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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:  47 reviews
Sales Rank: 65686
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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| • | ISBN13: 9780195341546 | | • | Condition: NEW | | • | Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. |
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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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Showing reviews 1-5 of 47
 The Beatles? Who were they? January 23, 2010
Lee Hartsfeld (Central Ohio, United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I figure I'll get my complaints out of the way first, starting with the terrible title. Yes, the media has pretty much reduced popular music history to (pick one) The Beatles, Elvis Presley, and Frank Sinatra, so it may be that, to get readers, an author has to name-drop one of those three. Imagine if the title had mentioned Earl Fuller, Paul Whiteman, Billy Murray, or Lawrence Welk--the volume might be gathering dust in a Big Lots bin as we speak. Still, "How the Beatles...." is so very misleading as to be a shame. Then again, if it succeeds in grabbing attention, more power to it.
My second major gripe--Wald's assertion that mood music "would have made little sense without long-playing discs" (i.e., prior to 1948), since its main function was "to create a lingering, romantic ambiance." Well, no. Mood music originated as material for silent movies, the musical stage, and early radio, and it proliferated on disc--examples by Paul Whiteman, Erno Rapee, Domenico Savino, and Andre Kostelanetz are common items on eBay. Many of the staples of mood music are 19th and early-20th-century light works that were also staples of early sound recordings--"Narcissus," "To a Wild Rose," "Old Folks at Home," "In a Clock Store," etc.
Finally, I can't help thinking that Wald has exaggerated the gap between early sound recordings and what was happening, performance-wise, outside of the recording studio. Granted, sound recordings provide a limited document, given the particulars of the medium (length, sonic limitations, the use of studio musicians, the recording process' lack of portability, etc.), yet I find no basis for presuming a huge disconnect between what we hear on 78s and what we might have heard "live," especially given that recordings initially followed from (and were necessarily derivative of) other media such as sheet music, pit band orchestrations, music hall sketches, etc.
What I liked, on the other hand, could fill a book. First and foremost, Wald is to be praised for treating popular music as just that--popular music. As in, the music that people listened to, vice the music that critics think people SHOULD HAVE listened to. It's a sad comment on music journalism that it's taken this long for the concept of "popular" to take hold, but late is better than never. That his approach has been received as revolutionary is a bit scary, not least of all because it's true. Again, better late than never.
And his coverage of the impact of rock and roll on jazz, etc. is the savviest account I've yet seen--yes, absolutely, beyond a doubt, rock and roll was seen at the time (by professional musicians, at least) as a triumph of amateurism, which it was to an extent. My jazz-musician father and his friends expressed this view again and again over the years, and even as a kid I could hear the difference in competence between the jazz on my parents' hi-fi and the rock on the radio. My father did surprise me at one point by describing rock and roll as something jazz brought on itself by becoming too remote in its complexity from the popular audience. Wald is also spot-on in his description of Mitch Miller as, more or less, the inventor of modern record production. And I suppose that Paul Whiteman and the Beatles performed similar functions in (what's the best term?) Europeanizing African-American pop music (jazz and R&B, respectively), in making dance-oriented music more a thing to listen to by adding Classical trappings (Ravel, in the case of Whiteman; string quartets and tape loops in the case of the Fab Four).
Greatly appreciated, too, is Wald's emphasis on the sheer, amazing scope of black popular music over the decades, even as PBS and other forces of conventional thinking continue to stereotype same as loud, pounding, and--worst of all--a thing of musical illiteracy, of feeling and instinct over formal accomplishment. Not that white performers haven't been typecast in similar ways--for instance, if Bob Dylan knows the chord changes to "Stardust," the rock press would kill to keep it from coming out--but African Americans are especially the victims of the "natural" cliche--natural rhythm, natural feeling for melody, etc., and never mind that Duke Ellington, James Reese Europe, and Scott Joplin rank among our best-educated and most innovative musicians.
