"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 hip hop.
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.
People I know who love this book lament the title: It was doubtless chosen because it read like a provocation, daring you to pick up this book and see what this guy has against the most popular band of the modern era. But the Beatles aren’t even mentioned until the last chapter, and most of the book is an exploration of how popular music developed from the 1920s through the ’50s, with particular focus on jazz, country & western, vocal pop, and rhythm & blues.
The subtitle says it all: An Alternative History of American Popular Music. Not the alternative history, because Wald is too sharp a scholar to think that any two people would agree about what should be included in such a book. Wald sets out to examine and challenge received wisdom, and his tool is the primary source, examining how music was experienced and discussed at the time it was being made. One of his primary theses is that popular music history is written in a way that favors the cerebral over the visceral; so dance music is often considered frivolous while popular music that nakedly aspires to “art” is held up for pushing boundaries. Inside this thesis are thoughts on race, gender, and class, and Wald moves through it with a good sense of humor and solid understanding of his own biases. How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll is one of those books that helps you to think about popular music differently and gives you new tools for thinking about music from several angles simultaneously. –Mark Richardson
