Cutting up a Glass Onion: Reading the Beatles’ History and Legacy

James McGrath, Leeds Beckett University, UK

Chapter published in Fifty Years With The Beatles: The Impact of The Beatles on Contemporary Culture,
Jarniewicz, J. and Kwiakowska, A. eds. Fifty Years with the Beatles. University of Lodz Press, 2010, pp. 303-326.

The Beatles, both as a group and as individuals, are the subject of thousands of published materials. Three
decades ago, Carol D. Terry’s catalogue The First International Beatles Bibliography (1985) exceeded a
doctoral thesis in length, yet omitted many titles. This paper has two purposes: to select and critique the
key commentaries which have shaped public knowledge concerning the Beatles, and to highlight gaps and
ambiguities in the research concerning these much-mythologized figures and their work. After evaluating
interviews, biographical narratives, critical journalism and academic studies, I explore an under-
documented area of Beatles-related research. Disparate yet strikingly consistent oral evidence – including
published comments from John Lennon and Paul McCartney – indicates that in the group’s pre-EMI
years, the two chief Beatles were far more closely influenced by local black musicians in Liverpool than
they were by their white peers. This corresponds with the more substantially-documented influence of
black American recording artists on the group. Drawing from interviews with key witnesses in Liverpool,
I will outline some ways in which local black musicians provided a link between American rhythm and
blues recordings and the early Beatles’ musical development. To begin exploring the construction of
public knowledge on The Beatles, however, I will first consider their own narratives.

The Beatles’ interviews

The hundreds of "contemporary" interviews with the Beatles from 1962-9, both as individuals and a
group, contribute richly to our knowledge. However, their most detailed and seemingly candid accounts
date from after the split. This discussion outlines the methodological aspects of utilising and cross-
referencing the key interviews, while also summarising the lesser-known sources.

Two journalists exclusively interviewed the Beatles for monographs. Most famously, Hunter Davies
(1968) observed them at home and at work in 1967-8, also interviewing their families. The book should be
read with the awareness of the Beatles’ ultimate approval of its content. Though the main text remains
unaltered, Davies’ later commentary (1985) is more critical of the group. Despite Davies’ title The
Beatles: The Only Authorized Biography, Michael Braun had attained similar access to the group,
producing Love Me Do: The Beatles’ Progress (1964). Lennon remarked that while Davies’ book
contained "nothing about the orgies" and "shit that had happened on tour", Braun portrayed "how we
were, which was bastards" (Wenner 1971: 61, 74). Yet Braun’s book is rarely salacious, evoking
predominantly the young Beatles’ relative innocence, yielding interestingly forthright comments on
various social topics.

McCartney – after commenting in his official biography (Miles 1997) that his narratives therein may be
viewed as "revisionism" – emphasizes the Beatles’ complacency towards journalists in the 1960s, treating
interviews as a "fun game" in which they offered playful fabrications (Miles 1997: xi-xii). Nonetheless,
while contemporary interviews are of questionable accuracy, they provide indications of how the group –
and manager Brian Epstein – wished the Beatles to be perceived. A difference between the contemporary
and retrospective interviews is the extent to which the former imply the Beatles’ unity. For example,

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Epstein discouraged Lennon and McCartney from revealing that they wrote many songs separately
(Barrow 1985: 21). In Lennon’s embittered 1970 Rolling Stone interview, the validity of the "Lennon-
McCartney" songwriting brand was one of several iconic notions concerning the Beatles that Lennon
trashed, claiming that he and McCartney stopped writing together "around 1962" (Wenner 1971: 26-7).
Asked about this suggestion years later, Lennon laughed: "I was lying" (Sheff 1981: 137). The factual
reliability of contemporary and retrospective Beatles interviews can, then, be ambiguous. Yet
contradictions reveal their own truths, indicating human tendency to fabricate, revise and re-revise
narratives over time.

Although in terms of what passes as "fact", contemporary Beatles interviews necessitate cautious reading,
perhaps more interesting to scholars is how these reflect the group’s broadening artistic, spiritual and
political interests. However, a methodological reality demands acknowledgement. Even in Britain, where
many key Beatles interviews were first published, access to original copies can prove elusive. British
Library holdings for New Musical Express (NME) and Melody Maker (MM) are incomplete; such
publications were seemingly not deemed worth preserving at the time. Three magazine-length
compilations of selected NME and MM articles focus on the Beatles from 1962-70 (Sutherland 2002),
Lennon from 1962-80 (Sutherland 2003) and the solo Beatles’ 1970-80 careers (Hunt 2005). Although
most articles are reproduced in full, headlines are different, and some dates and page references are
inaccurate.

Larger British city libraries hold microfiche reels of national newspapers, including most tabloids. This
means that, for example, Peter Forbes’ 1960 Sunday People report "This is the Beatnik Horror", profiling
(the unnamed) Lennon’s student flat, remains accessible, as does McCartney’s Daily Mirror defence of
his admission of taking LSD (Short 1967). However, many exclusive Beatles interviews were given to
London’s Evening Standard, and thus were distributed limitedly (if at all) in England’s provinces.
Likewise, archived copies remain largely inaccessible outside London. Local libraries can request
photocopies, but full bibliographical details are required. Several Beatles books from non-academic
publishers provide dates for articles quoted, but no page numbers. Thus, many of us have to rely on (for
example) Mike Evans’ The Beatles Literary Anthology (2004) for the citation of, say, Maureen Cleave’s
1966 interview with Lennon, eliciting his infamous comments on Christianity. I successfully requested a
copy of the original only after pausing my Beatles Anthology DVD (episode 5), in which the article,
including the page number (10) is fleetingly shown. McCartney's, Harrison's, and Starr’s conversations
with Cleave remain accessible only via the transcripts lovingly typed up by fans online. A Beatles-themed
Evening Standard anthology, containing these and other exclusives, would be welcome.

