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(c) Ian Hammond 1999
All rights reserved

The Beatles As Musicians: Review

"The Beatles As Musicians" (BAM) takes its place among Lewisohn and
Wise and few other books that form my desktop references. BAM's
strengths are the listings of the take orders and part assignments
culled from detailed study of the magazine articles, outtakes, photos
and guitar-sound evidence. 

This is not a coffee table confection of light anecdotes a la
MacDonald: it's hopelessly technical. That doesn't render it useless
to the notationally-challenged. You use the bits you understand.

It's an ambituous undertaking: to cover each song of the 1966-1969
period in detail, noting recording assignments, instruments and
musical analysis. 



TECHNOLOGY
It has become standard behaviour to lament the lack of musical depth
in the published literature. No more. Whatever the books merits be in
other departments, this is undoubtedly the best available work at the
technical level.

Everett sensibly adopts the Wise "Complete Beatles Scores" as a
standard. One spin-off is the lack of musical examples which in turn
leaves more space for text. A wise move when fighting for real estate
with an anxious publisher.

Who is this book written for? To go by its language and notation, it
would seem to target the modern musical academic, a rather small niche
market rather than the other 99.99% of avid Beatle book purchasers. I
have so much to say on this topic that I've moved the material to a
separate article.

The use the author makes of the magazine-based literature is
especially important to me particularly in the absence of good source
collections of this material. There are frequent references to the fan
club magazines of the period written when memories were fresh. The
outtakes are utilized without dominating the book. Everett has the
best published guitar usage.

The references are copious without being exhaustive. Everett provides
few references for information that has led to his take orders and
part assignments.


THE SONGS
Everett seems to separate the songs into three categories. At the top
of his list are "special" songs like "She Said She Said", "Strawberry
Fields" etc which are discussed in great detail, including the
evolution of the song. This is the first book to handle the musical
evidence in the outtakes. It was about time.

Most songs fall into the second "normal" category. These receive a
thorough treatment of the take order, part assignment, voice leading
etc. It sounds so easy and yet I'm sure this data is the result of
thousands of hours of patient and impatient study.

Songs such as "All Together Now" form a third "trivial" group which
Everett gives only passing treatment to. "All Together Now" receives
only five lines. I think this is a mistake. Everett himself says, in
the introduction, that songs are important not just for themselves but
for the context they provide for other works. "All Together Now" fits
that bill. The similarity of the structure of the song and it's bridge
is an uncanny fit for "Sgt Pepper". 

Interspersed between the song treatments is summary material including
an introductory section that sets the scene for the 1966 songs.
General commentary is not the author's forte, although it matchs most
of the record-review-style treatments that the Beatles have received
thus far. I should expand on this niggle:

JSeraf wrote a few days ago that his own ideas on the individual
Beatles roles had been challenged in the RMB leaving him much less
certain of just what this or that Beatle did. The RMB has developed a
refined articulation of Beatle knowledge that goes beyond any book
currently in print, due largely to a core group of contributors who
continually hone their Beatle knowledge. It's a jigsaw puzzle of
knowledge where the blind people reconstruct the elephant. By
comparison, Everett's evaluation comes across as a simplistic or naive
in many places.

A postlude tracks briefly the solo career of the fab four. Appendices
list the Beatles' guitars, peer performers and a table of chord
functions.


SUMMARY
"The Beatles As Musicians" doesn't a have new theory to prove. It's
about the trees rather than the forest. Compared to "Twighlight Of The
Gods", we find Mellers incision on matters of pure music. What it
lacks in Meller's superb aesthetic grasp it makes up for in the
technology, where Mellers was simply uninformed.

On a personal note, Evatt uses the phrase "double plagal" to describe
the bVII-IV-I cadence, something I have used for years but never seen
written elsewhere.

As one who plans his own Beatle books, I greet each new publication
with trepidation: "have they written 'my' book". BAM comes closer than
any other, but thankfully leaves most of my areas untouched. It does
make my job of writing a great deal easier, and for that I'm thankful.
It's a book I have been waiting for and one that will occupy me for
quite some time.

A companion article deals with the notation issues. I hope to find
time to look in more detail at his comments on the songs which is
where the meat (or tofu) and potatoes lie. 


--
ian (www.beathoven.com)