How the Beatles Destroyed Rock n Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music | 
| Author: Elijah Wald
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
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Rating:  20 reviews
Sales Rank: 7804
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 336
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.3
ISBN: 0195341546
Dewey Decimal Number: 781.640973
EAN: 9780195341546
ASIN: 0195341546
Publication Date: June 1, 2009
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Product Description
"There are no definitive histories," writes Elijah Wald, in this provocative reassessment of American popular music, "because the past keeps looking different as the present changes." Earlier musical styles sound different to us today because we hear them through the musical filter of other styles that came after them, all the way through funk and hiphop.
As its blasphemous title suggests, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll rejects the conventional pieties of mainstream jazz and rock history. Rather than concentrating on those traditionally favored styles, the book traces the evolution of popular music through developing tastes, trends and technologies--including the role of records, radio, jukeboxes and television --to give a fuller, more balanced account of the broad variety of music that captivated listeners over the course of the twentieth century. Wald revisits original sources--recordings, period articles, memoirs, and interviews--to highlight how music was actually heard and experienced over the years. And in a refreshing departure from more typical histories, he focuses on the world of working musicians and ordinary listeners rather than stars and specialists. He looks for example at the evolution of jazz as dance music, and rock 'n' roll through the eyes of the screaming, twisting teenage girls who made up the bulk of its early audience. Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, and the Beatles are all here, but Wald also discusses less familiar names like Paul Whiteman, Guy Lombardo, Mitch Miller, Jo Stafford, Frankie Avalon, and the Shirelles, who in some cases were far more popular than those bright stars we all know today, and who more accurately represent the mainstream of their times.
Written with verve and style, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll shakes up our staid notions of music history and helps us hear American popular music with new ears.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 15 more reviews...
 Fresh perspective on popular music; yes, the title is miscast and miscued July 4, 2009
Jessica Weissman (Silver Spring, MD USA)
As nearly all other reviewers have noted, this book spends 230 pages on the history of popular music (jazz, dance music, R & B, rock, pop) before the Beatles show up. Yes, the Beatles and the rest of the British Invasion recast rock into a far more segregated thing that it was before their arrival. While I like the Beatles more than Wald does, I agree with this part of his analysis.
Ok, that's out of the way.
The real value of Wald's book is in writing a comprehensive history of the American popular music of the 20th century from the point of view of working musicians and ordinary listeners/dancers. We now think of genres such as jazz and orchestral dance music and rock country and so forth as absolutely separate. They once were not quite so separate.
Before recordings and before radio, musicians played for people to dance to. Working musicians of all kinds had to be adept at many kinds of music (which basically means many kinds of rhythm to Wald), and they mixed them up to keep dancers going.
A popular song was popular no matter who sang it; except for a very tiny group of stars. These days, what we care about is individual performances, individual artists. Radio began to make this change, and records completed it.
One of Wald's more interesting points is that our idea of some of the earlier performers is based on their records, which were almost incidental to them and gave a very partial picture of an artist's work.
Another is that our picture of the evolution of music is based in large part on the opinions of music writers, many of whom were simply not typical in their tastes. What they liked is not necessarily what most listeners liked. Lots of people liked Paul Whiteman. Lots of people liked Bobby Darin. Lots of people liked a lot of things that rock and jazz critics did not. Shaping music history according to critical tastes is distortion, Wald says.
Wald does an excellent job of tracing the changes in how we consume and regard music from the turn of the 20th century to the 70s or so. He paints a clear picture of what working musicians did, and what dancers and listeners did in response.
His style is clear and incisive, and he provides plenty of footnotes if you are interested. They don't get in the way of the text. He is a bit repetitious, but the examples are interesting enough that I for one did not mind.
There are other, far more ponderous, histories of what recording did to change music. Most of them concentrate on star performers. This one's more interesting than those, because of its emphasis.
You can ignore his title and learn from and enjoy his book. I did.
Yeah, yeah, yeah!! July 3, 2009
Cecil Bothwell (Asheville, NC USA)
I picked up this book because of the title. I doubted it. Now, to quote one of the bands that followed the Beatles in the dying throes of Rock n' Roll, "I'm a believer."
Elijah Wald not only manages to prove his contrary-seeming title assertion, he delivers a splendid history of American popular music and 20th century popular culture. This is not merely the story of folk, jazz, R&B, rock, folk-rock, soul, and the stirrings of disco, hip-hop and rap, it includes the history of race relations and politics through those decades. Wald has delivered a brilliant tour de force. This is without question one of the three best books I have read this year. (See my reviews of Donella Meadows' Thinking in Systems: A Primer and James Workman's Heart of Dryness: How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age of Permanent Drought for the other two).
If you love music, you will find much to love in this book. If you care about our enduring legacy of racism, you will find deeper understanding in this book. If you still love the Beatles, you will find yourself saying "Aha!" as you read the concluding chapter. Perhaps the most astonishing lesson herein is Wald's explanation of why music became more and more racially segregated at just the time when society was making strides toward integration, and why the Beatles popularity combined with modern technology separated rock from its roots. This one is a keeper.
Not about the Beatles, but a fascinating read July 2, 2009
TheBandit (SEA-TAC)
First off, the title of this book is more or less a ploy to sell books. There are people who will buy anything with the Beatles name on it. But just consider beforehand, aside from a few references peppered throughout, there is only one chapter in this book that deals specifically with the Beatles and their impact on popular music.