In Beatles group interviews, which ceased almost entirely after their 1966 press conferences, Lennon and
McCartney dominated the reporters’ attention, affording little room for Harrison and Starr’s perspectives.
Lennon and McCartney were also more often interviewed as individuals during the group’s career. The
two songwriters’ comments from the mid-1960s often prefigure what would later emerge as significant
concerns for each. For example, interviewed in 1966 on the set of Richard Lester’s How I Won The War
(1967), Lennon told the Look Magazine that for his generation, unlike the last, there "might be a bit more
trouble" recruiting masses to fight in a war, "because I’d be up there shouting “Don’t do it!”’ (in Evans
2004: 184). Similarly, though McCartney’s retrospective emphasis that he initiated the Beatles' excursions
into electronic music exemplifies apparent "revisionism" in his later narratives, in 1966, he enthused in
NME about Stockhausen’s work, announcing the Beatles’ increasingly experimental direction by stating
"I, for one, am sick of doing sounds that people can claim to have heard before" (Smith 1966: 8).

Harrison’s relatively few 1960s interviews as an individual are under-represented in compendiums such as
Evans (2004) and Egan (2009). However, online archives, of which "The Ultimate Beatles Interview
Database" is a fine example, reproduce selections of insightful 1960s Harrison interviews, though again,
bibliographical pointers are limited. These conversations represent Harrison’s frustration as a songwriter

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competing with Lennon and McCartney (talking to the authorized Beatles Book magazine in 1966), plus
his eagerness to discuss his growing interest in Indian music and religion with the mainstream media (on
the BBC Radio series Scene and Heard in September 1967). Starr’s few contemporary interviews also
remain obscure. David Wigg’s December 1968 interview with Starr for Britain’s Daily Express elicits
candid acknowledgements of personal and financial strains upon the Beatles, but Starr repeatedly
emphasizes the love and strength within the group (Wigg 1976). Although Starr’s post-1970 interviews
complicate his image as the most easygoing Beatle, openly expressing his resentment of having to
continue discussing the group (especially if he is promoting his own new work), his actual comments on
the Beatles have remained respectful and affectionate. The consummate examples of this are his
comments in The Beatles Anthology documentary (1995) and book (2000) – the most extensive
testimonies to how the remaining Beatles and Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono wished the group’s history to
be preserved, if not a testimony to how it all happened.

The Anthology includes selections from Lennon’s 1963-80 interviews, including the first authorized
quotations from his abandoned 1979 oral autobiography. The words of McCartney, Harrison and Starr are
represented here (unlike in the 1960s) in roughly equal measure. A select number of close associates are
also interviewed, but not the Beatles’ wives. However, the focus prioritizes the group’s work over their
personal lives. While the choice of interviewees leaves the project insular, there has been no shortage of
external viewpoints on the Beatles over the decades, and the Anthology’s detail regarding the making of
the most famous songs (albeit at the expense of less obvious tracks) provides valuable insights for
musicologists. Harrison’s 1990s commentaries appear the most measured. McCartney and especially
Lennon’s recollections as presented in the Anthology are less frank than was typical of their post-Beatles
commentaries.

Jann Wenner’s 1970 interview with Lennon and Ono for Rolling Stone was republished as the book
Lennon Remembers (1971). The title was apt: the interview shows Lennon at his most belligerently
unforgiving. Sometimes encouraged by Wenner, Lennon vents anger at McCartney in particular. Perhaps
significantly, Lennon had recently undergone (but abandoned) "Primal Therapy", in which patients are
encouraged to confront their repressed psychological pain. Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn’s 1971
interview with Lennon and Ono for International Marxist Group newspaper Red Mole shows Lennon’s
anger becoming politically-focused, inaugurating what he described in NME as his commitment to
"British Socialism" (Smith 1971: 84). Accordingly, in 1970-2, Lennon asserted his "working-class"
origins. A less well-known source, particularly valuable for Lennon’s comments on art, is his 1971
interview (alongside Ono) with Peter McCabe and Robert Schonfeld, first published as John Lennon: For
The Record (1984).

As Lennon’s commercial favour dwindled in 1972-5, his interviews grew less high-profile and less
extensive, as well as less politically-outspoken. Facing a legal battle to attain US citizenship, complicated
by his 1971-2 endorsements of numerous radical groups, he needed to avoid controversy. Lennon
withdrew from public life from 1976-80, while supposedly living as a "house-wife" – a term he used more
often than "house-husband" (see Sheff 1981). His 1976-8 prose works, published as Skywriting by Word of
Mouth (1986), include "The Ballad of John and Yoko", reflecting on his life as a Beatle and ex-Beatle.
Almost uniquely amongst Lennon’s comments on his life, these do not directly respond to interviewers’
questions. Lennon’s August 1980 return to recording prompted renewed media interest in his work, and
with Ono, he participated in several lengthy interviews. Though Lennon renounced his earlier links with
radical groups, and he described his upbringing as less "working-class" than "suburban" (Sheff 1981: 154-
5), his narratives remained polemic, expounding his interest in feminism. Ono’s inspired choice of where
Lennon should most extensively discuss his life as a "house-wife" – Playboy, America’s leading men’s
magazine – is often overlooked. The Playboy conversations, published in book form as David Sheff’s Last
Interview (1981/2000), offer Lennon’s most complete narrative of his life, with particular attention to the
authorship of each "Lennon-McCartney" composition. A more obscure 1980 interview with Lennon

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deserves note: free-lance journalist Lisa Robinson’s conversation with the ex-Beatle for Rocky Mountain
News. Here, Lennon more openly acknowledges the roles of the household staff in caring for his infant
son Sean. This candid dialogue, plus selections from Robinson’s 1970s interviews with Lennon, was
republished in Vanity Fair (2001). Although the Playboy interviews, plus Andy Peebles’ 1980 BBC
interview with Lennon and Ono, present illuminatingly detailed reflections, the fact that these took place
shortly before Lennon’s murder does not render these his definitive statements. They demonstrate his
tendency to continue reassessing past events. Although his numerous 1980 interviews show Lennon in
different moods, his reflections on the Beatles are more proud here.