Unlike probably most readers, I came to this volume with a strong orientation in pre-rock pop music--nothing in here is especially "new" to me, but much of the treatment is. Some reviewers have criticized Wald for taking on too much, but he didn't have much of a choice, really, given that basic pop music history is the victim of such neglect. He's taken on a long-overdue task, and there's bound to be a rushed, unfocused quality to some of the text--mainly because he's covering so much new ground. New ground that should not be so. Considering the hugeness of the task, Wald has done a brilliant job. Five well-deserved stars.
Finally, A little common sense in Popular Music criticism! January 23, 2010
Dwight R. Price, Jr.
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
It's my impression that the author makes a valiant attempt to posit a larger truth that no race "owns" a music regardless of race or gender.
If that is in fact the case, buy ten copies and give him a Nobel prize.
Ridiculous concepts like Jazz or R&B being "ALL" black in inspiration or creation (or Classical being "ALL" white) and no race can lay claim to any of the other's idiomatic "turf" (concepts perpetuated by the idiotically and ironically rasicist dogma of self appointed experts like "PLACE NAME OF ROCK MUSIC MAGAZINE HERE") need to be plowed under so popular music might once again make progress.
Musicians have long known that these marketing ploys have nothing to do with music.
Musical primitivism as self desctructive lifestyle reinforcing auditory wallpaper is a concept that can't die soon enough for my tastes.
Nicely done Mr. Wald.
Misleading Title - Read Anyway January 22, 2010
BeatleBangs1964 (United States)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
The claim that the world's greatest band destroyed rock is fallacious and ludicrous. Using that claim as a title for a book will certainly grab readers' attention.
Despite the title, this book really focuses on other bands, jazz and other styles who were not nearly as prominent as the Beatles. The Beatles were a musical juggernaut who raised the musical bar and to this day are often held up as a guidepost to musical success.
Wald's work is not so much about the Beatles, per se but about other musical artists. For those who enjoy music history, then this book is for you.
Read past the title and read the book. The Beatles are mentioned very sparingly and readers come away with a rich historical perspective.
 Great ideas, but needs focus November 28, 2009
Vain Saints (USA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Wald makes a lot of outrageous claims, such as comparing the influence of Paul Whiteman to that of the Beatles, but in spite of this, Wald puts a narrative together that is always on the cusp of being fascinating, except that it never really comes together.
I'm trying to figure out as I read, What exactly is this book about? Where is the alternative in this history? What is the point. The author is tantalizingly close to having a point by the time he gets to the Swing Era, by which time the book seems to be congealing into a survey of American popular music from the perspective of the popular listener. It is becoming (at this time) a fairly comprehensive guide to who is listening to what, under what circumstances, and why these tastes change over time.
At this point, it had the potential to be a masterwork; but the book breaks down from there, meandering into a series of tangents without finding a point. Bebop is not mentioned, the death of the big-bands and the decline and eventual devastation of jazz is given a cursory treatment, and Wald drowns in an ocean of details that are put into the service of arguing minor points. By the time Wald gets to the Beatles, the reader has ceased to care enough to notice how questionable some of his analysis is.
In effect, Wald wrote half a book when he set out to write four or five. Wald would be an excellent contributer to the following series.
1.) The Rise of the Middle Class and the Dawn of American Popular Music.
2.) Blacks move North and Whites go to the cities: the Ragtime Life Begins.
3.) Louis Armstrong: from Ragtime to Jazz
4.) The Radio and Benny Goodman Swing that Music
5.) Meanwhile, Blues and Country Lurk
6.) Swing Ambushed From All Corners, from Bop on the one hand to Blues and
Country on the other, to the Cabaret Tax and the LP.
7.) R&B and Rock & Roll--and how the Beatles widened the chasm.
8--etc all the stuff that's happened since.
