How the Beatles Destroyed Rock n Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: teen club, jazz classique, finale hoppers, New York, New Orleans, Los Angeles (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Bookmarks Magazine

Revisiting original sources to understand how music has been received over the past century, Wald neatly traces the evolution of popular music. As with many books that set out to prove sensational claims in the title (the Christian Science Monitor calls the book's tag "blatantly disingenuous"), Wald's work doesn't really deliver on its claim (or, in fact, pay it a great deal of attention). But look past the title, and readers will discover that even when he's not being provocative, Wald can be thought-provoking, as in his profiles of lesser-known musicians and their influence on subsequent generations of musicians. Those pieces complement more mainstream -- and, in Wald's hands, refreshingly honest -- discussions of superstars and issues of race and gender. The result, despite the Los Angeles Times's sharp criticism of the thesis, is both passionate and informative.

Review

"I couldn't put it down. It nailed me to the wall, not bad for a grand sweeping in-depth exploration of American Music with not one mention of myself. Wald's book is suave, soulful, ebullient and will blow out your speakers."--Tom Waits
"Wald is a meticulous researcher, a graceful writer and a committed contrarian... an impressive accomplishment."--New York Times Book Review
"A complex, fascinating and long-overdue response to decades of industry-driven revisionism."--Jonny Whiteside, LA Weekly
"It's an ambitious project, but Wald's casual narrative style and eye for a juicy quote give it a lightness that even a novice to pop, rock, or jazz history can appreciate... The title is appropriate: This is a provocative book, in all the right ways."--The Onion AV Club
"Wald is a sharp, fair critic eager to right the record on popular music... deepens the appreciation of American popular music."--Boston Globe
"This is a debatable premise... you don't have to agree with it to admire this book... It is as an alternative, corrective history of American music that Wald's book is invaluable. It forces us to see that only by studying the good with the bad--and by seeing that the good and bad can't be pulled apart--can we truly grasp the greatness of our cultural legacy."-- Malcolm Jones, Newsweek
"A serious treatise on the history of recorded music, sifted through his filter as musician, scholar, and fan... It's a brave and original work that certainly delivers."-Christian Science Monitor
"A smart, inclusive celebration of mainstream stars, such as 1920s bandleader Paul Whiteman and the Fab Four, who introduced jazz, blues, and other roughhewn musical forms to mass audiences."--AARP Magazine
"A powerfully provocative look at popular music and its impact on America."--Dallas Morning News
"Elijah Wald is a treasure... There is far too much in these 300 pages to even summarize here. Wald is an economical and lucid writer with an amazing grasp of his subject. I know quite a lot of musical history, and I did not find a single clinker in this symphony of renewal and re-examination."--Winston-Salem Journal
"As catchy and compelling as a great pop single, this revisionist retelling is provocative, profound and utterly necessary... Clearly the product of years of passionate research, it's so rife with references and surprising anecdotes that it's potentially overwhelming, but Wald makes a superlative tour guide-- frank, funny and generous but judicious with his inclusions-- and his book is a beguiling, blasphemous breeze."--Philadelphia City Paper
"Elijah Wald's provocative, meticulously researched new book, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music, turns the stock rock-and-roll narratives on their head."--Very Short List
"Brilliant and provocative... the most challenging and head-clearing history of American popular music to be published in decades."--The Buffalo News
"Wald explains musical and recording techniques and sociological phenomena in an engaging style accessible to a wide range of readers. Throughout, he makes a compelling case for why the figures most historians have disregarded or footnoted need to be considered in order to understand the totality of American popular music. This is an ideal companion to the plethora of standard histories available. Highly recommended." --Library Journal starred review
"Wald's arguments are as nuanced as his scope is wide, which makes this a fascinating and useful volume--required reading for any fan of pop music."--Memphis Flyer
"Fascinating... It's hard to imagine any American music buff coming away from this book without a fresh perspective and an overwhelming desire to seek out Paul Whiteman CDs. Highly recommended."--San Jose Mercury News
"Wald's book may be the literary equivalent of revisionist Civil War histories which tell the war through the eyes of soldiers rather than the generals, for he highlights how consumers actually heard and experienced music over the years, whether as screaming teeny-boppers watching Dick Clark's Bandstand or swing afficionados dancing to Glenn Miller at the Roseland."--HistoryWire.com
"A subtle polemic, one that is fundamentally broad-minded and seeks to educate the reader on the rich legacy and development of American popular music, the music that spawned the Beatles and from which that group departed, for better and worse."--Brooklyn Rail
"Walds eminently readable book is a scholarly, provocative and opinionated account of the history of pop music from Sousa to the Stones, from genteel parlor piano recitals to arena rock spectacles."--Kansas City Star
"A bracing, inclusive look at the dramatic transformation in the way music was produced and listened to during the 20th century... One of those rare books that aims to upend received wisdom and actually succeeds."--Kirkus Reviews
"Some of the smartest historiography I've ever read. The examples and turns of phrase sometimes make me laugh out loud, and nearly every page overturns another outmoded assumption. Wald just calls it like he sees it and transforms everything as a result."--Susan McClary, MacArthur Fellow and author of Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality
"This is a ground-breaking book, a muscular revisionist account that will get people thinking quite differently about the history of pop music. I've learned much from it and admire the writing style that is so light on its feet, lucid and elegant."--Bernard Gendron, author of Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club: Popular Music and the Avant Garde
"Meticulously researched."--Bookforum.com
"A fascinating and scrupulous piece of pop scholarship...Tantalizing." --Paste Magazine

