Erin Torkelson Weber - The Beatles and the Historians: An Analysis of Writings About the Fab Four

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

ISBN (ebook) 978-1-4766-2470-9

2016 Erin Torkelson Weber. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Front cover: The Beatles, 1962 (Photofest)

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com

For my parents, Ray and Liana,
and for my husband, Scott.

To Cheryl Golden, without whose guidance, encouragement and instruction this book would not have been written. For guiding me through every step, and introducing me to so many others who helped along the way.

To Michael Austin, for examining my first chapter, and for his information on publishing practices, recommendations, and suggestions.

To B. Lee Cooper, for reading and reviewing all the chapters, as well as his recommendations and guidance.

To Jeremy Rosell, my first reader.

To Del Torkelson, for his editing and suggestions.

To the friends who helped make this possible, including Jill, Chad, and Louise.

The Beatles and the Historians provides a historians analysis of the Beatles story from 1962 to the present day. The book employs historical methods and source analysis to explain the various narratives that have developed from the inception of the group and throughout Beatles history. It tells the familiar story of the Beatles in an unprecedented way by applying the tools of legitimate history to one of the most popular phenomena of the twentieth century. Primary and secondary sources including movies, interviews and individual and group biographies are analyzed to determine their authenticity, credibility, and influence on Beatles history. Efforts by members of the group and the rock press to shape the historical narrative and the politics of the time are also discussed. The book explores three major themes: Beatles history and its major debates; the use of historical methods to analyze the sources that have been used to write that history, and the historiography of the group: How their story has been told over time.

Hundreds of books have been written about the Beatles, widely regarded as one of the most important cultural icons of the 20th century, but few authors have applied credible source analysis to their research. Many Beatles books claim to be definitive histories, but almost all fail to meet the standards of legitimate history. Despite the large amount of both popular and academic Beatles scholarship, no previous works have evaluated the various narratives which emerged throughout Beatles history or applied historical methods or historiographical analysis to the subject. This book uses a historians methodology to separate fact from mythology and provides in-text examples of source analysis, the application of historical methods, and the historiography of a popular, contemporary subject.

In addition to exploring the Beatles from a new perspective, this book offers a new way to look at historiography, which tends to concentrate on military or diplomatic topics, rather than cultural subjects. As a result historical methods analysis of popular media has not been as thoroughly examined. In contrast, this book concentrates on the popular presss role in crafting narratives, and provides extensive analysis of numerous mass-media sources. More recent books on historiography such as John Lewis Gaddiss The Landscape of History have provided information on the traditional standards used in historiographical analysis, but this book differs by applying those standards directly to a specific, modern and very media-saturated topic.

This is not a history or biography of the Beatles, or an analysis of the bands music. Although some of the works source analysis contains evaluations similar to those provided in Michael Brocken and Melissa Daviss invaluable The Beatles Bibliography: A New Guide to the Literature (the only major work in Beatles historiography which contains serious source analysis), this book is not, like Brocken and Daviss work, an annotated bibliography. While The Beatles Bibliography contains assessments of primary and secondary sources and, at times, offers conclusions regarding their overall credibility and accuracy, it does not apply historical methodology to the sources, place them in their respective narratives, or examine the arc of Beatles historiography as a whole. In contrast, the present work, The Beatles and the Historians, applies historical methods in-text to a topic of continuing popularity and growing academic importance.

This study blends the three subjectsthe Beatles, historiography, and historical methodsby employing essential works on historical methods and historiography to examine the most influential sources concerning the Beatles. Works such as Gilbert Garraghans A Guide to Historical Method and James D. Startts Historical Methods in Mass Communication are used to evaluate the major sources. March Blochs The Historians Craft and John Lewis Gaddiss The Landscape of History, among others, provide guidance in evaluating the patterns of Beatles historiography. Determining which Beatles sources were influential enough to merit source analysis involved a number of factors, including how well the book sold, its critical reputation both when it was published and decades later, the amount of original research it contained, its role in shaping or diverging from the prevailing narrative, and its imprint on successive works. The most important works of every narrative are examined, such as The Beatles: The Authorized Biography, Lennon Remembers, Shout!, Many Years from Now, Revolution in the Head, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, and others.

These historical methods, historiography and Beatles sources are used to examine the four major narratives that make up Beatles historiography. Chapter One, The Fab Four Narrative, covers the officially approved version of the Beatles story, which lasted from 1962 until 1970. Chapter Two discusses the Lennon Remembers narrative, which lasted from 1970 through 1980, rejected its predecessors major narrative components and saw the emergence of Beatles historiographys two most contentious debates. Chapter Three, The Shout! Narrative, explores how, in the wake of John Lennons murder in December 1980, extremely influential yet methodologically flawed secondary works concretized a partisan, incomplete version of the Beatles story. Chapter Four, The Lewisohn Narrative, examines how the emergence of previously unavailable primary sources, the essential quality of historical distance, and improved methodology resulted in a new Orthodoxy.

For Beatles fans, this book provides an original way to look at the bands story which, for more than 50 years, has become enmeshed in myth. For students of historical methods and historiography, the book offers an in-depth exploration of a previously unexplored but fascinating topic. By focusing on a modern subject, the work provides examples of how to apply source analysis not only to traditional sources such as government documents and diary entries, but also to the thousands of mass-media messages that shape and influence current historiography even as it unfolds.