In fact, the book really isn't even about rock'n'roll. It goes back to the very early part of the 20th century and details how caucasian musicians consistantly borrowed from (or hijacked) music originated by African-Americans and mainstreamed it for mass consumption. The book does this without slamming anyone really. White musician/bandleader Paul Whiteman, called by the author the most influential figure in popular music, is acknowledged as having talent. But the book details how, by instilling European musical elements in jazz, he made the music "safer" and more acceptable for white audiences.
It's an interesting book to read for those interested in the evolution of pop music pre-rock.
Misleading title but excellent history of 20th century American music June 22, 2009
J. Green (Los Angeles, California)
In spite of a very provocative title, this book isn't really a criticism of the Beatles. In fact, other than the introduction and the last chapter, there really isn't much said about them, and even then it's pretty thin and not likely to ruffle the feathers of any fans. But then again, it's hard to imagine buyers selecting a book with a less interesting title like "An Alternative History of American Popular Music." Nonetheless, the title is bound to offend Beatle's fans and a lot of negative reviews will come from disgruntled reviewers who haven't fully read the book (like the review in the LA Times) if at all.
Mr. Wald makes an important point that is central to his theme: "The people who choose to write about popular music, even while it is happening, tend to be far from average consumers and partygoers and often despise the tastes and behavior of their more cheerful and numerous peers (pg 97)." In other words, music critics and historians aren't often representative of what was really popular, and he cites many examples of musicians who were very popular in their time yet are usually ignored or denigrated today (Pat Boone and Paul Whiteman, among many others). He also emphasizes that we tend to see history through the lens of our own experiences since that time, and miss the context of the time when it was actually happening.
This book attempts to go back and examine what was popular and why. Race factors in frequently, and "black" and "white" music and the influences and interactions between the two are put into a clearer perspective, especially as it relates to the musicians, as well as the differences between male and female listeners. Ragtime, jazz, big band, rhythm and blues, country/western, rock & roll - all are looked at as they influenced popular music, in addition to the changes in technology (radio, records), society (prohibition, the Depression, WWII, etc), and the industry (genre labels, etc.). And it really helps to make sense of music history and answered a lot of questions I had wondered about - especially since it was all before my time (I kind of wish it had continued into the 80s or later).
But the book is perhaps a little more detailed than many people will want, and the font is smaller than normally used. Mr. Wald frequently says something to the effect of "not to belabor the point, but...", and then goes on to belabor the point some more, but even then l usually found it very interesting and entertaining. I had to remove the dust jacket while carrying it around because of the provocative title (one lady in the Taco Bell was positively *miffed* that anything so blasphemous could be said about the Beatles), but I can still highly recommend it, especially to those interested in music history.
Ignore the main title and focus on the sub-title June 20, 2009
R. M. Peterson (Santa Fe, NM)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
As I understand it, Wald's principal thesis, which is reflected in the somewhat provocative main title, is the following: As rock/pop performers -- of which the Beatles were the most conspicuous example -- began to see themselves more as "artists", they consciously aspired to create "high" or "serious" art and in the process divorced themselves and their music from entertainment and, especially, from dancing. At the same time, in part because it is easier to write about "art" than "entertainment," the media pushed the notion that these self-conscious, auteur-ish, studio products were indeed "art", something to be taken and discussed seriously. The two impulses fed and reinforced one another, pushing white rock/pop music further and further away from entertainment, dancing, and (for the first time in 20th-Century popular music) black music. By 1969, "[r]ock had become a white genre."
Whether or not you agree with that thesis (and Wald does marshal enough points and arguments in support of it that I come away willing to accord it some measure of validity), HOW THE BEATLES DESTROYED ROCK 'N' ROLL is still quite valuable as a history of American popular music in the 20th Century (or, ragtime through disco). Especially interesting to me were the discussions of how technological changes -- including recording itself, then advances in recording and developments in the methods of "delivery", such as radio, television, and LPs -- affected popular music. Other influences were economic in nature (the Depression) or political (Prohibition, World War II). I also appreciated the profiles, many of which are several pages in length, of key figures of American pop music, such as Paul Whiteman, Guy Lombardo, Benny Goodman, Mitch Miller, Frank Sinatra, and Harry Belafonte.
Wald is pragmatic and instructive on the blurred dividing lines of genres. For example: "[M]ost of our modern musical genres [are] at root simply marketing categories--that is, we call something jazz or rock less because of any inherent musical characteristics than because we think it will be of interest to people who consider themselves jazz or rock fans." Wald is sensitive to, and intelligently discusses (without letting the matter take over his book), the many manifestations of racial prejudice in the last century of American pop music. Best of all, the book reflects a mature perspective on the very exercise of musical history and criticism. For example, he introduces his book by quoting Charles Rosen (a distinguished classical pianist and critic) to the effect that a music critic does not have to love a work of art or a style in order to write about it critically, but the critic must at least recognize and allow for the fact that other people do love that work or style. In addition, Wald also recognizes that most of those who write music criticism are not the average music fans: "It is often said that history is written by the victors, but in the case of pop music that is rarely true. The victors tend to be out dancing, while the historians sit at their desks, assiduously chronicling music they cannot hear on mainstream radio."
On the negative side, the book drags at times, and some points seem belabored or over-illustrated. I also sense that it could have been organized better. Perhaps shorter chapters or periodic "sign-post" headings would have helped. (But then again, it is published by Oxford University Press, so those kinds of reader-friendly devices might violate the house style.) Whatever the reason was, I could only read a chapter or two at a time. I therefore give the book 4.5 stars and round down to four. Still, whatever you think of the book's title and the thesis that gave rise to it, HOW THE BEATLES DESTROYED ROCK 'N' ROLL is a fine book.
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