McCartney’s post-Beatles interviews divide into two phases: before and after Lennon’s death. In the
1970s, establishing a solo career, McCartney seldom publicly discussed the Beatles, though exceptions
occur, most notably in his interview with Paul Gambaccini for Rolling Stone (1974). McCartney’s post-
1980 interviews are characterized both by his expressed grief for Lennon and complaints that his own
importance within the Beatles was being downplayed amidst Lennon’s posthumous adulation. In Chris
Salewicz’s 1986 Q magazine interview, McCartney makes assertions that would increasingly dominate his
retrospective accounts regarding the Beatles: that "before John met Yoko and got avant-garde",
McCartney immersed himself in avant-garde culture and led the group’s more experimental approach to
recording (Salewicz 1986b: 34; Du Noyer 1989: 50-1). McCartney’s uses of the term avant-garde are less
discerning than the former art student Lennon’s. Despite McCartney’s complaints that only Lennon is seen
as "avant-garde" because, with Ono, he later released whole albums of electronic music, the fact that
Lennon largely avoided this term is generally overlooked. In 1980, Lennon challenged a reference to his
and Ono’s 1968 work as "avant-garde", responding that the label "defeats itself … The very fact that
avant-garde can have an exhibition defeats the purpose" (Peebles 1981: 12). Connoting movements
challenging boundaries, avant-garde translates as vanguard: "the foremost part of an army … advancing
or ready to advance" (OED). In the discourse concerning Lennon and McCartney (for example, Elliott
1999; Mäkelä 2004), avant-garde signifies artistic experiment and, paradoxically, experimental traditions.
Since Lennon’s death, McCartney has emphasized how "avant-garde" composers Stockhausen and Berio
influenced his own contributions to the Beatles’ work (Salewicz 1986b: 34). While the McCartney-led
uses of "electronic" (pre-recorded and manipulated) music in "Tomorrow Never Knows" (1966) utilized
techniques that were decades old, these had not previously been fused with popular song; nor had they
been offered to mass audiences. Thus, by tradition and innovation, McCartney’s role in the Beatles’ 1966-
7 work justifies the term avant-garde. However, alongside intellectual credibility, avant-garde connotes
leadership, and McCartney’s emphatic claims that he initiated the Beatles’ uses of electronic music
suggest determination to advance his reputation as an innovator within the group. The recollections of
producer George Martin (with Pearson, 1994: 79-80) and engineer Geoff Emerick (with Massey, 2006:
111-2) generally support McCartney’s claims. Indeed, Lennon complained in 1980 that his songs were
"sabotage[d]" by McCartney’s "experimental games" (Sheff 1981: 192). Amidst McCartney’s seemingly
valid claims of his own musical innovation, an important obviousness remains overlooked. Prior to the
Beatles’ "Revolution 9" (1968), on which Lennon worked with Ono, not McCartney, the group’s main
forays into electronic music appear to have been led by McCartney, but in songs – most notably,
"Tomorrow Never Knows" (1966), "Strawberry Fields Forever" (1967) and "A Day In The Life" (1967) –
initiated (and mostly sung) by Lennon. Meanwhile, McCartney’s compositions were suffused with less
sonically abrasive orchestral details ("Eleanor Rigby" 1966; "She’s Leaving Home" 1967). The artistic
currency of the avant-garde in Lennon and McCartney’s reputations remains an area necessitating but
deserving close consideration by researchers.

The defensiveness of Miles’ Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now (1997) appears largely reasonable,
given the concurrence with accounts by Martin and Emerick (notwithstanding that both worked on
McCartney’s 1990s recordings). Though the acknowledgement of Lennon’s studio innovations is scant in
the book – "I Am The Walrus" is barely mentioned – little of Miles (1997) has been challenged on factual
grounds. However, a rarely-mentioned exception deserves acknowledgement to indicate the limited

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reliability of McCartney’s recollections. In a comment encapsulating the tone of his 1990s reminisces, he
muses: "I believe I turned Mick Jagger on to pot … which is funny because everyone would have thought
it would have been the other way around" (Miles 1997: 261). Jagger promptly denied that McCartney
introduced him to marijuana (Lister 1997: 4).

Harrison’s autobiography I Me Mine (1980) was largely written by former Beatles' press officer Derek
Taylor. Though insights concerning the Beatles as a group are few therein, Harrison’s own commentaries
on each of his compositions from 1963-79 are invaluable. Starr’s book Postcards From The Boys (2004) –
inevitably, given its nominal format – reveals little, but indicates the fondness with which his co-Beatles
and later, fellow ex-Beatles, regarded him.

What the narratives reviewed above have in common is a decidedly fragmentary nature. The interviews
shift tantalisingly from topic to topic. Yet within and between the Beatles/ex-Beatles published comments,
contradictions can be as significant as consistencies. Though all can be read critically, these sources
accumulatively remind us of three qualities of which acknowledgement is often problematically lacking in
narratives by outsiders: the mercurial nature of memory, the Beatles/ex-Beatles’ changeable personal
agendas, and indeed, the subjectivity of knowledge itself.

Biographies

The first major non-authorized biography of the Beatles, journalist and novelist Philip Norman’s Shout!
(1981), utilized Davies’ archives relating to his own book and included new interviews with key
witnesses. The ex-Beatles did not co-operate. Shout! remains a standard reference book for commentators.
However, Norman’s florid prose and disdain for McCartney render his narrative impressionistic and
biased. Though he later retracted the statement, Norman commented upon the book’s 1981 publication
that "John was three-quarters of the Beatles" (1981: xxviii). McCartney criticized Shout! (Davies 1968:
467-8) and the book was seemingly a catalyst for his later defensiveness. Subsequent memoirs,
documentary accounts and studies supersede Shout! in provision of detail and analysis. Norman’s
elegantly quotable prose notwithstanding, Shout! is seldom an adequate substitute for the more thorough
memoirs, documentary accounts and studies which have since surpassed it in depth and detail. The book’s
2003 update is most significant for typifying standard journalistic opinions in a period when, decades after
his death, Lennon had become an individual icon, while McCartney’s reputation suffered as he continued
releasing work to mixed critical receptions.

