A few months ago I presented "The Beatles: Band of the Sixties" at the Port Orange, FL library. While waiting for the program to start, I conversed with a woman who commented on the feminine quality of the Beatles' boots, as displayed in the title slide for that program. Indeed, out of context this shoe certainly looks more like a woman's than a man's. But in context it clearly belongs to John Lennon's right foot. The Beatles (and Ringo especially) were frequently criticized for their mop-top hair styles, which made them look like girls. I recall finding a 1965 article in the New York Times while researching for From the Shadow of JFK: The Rise of Beatlemania in America complaining about the androgynous appearance of many young people, though I'm afraid my memory cannot cite a specific date for that article. But I had never before thought of the band's shoes as accentuating their feminine qualities. Then, a few nights ago in Carlisle, PA I presented "Band of the Sixties" again. This time somebody asked where that photo was taken. I had to admit I didn't know off the top of my head, so I emailed Mark Lewisohn with the question. Here is his erudite answer: "It’s best known as the cover of the extraordinarily successful EP Twist And Shout. (Also the Canadian LP.) Taken at a demolition site in Euston Road, London, April 25 1963, by Fiona Adams for the weekly paper Boyfriend. Personally selected for the EP cover by JL." There is a reason why Lewisohn is the world's authority on the Beatles! That picture will be on display tomorrow afternoon at the Kennett Public Library, when I deliver another "Band of the Sixties" at the Kennett Public Library:
Saturday, 9 April 2016, 2:00-3:00 p.m. Kennett Public Library, 216 East State Street, Kennett Square, PA The Beatles: Band of the Sixties Explore the music of The Beatles in this 60-minute multimedia presentation (part history and part musical analysis) spanning the full 1960's: beginning with the band's seminal visits to Hamburg, continuing through Beatlemania, and concluding with Abbey Road. The program will be supplemented with audio clips of music and excerpts from interviews with the band members.
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The other day I blogged on how George Martin and George Harrison combined to create the solo (technically a duet) on the Beatles' 1963 recording of "Baby It's You". I concluded by stating that the two Georges would do the same thing a year later on a song that would reach #1 in the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. That #1 hit was the title song to the band's 1964 debut film, A Hard Day's Night. And indeed the solo on that song is once again actually a duet: Harrison plays his guitar while Martin plays the same notes on piano an octave lower. This can be heard from 1:19-1:32 in the following clip: But that "duet instead of literal solo" isn't the only trick up George Martin's sleeve. Using analog (tape) recording methods, tempo and pitch are inextricably related. Play a tape recording at a rate 10% faster than normal rate and the tempo and pitch will both increase by 10%. Play that same recording 25% slower than normal rate and the tempo and pitch will both decrease by 25%. In other words, both tempo and pitch can be altered, but only by the same amount - they cannot be altered independently from each other. It's impossible, for example, to decrease the tempo by 5%, but the pitch by 15%. This technique is known as "varispeed". Knowing this limitation, the two Georges performed the "A Hard Day's Night" solo at half speed (approximately 70 beats per minute) and an octave lower than they wanted the finished product. Martin then played back that recording at double speed, which had the effect of both doubling the tempo (from 70 beats per minute to 140) and doubling the frequency (raising the pitch by one octave). The finished product, then, is impossibly fast and accurate. Much like the "duet instead of solo" technique, this varispeed technique would also be used again by George Martin and the Beatles. And we'll discuss those later uses in subsequent blogs. In the meantime, however, is another round of "Band of the Sixties" tomorrow at the Avon Grove library:
Friday, 8 April 2016, 7:00-8:00 p.m. Avon Grove Library, 117 Rosehill Ave, West Grove, PA The Beatles: Band of the Sixties Explore the music of The Beatles in this 60-minute multimedia presentation (part history and part musical analysis) spanning the full 1960's: beginning with the band's seminal visits to Hamburg, continuing through Beatlemania, and concluding with Abbey Road. The program will be supplemented with audio clips of music and excerpts from interviews with the band members. Yesterday, while driving from my home in Carmel, IN to the Steubenville, OH public library, I started listening to Carole King's autobiography A Natural Woman. In it, King describes puzzlement over the odd sounding instrument heard in Paul Anka's "Diana" (1957). When King met Don Costa (who produced the song), she asked him: "He confided, almost conspiratorially, that it was a guitar and a saxophone playing in unison. I was thrilled to learn this, first, because I never would have figured it out on my own, and second, because he considered me worthy of sharing an arranger's trade secret." One of my former composition teachers compared this sonic technique to a painter combining two different colors to produce a new third color. That "arranger's trade secret" of having two instruments play simultaneously (as opposed to the more traditional literal solo) was one the Beatles' producer, George Martin, also employed. At Martin's suggestion, the solo of Beatles' 1963 cover of The Shirelles' 1961 "Baby' It's You" (heard from 1:41-1:57 below) is actually a duet between George Harrison's guitar and George Martin's celeste. Unlike "Diana", this duet isn't in unison. Harrison plays his guitar in its lowest register, while the celeste is a high-pitched instrument. So while they both play the same notes, the celeste sounds a few octaves higher than the guitar, making it relatively easy to differentiate the two sounds. It's a trick Martin would implement again in the not-too-distant future, on a song that would reach #1 on both the US and UK charts. But we'll save that for tomorrow's blog. In the meantime, I drive to Wernersville, PA for a program this evening at the Wernersville Public Library. And be listening to A Natural Woman on the way.