This is not something that can be done in the scope of the Wald book. You need either a huge Tome or a series to truly cover the kind of ground that Wald wants to cover, and indeed, the pace of the last couple of chapters is so frantic that even Wald must have felt like he was writing the last pages of a term paper on the due day. Wald seems like a great guy to do this and it needs to be done.
Well-written, enlightening, easy-to-read, eye-opening book about popular music November 20, 2009
M. M Magliaro (Philipsburg, PA United States)
"How the Beatles Destroyed Rock n Roll" is well-written and entertaining, as well as educational. It is a fabulous book on many levels. I will focus on three:
1. Music History
2. Music as a Business
3. Race Relations and Music
These 3 main threads are carried through the whole book continuously. It is not as though there is a "section" on music history. But rather, the author takes you on a journey, more or less chronologically, from 1850 to about 1985, discussing these 3 subject areas and how they affected the development of music.
1. Music History
Era by era, the author discusses popular artists of the time, what made them popular, and how certain ones are remembered today as "great influences" while others have been completely forgotten. One of the most important lessons one learns upon reading this book is that the reasons certain artists were immensely popular are very often nothing like what one would imagine. More importantly, the artists who are remembered as "great ones" of a particular style are often not the ones who were most popular at the time. We confuse who is now considered "great" from a particular era with who had the most influence over the course of music during that era.
Even if you are a musician, or a historian with an otherwise very thorough knowledge of music history, you will learn a great deal from the history facet of this book. If you think that the history of rock `n roll is that it derived from jazz and blues, read this book. You'll be surprised. It is nothing so simple.
There are amazing statistics in this book that will challenge what you thought was true about music popularity. For example, Paul Simon's debut album out-sold every single Rolling Stones album except one. While both artists are well-known and were certainly "major influences", it is surprising to see that the Rolling Stones (popular as they were) virtually never managed to put out that big a seller, yet Paul Simon did. The book is full of fascinating information like this. More importantly, the author didn't just fill up a book with "gee whiz" anecdotes. These facts are always included as evidence to make a critical point about music history and popularity.
2. The Business of Selling Music
The author does a wonderful job of explaining how music as a money-making business migrated from being dominated by sheet-music sales, to generating dance-hall revenue, to recorded music. A very thorough discussion is included of how technology (records, portable amplifiers and microphones, television, radio) massively affected how music was sold and distributed. Even more importantly, these things affected the kind of music people listened to, where they listened to it, how much they would pay for it, and how that impacted the lives of working musicians and music distributors and publishing companies. The end product of all this was that the direction of modern music through the decades was changed by these physical everyday devices and by how money could be made in the music business.
3. Race Relations and Music
A good deal of the book, in section after section, era after era, is devoted to discussing how people of different races worked together, or for each other, in the music business. The book talks about the origins of music predominantly played and written by blacks, and that by whites, and how they merged and influenced each other, to the common benefit of both, through the decades. There is a lot of discussion of racism and the difficulties experienced by black musicians being respected, hired, paid, or even being in the "public eye" as good artists.
It is in this context that the title, about the Beatles "ruining" rock `n roll, is explained deep in the book. I won't ruin the book or steal the author's thunder by explaining all that here. But suffice it to say, you will again be delighted and surprised by what the writer means by "ruin", and once again, he has a brilliant and insightful point to make.
SUMMARY:
In short, whether you think you know all there is to know about the history of music, or you are just a new student to the subject, you will find this book entertaining and enlightening. The influences that made certain artists famous, or infamous, will astound you. The reasons music took the turns that it did, stylistically, at various points in history, will surprise you. I have been an amateur musician for over 30 years. I have listened to and played everything from Beethoven to opera, ragtime, 40s swing, rock-a-billy, The Beatles, folk rock, punk, grunge, and more. And STILL, there was something to learn on practically every page of this book.
It will change the way you look at artists, old and new. It will change the way you think about how music is written and sold. It will change how you see music, in general. It is a stunning book.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 47
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