Bob Spitz’s The Beatles: The Biography (2006) is more thorough and, citing (albeit under-critically) Miles
(1997), more balanced than Norman’s book. Although Spitz offers few new insights, his work raises the
standard of Beatles biographies to more scholarly (and generous) levels, providing full references for
quotations. As well as using his own interviews for the book, Spitz cites the archives of Lennon’s late
biographer Albert Goldman (see below). The first instalment of Mark Lewisohn’s three-part historical
biography of the Beatles is expected 2011. This seventeen-year research project began in 2003. Although
Lewisohn has previously written for projects authorized by EMI, McCartney and Ono, the scrupulous
research that distinguishes his previous work (1988, 1992) bodes encouragingly for what will most likely
become a standard narrative of the group’s history.

Lennon has been the subject of three major biographies. Ray Coleman, who interviewed him for Melody
Maker, received co-operation from Lennon’s family for the respectful John Lennon (1984). Albert
Goldman’s The Lives of John Lennon (1988) challenges Coleman’s portrait. Goldman depicts Lennon as
chronically drug-dependent, violent and misogynistic. His biographies of Lenny Bruce (1974) and Elvis
Presley (1981) were similarly iconoclastic. Yet Goldman’s critiques of Lennon’s lyrics are often highly
perceptive and indeed sympathetic. A former professor of Comparative Literature (Columbia), Goldman

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provides the first psychoanalytical approaches to Lennon’s work. His account of Lennon’s childhood
remains unsurpassed in detail. Although Goldman provides a flattering portrait of McCartney, the ex-
Beatle, plus Lennon’s family, dismissed the book in an attack by Coleman (1988). Miles, Goldman’s
friend, later wrote a cautious defence of the book (2000), detailing various obstacles facing Goldman in
researching and editing the biography.

Ron Ellis, one of Goldman’s several uncredited researchers, conducted 192 interviews for the book,
including those with Lennon’s Liverpool family. He recalls:

The newspapers (as opposed to the publishers) were pressing [Goldman] for a salacious hook
on which to hang a sales pitch but all along he maintained his was an academic work. … He
would not put anything in the book that was not corroborated and signed by the witness
concerned. Which is why he has never been sued (Ellis, e-mail to the present author, 29
October 2003).

Though Goldman’s representations of Lennon and especially Ono were unflattering, the book appears to
have done little lasting damage. It is arguable that, rather than re-assassinating Lennon, Goldman
inadvertently revitalized the legend. By 1988, public interest in Lennon appeared to be waning. The
posthumously-released 1972 recording John Lennon Live In New York City (1986) – surpassing all of
Lennon’s studio albums in sheer vocal conviction – was (and remains) widely ignored. In 1987, Ono had
failed to interest British broadcasters in the radio series The Lost Lennon Tapes, which (aired in America)
unveiled hundreds of unreleased Lennon recordings. Goldman’s book returned Lennon to the mass media
and, coincidentally or not, preceded (by weeks) what remains the definitive Ono-authorized representation
of Lennon’s life: Andrew Solt and Sam Egan’s film Imagine: John Lennon (1988) – a precursor, in
format, to the Anthology documentary. Lennon’s friends and family are interviewed, but nobody (bar
George Martin) who worked with him. The emphasis is on Lennon’s personal life and, as a loving portrait,
Imagine is equal in importance to its antithesis, Goldman (1988). Although both texts necessitate critical
discernment, they unavoidably (and usefully) provoke just this. Sociologist Fred Fogo’s rigorous study of
Lennon’s posthumous image (1994) closely compares both texts.

Norman’s 1988 Sunday Times interview with Ono presents her dignified but imprecise riposte to
Goldman’s claims. Ono and Elliott Mintz (her public relations officer) are extensively interviewed in
another major biography, Norman’s own John Lennon: The Life (2008). However, Ono withdrew her
initial endorsement of the book. Norman suggests that this was because he was quoting "things she had
told me in previous interviews, in a rather amused way" (Du Noyer 2008: 88). One of Norman’s most
publicized suggestions, deriving from his summaries of Ono’s comments, was that Lennon, in Norman’s
words, "contemplated an affair with Paul" (Norman 2008: 668-9). Ono’s cancelled endorsement is
advantageous to the book’s reputation and also to Lennon’s. While her conversations with Norman are
still represented and shape much of the narrative, the sympathetic book is freed from implications of being
controlled by Ono. Norman seldom addresses Goldman’s very different narrative. McCartney contributed
recollections to Norman (2008) and unlike Shout! the Lennon biography emphasizes McCartney’s
importance within the Beatles.

Norman’s Lennon biography utilizes Ron Ellis’s interviews with Lennon’s aunt and childhood guardian
Mary (Mimi) Smith (1906-91), conducted on Goldman’s behalf but mostly unused by the latter. Norman
discusses middle-class aspects of Lennon’s upbringing by Mimi in impressive detail. However, amidst his
characterization of Lennon as (to quote the title of Norman’s 2003 Daily Mail article) "The Bourgeois
Beatle", the book does not significantly consider how Lennon’s upbringing by his aspirational aunt
contrasted with his own parents’ less respectable lifestyles. Prioritizing the Beatles years, Norman under-
represents Lennon’s later Left-wing affiliations. More generous but less penetrating than Goldman’s
biography, Norman’s is in every sense a conservative portrait of Lennon.