Wednesday, 6 April 2016, 6:30-7:30 p.m. Wernersville Public Library, 100 N Reber St, Wernersville, PA From the Shadow of JFK: The Rise of Beatlemania in America Many Beatles authors and scholars have cited John F. Kennedy's assassination on 22 November 1963 as a cause of the Beatles' sudden popularity in the United States in early 1964. Their logic: Kennedy's assassination made America sad, then the Beatles made America happy again. But this commonly accepted answer is overly simplistic. America has suffered numerous tragedies and rebounded each time, but the popularity and staying power of the Beatles remains unmatched in American history. The real answer is that Kennedy's life and death inadvertently primed the nation for the Beatles' arrival and success. This 60-minute multimedia program will explain how and why. I usually try to write something interesting or amusing when blogging to supplement advertising the following day's program. But today is Major League Baseball's opening day for most teams, so instead of blogging, I'm gonna go watch Clayton Kershaw dominate the Padres.
Here's what going on tomorrow: Tuesday, 5 April 2016, 6:00-7:00 p.m. Bosler Library, 158 W High St, Carlisle, PA The Beatles: Band of the Sixties Explore the music of The Beatles in this 60-minute multimedia presentation (part history and part musical analysis) spanning the full 1960's: beginning with the band's seminal visits to Hamburg, continuing through Beatlemania, and concluding with Abbey Road. The program will be supplemented with audio clips of music and excerpts from interviews with the band members. During our stay in Phoenix last month, Dad and I stayed with Alan and Carrie Heikkala, friends of my father's from further back in time than the Beatles.
Alan and Carrie were wonderful and generous hosts, and have a gorgeous house in Tempe, just Southeast of Phoenix. They have two children: A son, Alec (20), and a daughter, Libby (19). Alec is a sophomore at Arizona State University, not far from the Heikkala household; Libby is a freshman at Franciscan University in Steubenville, OH. Since Alec lives relatively close to home and visits on weekends, Dad and I shared Libby's room. As it turns out, Libby is quite a Beatles fan. I noticed the album Please Please Me on her bookshelf, along with the film Across the Universe. Coincidentally, the location of that last stop on my March tour (during which I stayed in Libby's room) is tied to the first stop on my April tour, which happens to be at the Schiappa Branch of the Steubenville library - less than four miles from Libby's current college room at Fransiscan University: Monday, 4 April 2016, 6:00-7:00 p.m. Steubenville Schiappa Branch Library, 4141 Mall Dr, Steubenville, OH The Beatles: Band of the Sixties Explore the music of The Beatles in this 60-minute multimedia presentation (part history and part musical analysis) spanning the full 1960's: beginning with the band's seminal visits to Hamburg, continuing through Beatlemania, and concluding with Abbey Road. The program will be supplemented with audio clips of music and excerpts from interviews with the band members. March 30: "Reinventing Rock 'n' Roll: The Beatles' Rubber Soul and Revolver" at Wolfies Grill3/29/2016 Gteorge Martin, the Beatles' producer, died earlier this month at the age of 90. Paul McCartney lamented the loss by saying, "If anyone earned the title of the fifth Beatle it was George." (Source: http://www.usnews.com/news/entertainment/articles/2016-03-09/george-martin-the-perfect-catalyst-for-the-beatles-success) And indeed, Martin was an integral contributor to the band's music and hugely responsible for their artistic and commercial success.