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (June 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195341546
• ISBN-13: 978-0195341546
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #34,754 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #22 in	Books > Entertainment > Pop Culture > Music > Beatles
  #34 in	Books > Entertainment > Sheet Music & Scores > Forms & Genres > Popular
  #34 in	Books > Entertainment > Music > Musical Genres > Popular

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Misleading Title but a Good Music Book, June 15, 2009

By	Mr. Bey (Riverside, CT United States) - See all my reviews

Accusing one of the greatest bands in history of destroying rock and roll is a bold statement. However this book doesn't really focus on that notion at all. How the Beatles Destroyed Rock n Roll focuses more on the history of music with greater attention focused on lesser known bands that Wald felt were relevant to music. The book has heavy emphasis on Jazz and ragtime so if that isn't your cup of tea then this book is not really for you.

The book reads like Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States but from a music perspective. Wald throws out popular notions of who was relevant to the formation of modern day music and explores the lesser known bands. This makes for a pretty interesting historical perspective on something we all know and love but it wasn't what I was expecting from the book. In fact the Beatles are rarely mentioned at all in it.

To make a long story short if you're a fan of music historiography then you'll enjoy How the Beatles Destroyed Rock n Roll. If you're looking for an book that focuses on the darker side of the fab four however, you're out of luck.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Truth in titling: Play that funky music, white boy, June 13, 2009

By	Todd Stockslager (Raleigh, NC) - See all my reviews

It took me a while to get past the misleading title--the Beatles do not show up until page 230 of this 255-page book--and realize that this book is really about its subtitle: an "alternative" history of American popular music. I seriously felt duped and somewhat put off by an author who wanted to sell books by putting an eye-catching but misleading title in bold black letters on the dust cover of his book. In the spirit of truth in titling and eye-catching hyperbole, Wald might have better titled this book "Play that funky music, White boy".

The "White boy" part of the story is simple and well-known enough--Wald traces the interplay between black and white music through the 20th century (dating popular music as distinct from folk forms from around the beginning of that century), telling us again how black musicians innovated and were ignored and white musicians stole and sold. Wald, however, goes deeper and adds nuances that could easily be missed by that thumbnail statement. For example, ethnicity early in the century was more fragmented, with recent Jewish, Eastern European, and Italian immigrants constituting separate markets (and providing the basis for the sometimes seemingly arbitrary genre distinctions made in stores and sales charts). Moreover, while racism limited live performance dates by black performers, innovation flowed both ways and audiences of all races enjoyed performances by all types and races of performers.

The "Play that funky music" part of my new and improved title for Wald's book really gets to the "alternative" meat of his subtitle: Wald spends a great deal of time documenting how much of popular music for most of its history was dance music, played live, and listened to as a secondary soundtrack to the main purpose of the event--the dance and its mating rituals. This interesting emphasis leads to a redefining of popular music criticism of those years--as Wald points out, today's historians and critics focus on recorded music, while contemporary criticisms and accounts focused on live music, and the two performances served different purposes, with different technologies, and often different songs, styles, instrumentation and even personnel, even when nominally performed by the same singer or band.

Another aspect of this alternative history that Wald spends some time discussing are gender differences in the audience, and how the emphasis on musics as the soundtrack for date night dances changed the purchasing preferences of the listening public. As Wald says "American women dance because they want to dance, while American men dance because they want to be around women." This humorous synopsis has a serious effect: it places women at the center of purchasing power for popular music at a time when most historians ignore their influence.