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Though Lennon died in 1980, his life is documented in vastly more detail than those of McCartney,
Harrison and Starr. This pattern reflects his more candid, introspective interviews. Although McCartney’s
post-Beatles life is documented less closely, Salewicz’s 1986 biography McCartney – oddly unmentioned
in their 1986 Q magazine dialogue – is unsurpassed in detail regarding the subject’s early life. As of 1962,
the focus of Salewicz’s book disintegrates, as if there are simply too many significant events to sustain
depth or breadth. Christopher Sandford’s probing but sympathetic McCartney (2006) offers little that adds
to or challenges Miles’ 1997 narrative. Peter Ames Carlin’s Paul McCartney: A Life (2009) and Howard
Sounes’ Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney (2010) feature new interviews with many who have
known McCartney personally, but offer little significant new information beyond indicating increased
public interest in his the subject’s life since his widely-reported 2007 divorce from Heather Mills. A
fragmentary but convincing portrait of McCartney emerges in Danny Fields’ Linda McCartney: The
Biography (2000). Fields was a close friend of Paul’s late wife. Though Paul supported the book, Fields’
depiction of him is more rounded and critical than Miles’. The most substantial Harrison biography is
Joshua M. Greene’s Here Comes the Sun (2006), particularly valuable for its sustained consideration of
Harrison’s spiritual beliefs. Alan Clayson’s Ringo Starr: Straight Man or Joker? (1996) is the most
accomplished of this serial-biographer’s countless tomes. Well-researched and also referenced, it offers
detailed critiques of Starr’s many post-Beatles albums, including those of which all but the most loyal fans
know only the titles.

Critical journalism and academic commentaries

What distinguishes critical journalists from academics in this discussion concerns these writers’
professions and thus their terminologies. In terms of original ways of approaching the Beatles’ legacy
however, individuals in these categories have been of equal importance. Tim Riley (1988) and Jonathan
Gould (2007), for example, have authored fine, very different journalistic books on the Beatles, while a
more general commentary, Paul Du Noyer’s Liverpool: Wondrous Place – From Cavern to Cream (2002),
contains highly astute considerations of each Beatle’s role and legacy. However, the most influential and
ambitious journalistic work on the Beatles is the late Ian MacDonald’s Revolution in the Head: The
Beatles’ Records and the Sixties (1994). Not merely a contextualization, but a double-assessment of the
subtitle’s concerns, MacDonald’s macro-cultural consideration of the Beatles is subjectively passionate
yet intellectually rigorous. His own musicianship reflects in his widely-cited analyses of the Beatles’
chord structures.1 MacDonald analyzes every Beatles song in precise chronological order. A key
development is his equal emphasis on Lennon and McCartney’s talents. Although MacDonald often
asserts arguments, without solidly constructing them, his contentions demonstrate many possibilities for
the scholarly discussion of the Beatles within Cultural Studies and musicology.

Academic responses to the Beatles appeared sporadically through the 1960s. A rarely-discussed 1964
essay in the Cambridge journal Blackfriars holds the distinction of being both a first academic
commentary on the Beatles and the earliest known publication by the Marxist literary critic and cultural
theorist Terry Eagleton. Eagleton fortuitously anticipates that the grammar-school background of three
Beatles signifies a shift in popular music away from its previous working-class associations.

Though British broadsheets published detailed reviews of the Beatles’ music, more extensive were the
American appraisals of their work and cultural significance, a particularly fine example of which is
Richard Poirier's 1967 Partisan Review essay. The first academic monograph on the group was Twilight of
the Gods: The Beatles in Retrospect (1973) by Wilfrid Mellers, a professor of music. While writing of

1
MacDonald wrote, produced and arranged the album Interior Design for the otherwise obscure group Sub Rosa
(Expression Records, 1990).

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most songs as compositions, not recordings, Mellers considers various traditions (some ancient) to which
the Beatles’ music and lyrics can be aligned. He also evaluates the ex-Beatles’ early solo albums. The next
major academic work on the group would not appear until 1995: Henry W. Sullivan’s The Beatles with
Lacan. One of the few monographs to apply a sustained theoretical approach to the Beatles, this analyzes
their lives and popularity in Lacanian terms. Lennon and McCartney as individuals are Sullivan’s main
texts. Alongside his psychoanalyses of their characters and "psycho-musical matrimony", Sullivan uses
various biographical sources to present thoughtful socio-historical narratives of their upbringings.

The most extensive musicological studies to date of the Beatles’ work are Walter Everett’s two
monographs (1999, 2001). Everett considers the musical and lyrical content of each song. In what remains
unsurpassed in depth of research, these volumes constructively utilize hundreds of bootleg albums,
demonstrating their value for scholarly research.

In the 2000s, academic debates regarding the Beatles have been vitally enriched by several anthologies of
specially-written essays. Ian Inglis’s The Beatles, Popular Music and Society (2000) provides a range of
articles focusing on the group’s lyrics, music and films. Russell Reising’s Every Sound There Is (2002),
focusing on Revolver (1966), implicitly confirms a shift that began with MacDonald’s work (cited
frequently here): McCartney and Lennon are effectively represented as equals. Reising’s volume also
affords detailed considerations of Harrison, Starr and Martin’s contributions. With greater emphasis on
cultural theory, Kenneth Womack and Todd F. Davis’s anthology Reading The Beatles (2006) provides a
wealth of new arguments regarding the group. Womack’s Long and Winding Roads (2007) analyzes the
Beatles’ lyrics within wider literary contexts. Womack’s commentaries on McCartney’s lyrics are
especially illuminating.

Despite the advances marked by Reising (2002) and Womack (2007), McCartney’s work as an individual,
both within and without the Beatles, has received far less attention than Lennon’s. There have been no
academic books on McCartney’s work specifically, though it has been the subject of several journal
articles. Particularly stimulating is J. M. Dempsey’s "McCartney at 60: A Body of Work Celebrating
Home and Hearth" (2004), contextualizing McCartney’s solo work in broader social-political debates
concerning marriage and the nuclear family. Although Dempsey’s acknowledgement of feminism is
somewhat detached from McCartney’s decidedly traditionalist post-Beatles representations of "home", the
article presents a solid introduction to the chosen theme. Phillip McIntyre’s "Paul McCartney and the
Creation of 'Yesterday': The Systems Model In Operation" (2006) scrutinizes known information on the
genesis of the named song, applying rigorous theoretical dissection. McIntyre’s implication that the
conception of "Yesterday" represents a truly explainable process is not wholly convincing, but
nonetheless, his theoretical approach to this song is fascinating. Although my own research regarding the
Beatles had hitherto prioritized Lennon, my first, small contribution to the field was the article "Like A
Second Needs An Hour: Time and the Work of Paul McCartney" (2003). This sought to demonstrate
possible literary, social-historical and psychoanalytical approaches to McCartney’s work by focusing on
time as a persistent, evolving yet unresolved theme across his songwriting.