For that reason, my blogging throughout my third tour of 2016 (24 speaking engagements in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York between April 4-29) will feature Martin-oriented subjects in addition to my standard travel documentation. It will not be an exhaustive study of Martin's contributions to the Beatles (which are so extensive that such a comprehensive catalog would take much longer than 26 days to address and critique), but rather a series of highlights - examination and consideration of "The Best of George Martin" and how his efforts enhanced the Beatles' music. But that tour won't initiate for another few days. More immediate is my new hometown debut tomorrow night at Wolfies Grill in Carmel, Indiana: Wednesday, 30 March 2016, 7:30-9:00 p.m. Wolfies Grill, Merchant Square Shopping Center, 1162 Keystone Way S, Carmel, IN Reinventing Rock 'n' Roll: The Beatles' Rubber Soul and Revolver The sophisticated songwriting and experimental recording techniques on the Beatles' sixth studio album Rubber Soul and seventh studio album Revolver helped establish the rock album as a legitimate art form and anticipated the “concept album” Sgt. Pepper . This 90-minute multimedia presentation will discuss and analyze highlights from both albums with the intent of explaining and illustrating how these groundbreaking practices helped shape the Beatles' music specifically and rock music in general. The program will be supplemented with audio excerpts from interviews with the band members and clips of early song drafts. THIS IS A PRIVATE EVENT, BUT THERE ARE A FEW EXTRA CHAIRS WHICH ARE OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. CONTACT JONATHAN EVANS AT jevans1943@aol.com TO SEE IF THERE ARE STILL OPENINGS. I arrived back home in Camel, Indiana yesterday, officially concluding the two-and-a-half week tour which took me from Indiana through Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. And I'm sure glad to be back! Touring is rigorous. And while I love my job, it takes an awful lot of work. First, I have to prepare the presentations. Each one takes countless hours of research and analysis. Then that raw data must be structured and compiled into a cohesive and comprehensible slide show combining historical and musical analysis with audio examples from the songs and interviews with the band members and their associates. All of that must be easily digestible to an audience and simultaneously intellectually enlightening or else the whole project is worthless. Second, I then have to find a host location where I can deliver the program. I write hundreds of emails to potential hosts, most of which are ignored, but maybe a third of which respond with interest. To book enough presentations to sustain a full-time career takes a tremendous amount of time and effort. Third, I must travel to the host location. Sometimes, as in the presentation I gave at the Hussey-Mayfield Memorial Library in Zionsville, IN on 1 February 2016, that location is only a 10-minute drive from my house. On the other hand, the presentation I gave at the Liverpool Central Library on 16 July 2015 was 3,207 miles as the crow flies from my then-apartment in Hartford, CT, and the journey took a total of 26 hours from door to door. When planning and scheduling tours, I must ensure that I can safely and efficiently arrive at the location. I plan these tours very carefully, and I have yet to cancel any of the more than 300 programs I've booked so far (though the hosts have canceled a few times, such as in Lake Dallas last week). Fourth, I have to deliver the presentation. None of the above steps matter one iota if the presentation itself is sub-par. Since travel is inherent to my career, I spend a good deal of time away from home. I miss my wife and puppy terribly - especially at the end of the day, in between finishing a program and going to sleep. Since February 8, I've spent a total of four days at home (March 4-7), in between my Florida and Arizona tours. And I was ill with food poisoning for all four of those days. So now it's time for a well-deserved and physically healthy stay-cation. Being a full-time professional Beatles scholar is fun work, and very engaging work - I visit many new places and meet many new people. One of my favorite parts of my job is the opportunity to meet and talk with fellow Beatles fans, who continually impress me through the sharing of their own stories and knowledge. I am perpetually amazed at how much I learn by teaching. There's nothing I'd rather do... but right now it's sure good to home! THE END