The rise of records was a technological shift that influenced markets, but much later--the 50s and even 60s--than we usually think. Wald spends some time talking about the genre explosion and confusion in the 50s and 60s as an outgrowth of this shift, then finally, as a historical culmination (or at least a checkpoint before the disco, punk, rap, and hip-hop eras) but almost as an afterthought, he talks about how the Beatles destroyed rock and roll. It is to his credit in telling the longer story before the Beatles and making us understand its relevance then and now that the influence of the Beatles (and Elvis and Dylan, the other music giants of his and my lifetimes) on the bigger story seems not as important as that misleading title suggests. And I forgive him for the title. Just play that funky music!

PS. I have just read John McWhorter's Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care, a work which Wald should surely have footnoted or at least included in his bibliography. I can only do my part to correct his error by referencing it here. McWhorter, a linguist, talks about the decline in written English as reflected in public oratory, poetry, prose--and music in a chapter even conveniently titled "What Happened to Us? or Play That Funky Music, White Folks", where he unpacks the meaning of each word in that song title. McWhorter's analysis (from 2003) extends Wald's musical analysis into the linguistic realm, and also touches on some of the mechanism of how the Beatles were in fact a transitional form between a more structured ("written") form of music and a more "real" (oral) form--in essence the genetic marker of the mutation that, in Wald's title terms, destroyed Rock 'N' Roll".

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ignore the main title and focus on the sub-title, June 20, 2009

By	R. M. Peterson (Santa Fe, NM) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As I understand it, Wald's principal thesis, which is reflected in the somewhat provocative main title, is the following: As rock/pop performers -- of which the Beatles were the most conspicuous example -- began to see themselves more as "artists", they consciously aspired to create "high" or "serious" art and in the process divorced themselves and their music from entertainment and, especially, from dancing. At the same time, in part because it is easier to write about "art" than "entertainment," the media pushed the notion that these self-conscious, auteur-ish, studio products were indeed "art", something to be taken and discussed seriously. The two impulses fed and reinforced one another, pushing white rock/pop music further and further away from entertainment, dancing, and (for the first time in 20th-Century popular music) black music. By 1969, "[r]ock had become a white genre."

Whether or not you agree with that thesis (and Wald does marshal enough points and arguments in support of it that I come away willing to accord it some measure of validity), HOW THE BEATLES DESTROYED ROCK 'N' ROLL is still quite valuable as a history of American popular music in the 20th Century (or, ragtime through disco). Especially interesting to me were the discussions of how technological changes -- including recording itself, then advances in recording and developments in the methods of "delivery", such as radio, television, and LPs -- affected popular music. Other influences were economic in nature (the Depression) or political (Prohibition, World War II). I also appreciated the profiles, many of which are several pages in length, of key figures of American pop music, such as Paul Whiteman, Guy Lombardo, Benny Goodman, Mitch Miller, Frank Sinatra, and Harry Belafonte.

Wald is pragmatic and instructive on the blurred dividing lines of genres. For example: "[M]ost of our modern musical genres [are] at root simply marketing categories--that is, we call something jazz or rock less because of any inherent musical characteristics than because we think it will be of interest to people who consider themselves jazz or rock fans." Wald is sensitive to, and intelligently discusses (without letting the matter take over his book), the many manifestations of racial prejudice in the last century of American pop music. Best of all, the book reflects a mature perspective on the very exercise of musical history and criticism. For example, he introduces his book by quoting Charles Rosen (a distinguished classical pianist and critic) to the effect that a music critic does not have to love a work of art or a style in order to write about it critically, but the critic must at least recognize and allow for the fact that other people do love that work or style. In addition, Wald also recognizes that most of those who write music criticism are not the average music fans: "It is often said that history is written by the victors, but in the case of pop music that is rarely true. The victors tend to be out dancing, while the historians sit at their desks, assiduously chronicling music they cannot hear on mainstream radio."

On the negative side, the book drags at times, and some points seem belabored or over-illustrated. I also sense that it could have been organized better. Perhaps shorter chapters or periodic "sign-post" headings would have helped. (But then again, it is published by Oxford University Press, so those kinds of reader-friendly devices might violate the house style.) Whatever the reason was, I could only read a chapter or two at a time. I therefore give the book 4.5 stars and round down to four. Still, whatever you think of the book's title and the thesis that gave rise to it, HOW THE BEATLES DESTROYED ROCK 'N' ROLL is a fine book.