Lennon studies have evolved independently from Beatles studies. A limitation in the former is that the
other Beatles’ roles are overlooked. While this is somewhat inevitable in studies prioritizing one member,
oversimplification can ensue. The most enduring Lennon study is Jon Wiener’s social-historical
monograph Come Together: John Lennon in his Time (1984), concentrating on Lennon’s changing
affiliations with radical politics. Wiener brilliantly illustrates the political significance of the lyrics that do
not overtly address ideological themes ("Woman") alongside those that do ("Imagine"). However, the key
to Wiener’s construction of Lennon as a radical is a somewhat unquestioning subscription to his subject’s
narratives of his "working-class" upbringing. Although there is substance to these, had Wiener referred to
the origins of McCartney, Harrison or (especially) Starr, the complexity of class in post-war Britain would
have been more apparent, as would be that of Lennon’s upbringing. Nevertheless, while Wiener’s

8
emphasis on working-class aspects of Lennon’s background is overly-forceful, this, plus his focus on the
ex-Beatle’s political interests, makes the book a valuable counterpart to Norman’s recent reconstruction of
the "bourgeois" Beatle.

Anthony Elliott’s The Mourning of John Lennon (1999) applies Freudian theory to Lennon’s legacy,
emphasizing how Lennon combined his work with his life to innovative effect. A limitation of this
approach is that Elliott prioritizes the lyrics which are self-explanatory ("Mother") or which Lennon
elucidated in interviews ("Strawberry Fields Forever"). The focus on Lennon as an individual is also
problematic here. Given Elliott’s concentration on mourning – primarily, the absence of Lennon’s mother
during his childhood, and her death when he was seventeen – it is frustrating that he neglects to consider
that McCartney, who Lennon chose as his main partner, had lost his own mother nine months before they
met as teenagers. Although Elliott’s commentary on Lennon’s Beatles songs owe much to MacDonald, the
Freudian scholar’s lucid and substantial arguments offer many points with which we can engage.

More objectively detached than other Lennon studies is Janne Mäkelä’s John Lennon Imagined: Cultural
History of a Rock Star (2004). Discussing Lennon as a "star", Mäkelä utilizes cultural theory and popular
music studies to consider how Lennon and the Beatles’ successes were, to significant degrees, the
products of music and media industries – an obviousness neglected elsewhere.

With few exceptions, the materials reviewed above and indeed, the vast body of the commentaries
concerning the Beatles, are male-authored. Feminist perspectives on the work, lives, public images and
cultural legacy of these four men – whose fan base was initially represented as predominantly female, and
whose early lyrics directly petition "girls" – are few amidst the existing literature. Nonetheless, Peggy J.
Bowers’ essay “'She’s a Woman': The Beatles and the Feminist Ethic of Care" (2006) provides many
substantial observations. More extensive is the work of Sheila Whiteley, whose The Space Between the
Notes (1992) includes a detailed, widely-cited consideration of the Beatles’ 1966-7 recordings, with
particular reference to the connotations therein of psychedelic drugs and the countercultural significance
of psychedelic experience. Most exemplary for new approaches to the Beatles, however, is Whiteley’s
Women and Popular Music: Sexuality, Identity and Subjectivity (2000). Although her references to the
group are limited and Whiteley makes little reference to their solo work, she introduces various
frameworks for discussing the Beatles’ 1966-8 songs from feminist perspectives, focusing on how
inscriptions of women in these lyrics are male-given. Whiteley is especially attentive to how women are
foregrounded in Lennon and McCartney’s songs as providers, forgivers and healers.

In addition to being largely male-authored, existing commentaries on the Beatles predominantly offer
"white" narratives, with little consideration of other cultural viewpoints. Again, however, studies are
(gradually) demonstrating broader ways of contextualizing and discussing the Beatles’ work. Most notable
here is Everett’s 2002 essay on "The Soul of Revolver". This highlight of Reising (2002) outlines and
considers the substantially-documented, yet, in biographies, rarely-mentioned story of the Beatles’ and
Martin’s attempts to negotiate the recording of their 1966 album in Detroit or Memphis. Plans were
discussed for collaborations with Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier and Brian Holland (who had written and
produced for the Supremes and the Four Tops to massive success). Thus, "the Beatles would have
followed one album that had been largely dedicated to the sounds of contemporaneous American soul
music, Rubber Soul, with another that was as authentic a part of that scene as it would have been possible
for them to produce" (Everett 2002: 27). Everett lists 113 songs by black artists covered by the Beatles
from their 1950s incarnation as The Quarry Men onwards (ibid.: 28-9).

What remains under-explored, however, is the subject of "race" and the Beatles from a social-political
perspective. It is rarely mentioned, for example, that the first of their few overtly political statements as a
group addressed racial segregation. In September 1964, prior to their performing in Florida, a Beatles
press statement declared: "We will not appear unless negroes are allowed to sit anywhere" (Miles 1998:

9
169). This is not cited here to suggest that the Beatles consistently took risks in expressing such
sympathies – or at least, not beyond their music. Despite McCartney’s plausible but retrospective
insistence that "Blackbird" (1968) was written in support of the Civil Rights Movement (Miles 1997:
485), interviewed in New York in May 1968, Lennon and McCartney evaded the questions regarding the
Civil Rights struggle (Kane 2005: DVD). Nonetheless, the subject of "race" in regard to the Beatles is a
topic on which there is much to be discussed. This has been lost somewhat in Beatles-centred literature to
date, but not in broader cultural-historical studies addressing popular music. Discussing the influence of
black American recording artists on the Beatles, Iain Chambers’ Urban Rhythms: Pop Music and Popular
Culture (1985) proposes: "[m]asterfully working through black and white traditions they offered a novel,
sympathetic focus: an altered perspective, not a foreign landscape" (Chambers 1985: 63). Similarly, in
There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation (1987), Paul Gilroy
conjectures:

the Beatles’ early reliance on cover versions of material from rhythm and blues artists … are
probably as significant as the blue beat itself in the history of how popular culture has formed
spaces in which the politics of "race" could be lived out and transcended in the name of youth
(Gilroy 1987: 167).