JOHN (Aaron's father and traveling companion): Our time together sped by like a Greater Roadrunner. I'm hoping that meant I had fun on this lecture tour with Aaron. But knowing I had to drop Aaron off at the airport in a matter of hours so he could return home at the end of our journey was worse than a kick in the head with a lead boot. I was thinking about the past two and a-half weeks and, while we didn't do a lot of soul baring or deep, personal discussions -- neither of us are that type -- our travels were enjoyable. Much of our conversation in the car was him relaying his phone GPS directions, and me asking two minutes later to repeat them. I felt good when he shared his future plans with me. We gasped at the spectacular terrarium landscape that was Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. We marveled at the moon emerging from behind a mountain, or a large hill, depending on whom you ask, while cruising along the highway after an evening talk at the Juniper branch of the Phoenix library. "I've never seen the moon like that before," Aaron said, and I agreed. The moon was so grand it almost dwarfed the mountain, or hill, like a saucer-sized eye trying to peek over the peak. Near the airport, Aaron pointed to several airborne planes with navigation lights as insistent as controlled explosions. "They look like ducks in a row," he said. We approached the highway exit for the airport. The GPS noted we had to stay to the right. "We'll get off the highway onto one of those loopy things," Aaron said, referring to the exit ramp that forced us into a U turn toward the airfield. We easily found the Delta drop-off zone at Terminal 3. I pulled alongside the curb, hopped out and opened our Chevy Suburban's tailgate to pull out his bag and backpack. We hugged. "I'm really going to miss you," I said. "I'm going to have to really pay attention to where I'm driving now." "Yeah, that's one thing," he said. "Well, there's more than that. I'm going to miss having you to talk to and to point out all the strange things we see on the road." We hugged again, and he walked off. I returned to the driver's seat and looked for the way to retrace our tracks. I was confounded at first by seeing a sign pointing to Interstate 10, which I knew I'd eventually have to get to, and then a sign for Highway 143, which was the last road we were on before reaching the airport. Should I follow the arrows to the interstate? Or get into the lane for 143? Aaron...? I made an executive decision (wild guess) and got onto 143. The road to the highway curved to the right and bent back toward the airport. Is this correct? It swerved to the right again, and signs for terminals 3 and 4 suddenly appeared. Oh no, am I going back to the Delta terminal after leaving it just minutes before? Aaron...? The road took me past terminal 3 and 4 and finally exited to 143. I was able to do it -- go in the right direction without electronic help. Would I miss Aaron? Of course I would. Would the rest of the trip seem a bit incomplete without him? Yes, it would. Would I eventually get to the point where what I was doing would overshadow the fact he was not there in the passenger seat? I didn't doubt it. I swung from 143 into the lane that would take me to I-10 South, then to Highway 60 and then State Route 101. As I made the lane change, the full moon -- brighter than any jet airplane's lights -- seemed to balance above the highway in front of me, out of the way of the mountains/hills and making me marvel once again. It also reminded me that I had no one there to share it with. Confucius say: "Man who behave like ass will be butt of those who crack jokes."
I'm sitting in the Detroit airport, waiting for my connecting flight to Indianapolis. It's about 6am EST (3am AZ time). On my way into the Phoenix airport last night, I noticed the full moon shining bright (technically a waning gibbous, but pretty close to full). On my way into the Detroit airport moments ago, I noticed it again. As we were waiting to disembark the plane, the man across the aisle stood up and grabbed his luggage from the overhead compartment. In fashion terms, this particular gentleman was apparently stuck in the late 90s because his pants were waaaay too big. With suitcase in hand above his head, those pants fell to the ground. And I had a front row seat. Let's just say the moon was full in more ways than one! I fly out of Phoenix on a red eye late tonight, which will put me back home again in Indiana early tomorrow morning. I've been thinking a lot about my blog from the other day on how I learned how to teach. People will often tell me after my presentations, "You're such a natural teacher." And while I'm pleased that I can give such an impression, that observation is entirely inaccurate - there's nothing natural at all about my teaching skills. Rather, they are entirely the product of lots of experience, hard work, and the tenacity to bounce back after miserable failings. That being said, the other skill fundamental to my career (the ability to analyze music) IS largely a natural talent. Unlike my teaching skills, I really don't have to work terribly hard at it - somehow my brain just does the work on its own with little conscious effort from me. It's a "gift", as such abilities are often described. Brad Roberts, lead singer of The Crash Test Dummies, described this phenomenon in the song "How Does a Duck Know?", when he sang, "All my organs doing their jobs, no help from me." Of course, learning analytic techniques in the first place took time and practice to perfect (nobody is born with that kind of gift). And I do have to spend a great deal of time and effort conducting the analysis in the first place. But once that raw data enters my mind, my brain somehow sifts and sorts it all, intuitively finding connections and drawing conclusions.
