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The Beatles and Mcluhan
Understanding the Electric Age
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Publisher:
2012
Summary
In the 1960s, The Beatles would address like no other musical act a radical shift in the cultural mindset of the late twentieth century. Through tools of “electric technology,” this shift encompassed the decline of visual modes of perception and the emergence of a “way-of-knowing” based increasingly on sound. In this respect, the musical works of The Beatles would come to resonate with and ultimately reflect Marshall McLuhan’s ideas on the transition into a culture of “all-at-once-ness”: a simultaneous world in which immersion in vibrant global community increasingly trumps the fixed viewpoint of the individual.
By engaging with recording technologies in a way that no popular act had before, The Beatles opened up for exploration the acoustical space precipitated by this shift. In The Beatles and McLuhan: Understanding the Electric Age, scholar and musician Thomas MacFarlane examines how the incorporation of electric technology in The Beatles’ art would enhance their musical impact. MacFarlane surveys the relationship between McLuhan's ideas on the nature and effects of electric technology and The Beatles own engagement of that technology; offers analyses of key works from The Beatles' studio years, with particular attention paid to the presence of cultural metaphors embedded in the medium of multi-track recording; and collates these data to offer stunning conclusions about The Beatles’ creative process in the recording studio and its cultural implications. This work also features the first published transcriptions ever of the complete filmed conversation between John Lennon and Marshall McLuhan on their respective ideas, as well as an interview between MacFarlane and McLuhan’s son and executor, Michael McLuhan, on his father’s and the Beatles’ legacy.
The Beatles and McLuhan will interest scholars and students of music and music history, recording technology, media studies, communications, and popular culture.
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Bibliographic data
Copyright year
2012
ISBN-Print
978-0-8108-8432-8
ISBN-Online
978-0-8108-8433-5
Publisher
Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham
Language
English
Pages
170
Product type
Book Titles
Table of contents
ChapterPages
Contents No access
Figures No access
Acknowledgments No access
Preface. Every Sound There Is No access
CHAPTER ONE. Notes from the Electric Age No access
CHAPTER TWO. Who Is McLuhan? No access
CHAPTER THREE. Mapping Acoustical Space No access
CHAPTER FOUR. The Simultaneous Worlds of Sgt. Pepper No access
CHAPTER FIVE. Mystery Tours in the Global Village No access
CHAPTER SIX. Revolution: Splitting the Definitive No access
CHAPTER SEVEN. The Poetry of Sound No access
Afterword. Cliché as Probe No access Pages 113 - 116
Appendix A. Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono (December 20, 1969) No access Pages 117 - 122
Appendix B. John Lennon and Yoko Ono Meet Marshall McLuhan (December 20, 1969) No access Pages 123 - 142
Appendix C. Interview with Michael McLuhan, MPA (March 23, 2012) No access Pages 143 - 158