Yet what has received still less serious consideration or indeed acknowledgement from biographers,
journalists and scholars writing about the Beatles is the evidence that such implications of their work
effectively honour their own cultural-geographical roots. I will conclude by outlining, as a new research
topic concerning the Beatles, an area of cultural "history from below" in which separate yet decidedly
consistent oral evidence has emerged, especially in the past decade.

Liverpool’s black perspectives on the Beatles

The most distinguished aspect of the Beatles’ recorded output, crucial to the continued evolution of their
sound, is their clear interest in the musical styles of other nations, including Northern Indian sitar music
and European avant-garde composition techniques. In the case of Lennon and McCartney especially, such
diverse interests first became apparent when the two chief Beatles were Liverpool teenagers. In his
foreword to Du Noyer (2002), McCartney commented of the city’s influence on the Beatles:

the big factor about Liverpool was it being a port … you could get so many different ethnic
sounds: African music, maybe, or calypsos via the Liverpool Caribbean community, which I
think was the oldest in England … with all these influences, from your home, the radio, the
sailors and the immigrants, Liverpool was a huge melting pot of music. And we took what we
liked from all that (Du Noyer, 2002: vii).

McCartney has seldom been asked about this topic in more detail. In accounts of the Beatles’ history, little
attention has been given to McCartney’s comments, and even less to the narratives of those who witnessed
first-hand these young white musicians’ interest in local black musicians’ work.

The most substantial text regarding this appeared in 1998, when London’s Observer published an
article by Tony Henry titled "The Man Who Put The Beat Into The Beatles". This was a profile of
Trinidad-born calypso singer and steelpannist Harold Phillips (1928-2000), better known as Lord
Woodbine. He arrived in England on SS Windrush in 1948 and settled in Liverpool. Henry interviewed
Woodbine and various Toxteth-based members of Liverpool’s black community, plus the Beatles’ first
manager Allan Williams. Williams, a Liverpool Welshman, was Woodbine’s former business-partner.
Woodbine is mentioned frequently but peripherally in Williams’ 1975 memoir (with Marshall) The
Man Who Gave The Beatles Away. The book portrays the Trinidadian as a fatherly friend to the
Beatles, describing how they "often drank far into the night with Lord Woodbine" (p. 99) after-hours at

10
his New Colony Club in Liverpool, where they performed (and slept) on numerous occasions. On
several bookings, they backed a stripper at Williams and Woodbine’s Cabaret Artists Social Club.
Williams’ own official biography (Baxter, 2002) jovially acknowledges the Beatles’ first manager’s
well-documented propensity to fabricate truths. It is thus intriguing that Henry reports how Williams
and Woodbine came to blows over the 1975 memoir because Woodbine felt that it greatly downplayed
his own role in the Beatles’ story, especially in their first trip to Hamburg (Henry 1998: 9). Williams
tells Henry two decades on: "I’ve never said this before, but if it hadn’t been for Lord Woodbine …
there would have been no Beatles" (ibid.). Although Henry’s article mainly concerns Woodbine’s role
in securing the Beatles’ first Hamburg trip, most interesting are the repeated assertions of young
Lennon and McCartney’s interest in Woodbine’s music. McCartney’s 2002 reference to "calypso" is
here intriguing, as is his 1980 comment regarding the Beatles’ pre-EMI songwriting: "we were trying
to find the next beat – the next new sound. New Musical Express … was talking about calypso, and
how Latin rock was going to be the next big thing" (Garbarini 1980: 56). "Lord" Woodbine’s title, in
the tradition of Lord Invader and Lord Kitchener, reflected his recognition as a calypso singer. It has
previously been overlooked that this Trinidadian Liverpudlian was seemingly the first singer-
songwriter with whom Lennon and McCartney came into contact. Woodbine first encountered them
around 1958, when he began noticing their frequent attendance of his steelpan performances in the
clubs of Toxteth, Liverpool 8 – the heart of the city’s black community (Henry 1998: 9; Smith 2009).

Henry’s narrative of how the young Beatles affiliated themselves with Woodbine’s All-Steel Caribbean
Band (prior to their employment at his clubs) is supported in the article by two highly respected
Liverpool figures: Herbie Higgins MBE (a pioneer of the city’s community services) and Candy
(Candace) Smith, who started, oversaw and secured the funding for Liverpool’s Amina House, a
residential home for black individuals with mental health problems. In the 1950s, Candace’s partner
was Woodbine’s friend and fellow steelpannist Gerry Gobin (inaccurately named by Henry as Gerry
Goldberg). When, around 1960, Woodbine left the All-Steel Caribbean Band, it became The Royal
Caribbean Steel Band. Candace recalls how Lennon and McCartney "would be standing by the stage
while the steel band were playing, overwhelmed by the music" (ibid.). Candace told me: "They just
hung around all the time. They were trying to pick up the rhythm. … Gerry kept on saying 'those kids
were there again'."2 Most often, Gobin noticed Lennon and McCartney watching the band during
evening bookings at the Jacaranda Coffee Bar. Although the Beatles spent much time at the Jacaranda
(which was owned by Williams), "those kids" paid conspicuous attention to the steelpannists. Candace
describes how, "to worm their way in", Lennon and McCartney "would wash glasses and empty
ashtrays" at the Jacaranda, "so that afterwards, they could have a go on the drums on the stage". She
confirms that initially, Gobin "was not impressed" by Lennon and McCartney’s appearances at the
steelpan gigs, nor by these teenagers’ own music. Nonetheless, respect between the Beatles and the
pannists gradually became mutual. Candace describes Lennon and McCartney plucking up enough
courage at the Jacaranda "to jump up [onstage] to a pan player and say, 'Hey, – giz a go'” (Henry
1998). McCartney, who drums on The Beatles (1968) and several of his solo albums, said in 1997:
"I’ve been drumming for years, since the old Lord Woodbine days" (Wonfor 1997). Still more
intriguing is the detail – unmentioned in Beatles biographies but preserved in Woodbine’s 100 Great
Black Britons website entry – that Lennon in particular would take his guitar to the steelpan concerts to
"jam with 'Woody'". When the Beatles attempted to play in Woodbine’s clubs with no drummer,
McCartney told him: "The rhythm’s in the guitars" (Henry 1998).

