There is an interesting paradox in The Beatles‘ music. Despite their extreme sytlistic variety, their songs seem to always bear a distinctive identity – something that emerges even more when we hear and recognize “Beatlesque” (or “Beatle-y”) tunes by other acts, whether they are merely inspired (like XTC, Elliott Smith or Oasis, to mention just a few), or explicitly paying homage or making parodies (like Utopia, Vinyl Kings, of course The Rutles…). Sometimes it is that familiar four-in-a-bar piano accompaniment, sometimes it is the vocal harmonies, sometimes it is a baroque-styled solo played with a wind instrument…
Dario Martinelli and Paolo Bucciarelli, the authors of this book, address the paradox through a crossdisciplinary hybrid of reflections. Being respectively a musicologist and a music producer, they draw from both the musical practice and academic research.
The Beatles and the Beatlesque – A Crossdisciplinary Analysis of Sound, Production and Stylistic Impact emphasizes the importance of songwriting and record production in The Beatles’ music in a way that does justice not only to the final artefacts (the released songs) but also to the creative process itself (i.e., the songs “in the making”).
Through an investigation of the work of the Fab Four, along with George Martin and his team, this book aims at shedding light on how studio activity, combined with the band’s creativity, shaped the group’s eclectic but unique sound – and therefore that rich, varied and yet always recognizable style. To put it in simpler terms: if a song like “Penny Lane”, with that familiar four-in-a-bar piano accompaniment, those vocal harmonies, that baroque-sounding trumpet solo and all the rest, sound intrinsically and unmistakably beatlesque, it is because of the marriage-in-heaven between compositional and studio work.
Thus: what are the elements that make a song Beatlesque? How deep is the connection between songwriting and artistic production? To what extent are production choices responsible in developing a style? The authors undertake these questions in five main steps. Chapter 1, A Short History of The Beatles in the Studio, offers an overview of the band’s activity in the studio: the premises, the instruments, the staff, the techniques, and the technologies.
In Chapter 2, Style and Sound, the authors discuss the notions of “sound” and “style” and summarize the various sources that forged the style of The Beatles, from rock and roll to experimental music, from Chuck Berry to Bob Dylan, from Motown to Pet Sounds. Chapter 3, (The Difficulty of) Defining the Beatles Style classifies the six main stylistic elements of the band’s music, from the most recurrent to the most defining ones: vocals, harmony, melody, rhythm, structure, and lyrics. Chapter 4, Crossdisciplinary Reflections: Production vs. Multimodality Studies, Narratology, and Film Studies, goes into full analytical mode, as it scrutinizes the band’s songwriting and production through the lenses of semiotics, multimodality studies, and even film and media studies, within a crossdisciplinary interface that, possibly, results in the most innovative section of the book. Finally, Chapter 5, Birth and Fortune of the “Beatlesque”: Transmission of Creativity and Legacy, elaborates on how the Beatles’ influence on western popular music became manifest in countless songs and repertoires. That part is implemented with an appendix containing a list of 500 Beatlesque songs written/performed by other acts, plus 25 written by The Beatles themselves during their solo years.
While not the easiest of readings (due to its mostly academic nature), this book is however a unique case within the vast Beatle-related literature. Not a day-by-day diary of studio activity or a song-by-song analysis (a task already covered, and remarkably, by the likes of Lewisohn, MacDonald and others), The Beatles and the Beatlesque is rather an investigation on the aesthetics, the semiotics and the philosophy behind that fascinating path that goes from the creation to the production of the Fab Four’s repertoire.
Publisher: Springer; 1st ed. 2023 edition
Language: English
Hardcover: 230 pages
Item Weight: 1.14 pounds
Dimensions: 6.14 x 0.56 x 9.21 inches
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