Paul McCartney articulated the act of songwriting in similar terms: "It comes through your own layers of personality, your own mindset and your musical background," he said. "My brain will filter out all that I don't like.” (Pritchard and Lysaght, The Beatles: An Oral History, p. 193) Paul is describing the creative process (putting things together) whereas in my case it's the same phenomenon but analytic (breaking things down). But the concept is the same: Let our brains do their thing. The only comparison I can make is that it's quite similar to using a calculator - you punch in the figures and operations, then it spits out the data without any further effort from the user. If a user doesn't know how to accurately enter the numbers or the proper order of operations, then any subsequent calculations will be inaccurate and worthless. But once a user learns how to properly use the instrument, the calculator itself does all the hard work while the user merely presses buttons. Just as the balance between analysis and explanation is integral my success as a Beatles scholar, so too the balance between intuition and cultivation is equally important. AARON: I've now done more than 300 presentations in my career, more than 200 of which have been about the Beatles. But last night's "From the Shadow of JFK: The Rise of Beatlemania in America" at the Ironwood library in Phoniex, AZ was the first in which I left my computer power cord behind! I realized about 2 minutes after leaving the house that I had forgotten my notes and so I turned around and went back to collect them. But that wasn't the only thing I forgot, and I didn't realize it until I arrived at the library and tried to plug in my laptop. The battery was at 23%, and the estimated remaining battery life was 67 minutes. But for some reason this particular computer shuts down at 6%, which meant it really only had 17% (about 45 minutes) remaining. This particular library was not far from home - only about 15 minutes - and so normally I would have driven back to retrieve the plug. But normally I would have arrived a full hour before the start time to set up. In this case, however, the library had an event in the program room that ran until 6pm, meaning my normal prep time was limited to 30 minutes instead of 60 minutes. Thus, I didn't have time to go get it. So we pulled out a library laptop as a back-up for when my own died. And while it wasn't perfect (the second computer didn't have OpenOffice installed, and we couldn't install it due to security reasons, so I had to create a low-quality PDF of my original slide show which cannot embed audio or video clips, then put that PDF on a thumb drive, and transfer it to the second laptop), it did more or less work. The picture quality was poor, and I had to exit the slideshow and manually play the clips, but overall the transition went about as smoothly as could be expected, given the less than ideal situation. Importantly, I didn't let the problems interfere with the quality of the presentation. I've done enough of these programs that I've learned how to maintain composure, even when things go wrong, and still deliver a high-quality product. The audience last night was the best I've had so far in Arizona, and they asked some really great questions. One was about the correlation between history and technology since I talked about how Kennedy embraced television, the technology that came of age at the time he was running for office. And indeed, history and technological advancement are inextricably intertwined. As machines grow progressively more sophisticated and accessible, they help capture what life is like at that time, documenting the actions and atmosphere of the time. In 2016, television is still a major component life, but the internet has supplanted TV as the primary communications medium. Popular social media like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are unique to the last decade, making them the contemporary equivalent of what television was to the late 1950s and early 1960s. It's no surprise, then, to find current politicians embracing these new social media the same way Kennedy embraced television more than a half century ago. Similarly, technology and specifically MUSIC history are also strongly related. The electric guitar was invented in the 1931, but it didn't become popular right away. Why not? In part because electricity wasn't very common or accessible in 1931. The electric guitar wouldn't reach mainstream popularity until the 50s, when electricity became a standard technological component of life. Not coincidentally, it was around the same time that the new musical genre Rock 'n' Roll, a genre particularly well-suited to the use of the newly accessible electric guitar, exploded in popularity. So both history and music - and, indeed, life and culture in general - are strongly tied to technological advancement. That has proven true in the past, and no doubt it will continue to be true far into the future. JOHN (Aaron's father and travelling companion on this tour):
People don't mean to be rude, do they? Let's go back to March 12, an unusually warm but still pleasant day in Burleson, Tex. A Beatles tribute band named Me and My Monkey -- mimicking the John Lennon song"Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey," on THE BEATLES album, aka THE WHITE ALBUM -- played a set before and after Aaron's lecture titled "The Beatles: Band of the Sixties." Both the concert and the lecture were in the city's Recreation Center gymnasium. The first set was well attended. A woman carting around an energetic 6 year old had sat through the music and continued through part of Aaron's talk, which featured chord comparisons, recording tricks and influences on the band as well as their history. The woman walked out of the gym with the youngster before the end of the talk. I was outside the gym watching the table with Aaron's books and CDs for sale. She saw me and walked over with, I could tell, an inquiry. "Aaron, who's giving the presentation," I explained, pointing inside the gym, "is my son, and these are books he's written about the Beatles and copies of a CD he's recorded." She nodded then slowly said, "Let me ask you something." Lowering her voice for some reason, she continued: "When does the music start again?" (Out comes the mental pen and paper to create Reminder #1: Everyone has his or her own likes and dislikes, and is not as enamored with our son's thorough research, engaging speaking voice and exciting topic as we are.) I tried not to take her question personally, so my answer was inflection neutral. "He'll be done in about five minutes, then the band returns," I said. "Oh good," she offered as an insult follow-up, then was startled to discover the child had escaped her grip for the lure of a climbing rock in the center's lobby. She turned to catch up to him but first explained about the lecture, "I already know all that stuff." (Reminder #2: Not everyone knows what he or she is talking about.) |
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