Long and Winding Roads: The Evolving Artistry of the Beatles
by Kenneth Womack
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Book Summary Information
Author: Kenneth WomackEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-05-30
ISBN: 0826417469
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Continuum
Book Reviews of Long and Winding Roads: The Evolving Artistry of the Beatles
Book Review: A wish for more focus on the music itself, and less on the lyrics
Summary: 3 Stars
I wanted to love this book; I might have approached it with unfair expectations, but one is led to believe that Womack shares some original insights on the Beatles' music. The book is merely a cursory overview of the Beatles' backgrounds (again?), private lives (again?), and recorded output, with a couple of long detours to discuss the band's image; it's not nearly as in-depth or freshly perceptive as its press indicates. On the positive side, there's certainly one aspect of the narrative that's highly praiseworthy, even if it's not directly related to the music -- so I'll mention that after first elaborating on my disappointment with the book's failure to fulfill the promise of the subtitle.
Womack's curious tendency is to focus on the romantic psychology behind the lyrics, which always seems to be quite a stretch, as the words meant nothing to the Beatles themselves during the first half of their recording career (apart from the words' strictly phonetic functions in melodic delivery). This arbitrary exercise is especially overreaching throughout the first two-thirds of the book, considering the superficial boy-meets-girl nature of the first few albums' lyrics.
As the Beatles' inventiveness and culture-altering imaginations were so effective due to melodic, harmonic and stylistic innovations and convention-breaking, and certainly not their lyrics, it would be much more interesting to read about any musical insights that might have rewarded the author's close listening, rather than the over-analytical lyrical guesses.
Further, there are several errors sprinkled throughout, both factual and lyrical; they're small, but they add up over the course of the volume to make the reader wonder why there's yet another Beatles book if, rather than adding a new perspective of any kind, it merely muddies the literary knowledge base with misconceptions, however slight; do we, in other words, really need another condensed Beatles-history book?
Examples of my admittedly pedantic nitpicking include: It was in the control room, and not Studio 2 itself, where George Martin lectured the Beatles, and heard George Harrison's well-known joke about not liking Martin's tie; it's not only Paul who vocally duets with John during "Money"; the hyperactive "Please, Mister Postman" is certainly not "lifeless"; the Beatles played more than just "All My Loving" during their first Ed Sullivan appearance; the line in "I'm Happy Just to Dance with You" is not the nonsensical "Well, it's only try and understand," but rather, "If it's funny, try and understand"; John and Paul don't both sing the lead vocal in "You're Going to Lose That Girl" -- it's only John, double-tracked; there's not a "lone piano note" after the guitar solos in "The End," but a full piano chord; etc.
Finally, the numerous footnotes are highly distracting. This sort of thing is obviously expected in a textbook or an exhaustive exegesis, but not packed together so closely throughout the main text in such a fleeting narrative. As each footnote requires the reader to turn to the end of the current chapter, I can't help but wonder why the extra prose wasn't simply incorporated into the main -- or printed at the bottom of each page. That's a minor complaint, of course, but it does break up the reading experience quite frequently.
This is all not to mention the numerous grammatical errors, which are curious, considering that Womack is an English professor. One can perhaps blame the book's editor(s).
Where the author shines, however, is in his formidably acute grasp of media-fueled mythologies, the ability of an iconic performer to find commercial success due to the repetition of facile images and messages, and the ways in which the young listeners of the sixties identified with the Beatles myth. Womack's knowledge of the history of popular culture is vast, especially regarding the quick usurping of the new "teen music" by cynical corporations in the late '50s and early '60s. Frankly, his insight is astonishing.
So the book's worth reading if you happen to be interested in media-propagated mythologies, and how the marketing world responded to the Beatles' previously unheard-of level of media success and social influence; but again, the subtitle indicates that the music will be the narrative priority. (In all fairness, perhaps the subtitle and book descriptions were impressed upon Womack by the publisher.)
What does come through consistently, however, is Womack's genuine love for the Beatles' music. I might disagree with the particularly over-analytical manner in which he attempts to dig tributaries from the music's joys into the rest of life's elusively defined waters, especially given his top-heavy focus on the lyrics, but you might not -- for you'll find here none of the aloof, irrelevant "cooler than thou" cynicism that most self-styled "critics" are guilty of.
In terms of the creative processes behind the music itself, recommended instead are Many Years from Now by Barry Miles, the Complete Beatles Recording Sessions by Mark Lewisohn (in spite of its own errors, it's at least interesting), and the group's own Anthology book.
If you're really in the mood for besides-the-point musical trainspotting vis-a-vis the Beatles, a couple of much more insightful -- or at least more thought-provoking -- books are Tell Me Why by Tim Riley and the Cambridge Companion to [sic] the Beatles.
Absolutely to be avoided is the largely negative and subjectively critical Revolution in the Head by Ian MacDonald, the wholly sensationalistic The Love You Make by Peter Brown, and the simply fabricated Here, There and Everywhere by Geoff Emerick.
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