Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #830860 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Review
[McKinney] is very good indeed on tracking the Beatles' collective footprints through the sands of the collective unconscious. He's a pleasure to read on the Marcos debacle and the 'butcher' photograph (in a chapter entitled 'Meat'): his deconstruction of "Help!" is little short of masterly...This is the work of a critic bold enough to cite 'Happiness is a Warm Gun' as 'the defining song of the Beatles' greatest album.' -- Charles Shaar Murray "Mojo" (06/01/2004)

Customer Reviews

One bridge too far
As a very big Beatles fan, I've been collecting books on Beatle topics for years, from the carreer-spanning biographies (Shout!, Love you make etc.) and discographies and photobooks to the ultra-detailed books by Lewisohn, Sulpy and Madinger and the wonderful Way beyond compare book. As an academic, I can take a good deal of analysis, and digging into the collective and individual minds of my favourite subjects is a joy. This book, however, is simply one bridge too far. Pretentious vocabulary, inept reasoning (the toilet metaphor in the first chapters is neither scholarly or original) and vacuous, rambling prose define this book. I read scholarly prose every day, and to my opinion, those who will hail this as a major step forward in Beatle or popular music scholarship have clearly never read Ian McDonald's wonderful tome "Revolution in the head", which, by the way, is far better documented. A scholar's approach should be one that clarifies its subject, not one that obscures it. This will be the first Beatles book that I definitely will not bother reading again.

Curiously underrated
Have to disagree with other assessments of this book. It's not a "scholar's approach", nor is it meant to be; it's more of a meditation on the meanings of the Beatles. If you want raw scholarship, Mark Lewisohn's books will tell you more than you ever needed to know about what the Beatles did on any given day, while Ian MacDonald's book is simply the one indispensable book on how they got to sound like what they sounded like. But MacDonald's jeremiads about how it's all been going wrong since 1970 are sentimental and depressing, whereas McKinney is bracingly rockist - his favourite Fab album is the White one (interesting choice, wouldn't have been mine but I see his point) and I found his discussion of the afterlife very interesting. A worthwhile read, certainly better than (say) Mark Herstgaard's book.