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January 23, 2007
the Beatles and Philosophy: Book Review
Adopted Texan and MS pal Randall Monty drops in once again to prove that we're not a bunch of emotionally stunted dolts who only read in two sentence bursts about bands on the internet. Sometimes we manage hundreds of sentences. On paper. In a row. Alright, they're still about bands, but we're smart dammit! Anyway...
The Beatles and Philosophy: A Review
by Randall Monty
A quick Amazon.com search gives us some 22,000+ different books about the Fab Four, 273 of which fall under the “Gay and Lesbian” grouping and 435 categorized under “Science Fiction and Fantasy”. Included in this massive list is the Beatles and Philosophy: Nothing You Can Think That Can’t Be Thunk, one of Open Court’s newest additions to its ambitious-yet-ultimately-insatiable Pop Culture and Philosophy series.
Following the form of the series, this volume employs roughly 20 different writers, academics and, yes, philosophers, that address the titular topic from an allegedly philosophical perspective. However, rather than fully utilize the Beatles’ work as a vehicle for philosophical thought, most of the authors take an, “Aww, shucks, I sure do love the Beatles” approach to their essays. This is not to say they are poorly written or underdeveloped – they aren’t. My primary complaint with the PC&P series, and the Beatles edition in particular, is the collective writers’ trepidation; only one or two of the bunch will ever fully challenge the legitimacy of the selected artifact. Instead, the bulk of the writers tend to either focus too much, or not enough, on the subject. In this sense, most of the essays become about the Beatles or philosophy.
Furthermore, most of the writers take the most obvious approaches to the task at hand, as the same tracks and stories are repeatedly mentioned. (I don’t know how may times I need to be told that John Lennon didn’t like the Maharishi. Apparently: a lot.) Even though the Beatles released over twenty albums between the years 1963 and 1970, (which are neatly catalogued, along with a list of the band’s cover songs, as an appendix of this book), and even though each article mentions many different songs, most of the writers contained within this text focus on only a small handful of the group’s tracks. If judging solely on number of mentions, the Beatles songs most suitable for philosophical discussion are as follows: “Across the Universe”, “All You Need is Love”, “A Day in the Life”, “Eleanor Rigby”, “Help”, “I Am the Walrus”, “I Me Mine”, “The Inner Light” (which I hardly know), “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds”, “Nowhere Man” (#1, by far), “Piggies”, “Rain”, the various incarnations of “Revolution”, “She’s Leaving Home”, “Strawberry Fields Forever”, “Tomorrow Never Knows”, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, “Within You Without You”. While these tracks would make one heck of a greatest hits album, it would have made for a better read if the collective writers had shown a bit more variety in their approaches. Unfortunately, this lack of daring and critical chutzpah has become a disappointing hallmark of this (conceptually fantastic) series.
the Beatles - "Across the Universe"
the Beatles - "Nowhere Man"
It's not all fluff, thankfully. There are a few essay contained within that are certainly usable in a college syllabus, such as the two that comprise chapter VIII, “Zarathustra’s Silver Hammer: The Beatles and Nietzsche”. And while the connection made by Steven Baur in his piece “You Say You Want a Revolution: The Beatles and Marx” (chapter IV) is by no means a stretch (after all, Marx does make an appearance on Beatles album cover), the author manages to simultaneously remain focused on the two separate subjects over the entire course of the argument. Take, for instance, Baur’s analysis of the Beatles’ second album of 1964:
[T]he demand that the Beatles ceaselessly produce ever more commodities further alienated them from their work and forced them to put out a record that bears less of their imprint than anything they had previously done … Perhaps recognizing the extent which they were being exploited to accommodate the marketing frenzy that accompanied Beatlemania, the band called the album Beatles for Sale. (97)
The Marx reference in this passage is quite obvious, and rather than take a few lyrics out of context (as most of the other authors do), Baur points to a specific instance where Marx’s philosophy is applicable to the Beatles.
John Lennon has been repeatedly cited as denouncing the notion that the Beatles’ lyrics possess any sort of deeper, or even philosophical, meanings. He made such frequent proclamations not only to prove his point about avoiding unnecessary hero worship, but also, likely, to play it safe and avoid having his work held up to any real critical scrutiny. That is a fine position for a musician to take, but why did the contributing writers of The Beatles and Philosophy have to hide the same way?
// the Beatles and Philosophy - buy
Posted by Jeff Klingman at January 23, 2007 01:50 PM
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