Reading Tim Riley’s Tell
Me Why: The Beatles Album by Album, Song by Song, The Sixties and After at
the unripe age of 15 quite literally changed my life. It didn’t just teach me that
pop songs were worthy of deep analysis and the valuable lesson that even The
Beatles’ mighty body of work is not critic-proof. It also set me on the path
that led me to indulge in the analytical jibber-jabber I’ve been spouting here
on Psychobabble for the past eleven years, as well as in my book The Who FAQ. So I was excited to see
that Riley was involved in a new Beatles book.
However, I’m not really the audience for Riley and Walter
Everett’s What Goes On: The Beatles,
Their Music, and Their Time. In fact, this book is directed at a very
specific audience: college students. What
Goes On is structured as a chronological Beatles primer, providing a basic look
at their musical innovations and cultural influence complete with text-book
style study questions (my fave: “How does Lennon’s quip at the Royal Command
Performance illustrate the generation gap?” …oh, what would 23-year old Lennon
have thought if he’d known his offhand wise assery would one day be studied in
university classrooms?!?). More thorough analyses of select songs are very
similar to the ones in Tell Me Why.
One aspect of What
Goes On that could not have existed in Riley’s 1988 publication are the
Internet videos referenced throughout the book that further illustrate the
various subtopics, often with musical examples by a young drummer or Everett on
bass or guitar (or in one screen-in-screen instance, both). Videos cover such specifically
Beatle-focused topics as how Ringo’s drumming style differed from the
prevailing styles that preceded him to such general musical theory concepts as an
explanation of syncopation. I had a bit of trouble accessing them by typing the
provided URL’s into my browser but had no trouble using the direct links
provided Oxford University Press’ web site.
Now a middle-aged fart, I’m versed in music theory and Beatledom
well enough to not need a book like What
Goes On, but I do feel heartened by the idea of a new generation of young
people discovering their music and the pleasures of delving deep into it in the
kind of class that might employ this book as its main text. Happy studying,
kids.
