Post by yerblues1968 on Dec 28, 2008 22:21:38 GMT -5
Please, Please Me: Sixties British Pop,
Inside Out by Gordon Thompson
Publisher: Oxford University Press USA (September 18, 2008)
Released: September 18, 2008
List Price (Paperback): $24.95 US
Gordon Thompson is Professor of Music at Skidmore College. His book, Please Please Me: Sixties British Pop, Inside Out, offers an insider’s view of the British pop-music recording industry. In the timely post below he looks at how the Beatles on Boxing Day.
"I WANT TO HOLD YOUR HAND," 26 DECEMBER 1963
oupblog
December 24, 2008
For many of us raised in the British Commonwealth, Boxing Day can bring back memories of visiting family and friends, even as the modern world transforms the date from an opportunity to exchange gifts between one another into one on which you return gifts at shopping malls. For Americans, the notion of Boxing Day commonly represents a quaint British anachronism; one of those holidays like Victoria Day that remain obscure to a nation preferring to celebrate its declaration of independence and the birth of a new regime. As such, forty-five years ago on 26 December 1963, Capitol Records seized the commercial opportunity to release a 45-RPM disk, numbered 5112.
In Britain, Parlophone Records had released I Want to Hold Your Hand (backed with This Boy) at the end of November 1963. Within weeks, the disk was gaining unofficial airplay in Washington, DC, just as the eccentricities of Britain’s Beatlemania were beginning to attract the attention of American broadcasters eager for distraction. The buzz convinced Capitol (a subsidiary of Parlophone’s parent company, EMI) to conclude that they could no longer resist the entreaties of the Beatles’ producer George Martin and their manager, Brian Epstein. So, in the relative commercial dead zone between Christmas and New Year’s, after the rush to buy presents and before the depth of that depressing winter settled down to hibernate until spring, Capitol released I Want to Hold Your Hand with I Saw Her Standing There on its flip side. Like a virus, interest in the Beatles spread clandestinely throughout the adolescent corners of North America, disseminated through millions of pairs of earphones plugged into transistor radios and breaking into the open at high school dances. The adults never knew what hit them.
For comedians and drummers, timing is everything. As winter descended, America’s youth contemplated the assassination of their president, even as the power of their numbers began to rise in their consciousness. Their futility rubbed their conscience raw: Why could they not have stopped this? And now a new question arose in their minds: “What can we do to rule our own world?” The passion that the Beatles brought to their music and their polite but open disdain of all things adult (their hair, their press conferences, and their sexuality) over the coming months would transform our world in ways none could have imagined. The Beatles became the first talisman with which this generation would attempt to take control of their lives and to distinguish themselves from all who had come before them.
With the Beatles already scheduled to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show (more on this in my February blog), Capitol had at first agreed to release I Want to Hold Your Hand in January. But they could no more stop the growing interest in the Beatles than they could resist the opportunity to make a buck on what some executives in the iconic tower at the corner of Hollywood and Vine in Los Angeles surely must have considered a novelty act. Boxing Day, whether recognized in the US or not, would become the official launch date for what Americans would call the “British Invasion.”
Editorial Reviews
Reviews
Gordon Thompson's Please Please Me is authoritative, comprehensive, and thoroughly engaging. With lots of information gathered from interviews with the creators themselves and not available elsewhere, Thompson contextualizes his topic with just the right amount of historical and cultural history. Please Please Me will be valuable for all those interested in twentieth-century popular music, music technology, and the British Invasion."--Walter Everett, University of Michigan
"Where other chroniclers have dug deep into the popular music world of the 1960s, Gordon Thompson has tunneled his way to the center of the earth. His observations coupled with his ability to identify with the artists, musicians, musical directors and producers of that era make for an enlightening, entertaining and educational book. Thompson has caught the camaraderie, excitement, stress, along with the expertise and experimentation that made the '60s a very special time."
-- Vic Flick, Guitarist www.vicflick.com
"The stories, the personalities, the attitudes, the secrets, the blunders are all here, exactly as they happened. Not only has the author elevated the history of '60s British Pop to an unprecedented level of excellence, but I have been reminded of just how bloody lucky we were to be part of it."--Mitch Murray, Hit Songwriter
Product Description
The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Who, and numerous other groups put Britain at the center of the modern musical map. Please Please Me offers an insider's view of the British pop-music recording industry during the seminal period of 1956 to 1968, based on personal recollections, contemporary accounts, and all relevant data that situate this scene in the economic, political, and social context of postwar Britain. Author Gordon Thompson weaves issues of class, age, professional status, gender, and ethnicity into his narrative, beginning with the rise of British beat groups and the emergence of teenagers as consumers in postwar Britain, and moving into the competition between performers and the recording industry for control over the music. He interviews musicians, songwriters, music directors, and producers and engineers who worked with the best-known performers of the era. Drawing his interpretation of the processes at work during this musical revolution into a wider context, Thompson unravels the musical change and innovation of the time with an eye on understanding what traces individuals leave in the musical and recording process.
Customer Review
Best of its kind, December 16, 2008
By Malcolm Addey
In the interests of "full disclosure" I have to point out that I am one of Professor Thompson's subjects covered in his book and have worked and know intimately many of the other people he interviewed. Having had first hand involvement in the British pop music scene of the 60s, however, one can be certain that I am likely to be more critical than most. Based on that I can say that the result of the author's research has produced a remarkably accurate overview of the subject and therefore recommend this book over and above some of those pitifully inaccurate self-serving attempts by others.
Please Please Me: Sixties British Pop, Inside Out (Paperback)
www.amazon.com/Please-Me-Sixties-British-Inside/dp/019533325X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230514687&sr=8-1
Please Please Me: Sixties British Pop, Inside Out (Kindle Edition)
Kindle Price: $9.99 and includes wireless delivery via Amazon Whispernet
www.amazon.com/Please-Me-Sixties-British-Inside/dp/B001IKJXZO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230514687&sr=8-2
blog.oup.com/2008/12/beatles-3/