The Beatles Encyclopedia brings the Beatles' dramatic story alive, highlighting the humanity of the quartet of artists that has made them an enduring artistic and social phenomenon. The entries in this condensed encyclopedia provide in-depth biographical information about the Beatles and their circle as well as fascinating historical background and key details about their most important works, giving readers broad coverage that addresses the major aspects of the band's and its individual members' phenomenal achievement. The easy-to-use A–Z resource also includes a biographical chronology and a discography as well as a bibliography that directs readers to excellent sources of additional information in print and online.

Given the phenomenal fame and commercial success that the Beatles knew for the entire course of their familiar career, their music per se has received surprisingly little detailed attention. Not all of their cultural influence can be traced to long hair and flashy clothing; the Beatles had numerous fresh ideas about melody, harmony, counterpoint, rhythm, form, colors, and textures. Or consider how much new ground was broken by their lyrics alone--both the themes and imagery of the Beatles' poetry are key parts of what made (and still makes) this group so important, so popular, and so imitated. This book is a comprehensive chronological study of every aspect of the Fab Four's musical life--including full examinations of composition, performance practice, recording, and historical context--during their transcendent late period (1966-1970). Rich, authoritative interpretations are interwoven through a documentary study of many thousands of audio, print, and other sources.

The Beatles are widely regarded as the foremost and most influential music band in history and their career has been the subject of many biographies. Yet the band's historical significance has not received sustained academic treatment to date. In The Beatles' Reception in the 1960s, Kenneth L. Campbell uses the Beatles as a lens through which to explore the sweeping, panoramic history of the social, cultural and political transformations that occurred in the 1960s. It draws on audience reception theory and untapped primary source material, including student newspapers, to understand how listeners would have interpreted the Beatles' songs and albums not only in Britain and the United States, but also globally. Taking a year-by-year approach, each chapter analyses the external influences the Beatles absorbed, consciously or unconsciously, from the culture surrounding them. Some key topics include race relations, gender dynamics, political and cultural upheavals, the Vietnam War and the evolution of rock music and popular culture. The book will also address the resurgence of the Beatles' popularity in the 1980s, as well as the relevance of The Beatles' ideals of revolutionary change to our present day. This is essential reading for anyone looking for an accessible yet rigorous study of the historical relevance of the Beatles in a crucial decade of social change.