Biographers may have their own reasons for doubting the validity of Henry’s article on Woodbine, but
given that this, in a Sunday broadsheet, attained wider distribution than most books about the Beatles,
general readers as well as scholars surely have a right to expect the acknowledgement of its content in any

2
Unless otherwise stated, all quotations from Candace Smith are taken from a recorded interview, which I conducted
with her on 7 Oct 2009.

11
text professing to narrate the group’s Liverpool years in detail. In The Beatles Encyclopedia, Bill Harry,
Lennon’s art college friend, dismisses Henry’s article in one sentence as "wildly inaccurate" (Harry
1992/2000: 1164). Similarly, in Woodbine’s Independent obituary, Spencer Leigh states that Henry’s
article "did not stand up to journalistic scrutiny" (Leigh 2000: 6). Yet neither Harry nor Leigh apply any
scrutiny to the piece; nor do they summarize its content. A more pertinent response came from Professor
Arthur Marwick, a respected British historian, who wrote to the Observer congratulating Henry on an
"excellent" article (Marwick 1998). He did, however, question Allan Williams’ suggestion that without
Woodbine, "there would have been no Beatles". Marwick pointed out that countless other individuals
helped to create the Beatles’ success. This is true, but Woodbine (and Gobin) – unlike Stuart Sutcliffe,
Bob Wooler or indeed Bill Harry – are scarcely recognized in the histories of the group. However, this
lack of recognition from Beatles experts does not mean that the suggestions made in Henry’s article, the
100 Great Black Britons website, or indeed, McCartney’s 2002 comments, are uncorroborated. Before
researching this topic, I was introduced to a figure from Liverpool’s 1959-65 music scene who similarly
emphasizes the Beatles’ debt to another of the city’s black musicians, the late Somali-Irish rhythm
guitarist Vinnie Ismail.

Vinnie Ismail (born Liverpool, 1942) died in 2007. As Vinnie Tow, he led the Liverpool group Vince and
His Volcanoes from 1959 to 1962. The band’s former manager was George Roberts, an Arabic-
Norwegian resident of Liverpool 8. Roberts’ 2001 article "Managing The Bands" (on Harry’s "Mersey
Beat" website) describes how, in the Cavern, prior to a lunchtime session in 1961,

I witnessed Vinnie tutoring John Lennon and Paul McCartney on how to play a seventh chord
in the Chuck Berry style. John, in particular, wanted to master the technique. The chord in
question is where the index finger is used as a bridge bar to create a chunky octave chord
sound; the pinkie [little finger] brushes the beat and the two middle ones create the note
(Roberts 2001: 2).

While this is only a passing detail in his article, Roberts has emphasized to me that this "tutoring"
session between Ismail and two Beatles was not a singular occurrence in 1961-2, and that nor did it
seem – at the time – significant. Roberts also witnessed his most promising protégé showing Lennon
and McCartney guitar chords offstage at Liverpool’s (Windsor Street) Starline Club, "servicing,
mostly, white people who had sympathies with the immigrant population".3 Lennon and McCartney,
Roberts adds, "came directly in contact with black and mixed race Men in a very structured way … .
They were astute and intuitively knew the body politic", making "expedient slight of hand choices in
choosing a particular friend and collaborator". Roberts (like myself) was unaware of Henry (1998)
when he made these comments. Roberts knew Woodbine only by sight and was unacquainted with
Candace Smith. Yet from significantly different perspectives, these accounts concur with implications
of McCartney’s 2002 comment: Liverpool’s ethnic diversity fostered its musical diversity, and the
Beatles were eager to learn from this. While Roberts expresses frustration at the obscurity of Vinnie
Ismail’s name in the narratives of the Beatles’ history and that of Mersey Beat at large, he emphasizes
his admiration for the young Lennon and McCartney as "ordinary" youngsters with "remarkable"
talent: “!they were like sponges, in the best possible way! They soaked up every influence around
them. Some, like me, will claim a part of that on behalf of my good friend and 'brother' at the time,
Vinnie". The sources evaluated and introduced in this chapter suggest that, regarding the Beatles’ pre-
EMI career, there is more evidence that McCartney and especially Lennon looked to Liverpool’s black
musicians for inspiration and guidance than they did to their white peers on the Mersey Beat scene,
from whom they gradually distinguished themselves. While this, for whatever reason, remains

3
Quotations from George Roberts, except where stated, derive from his emails to me on 20 April 2008, 30 April
2008, and 14 Apr 2009.

12
overlooked in most of the histories, there is too much evidence to ignore; and this evidence is too
consistent to dismiss as uncorroborated.

Lennon’s self-referential "Glass Onion" (1968) uses the nominal image to suggest the multi-layered,
man-made natures of knowledge and meaning. The song begins

I told you ’bout Strawberry Fields,

You know, the place where nothing is real
Well here’s another place you can go

Around the middle of the track, however, Lennon references a local Liverpool landmark: Standing on
the Cast Iron Shore, yeah. The Cast Iron Shore is a colloquial name for St Michael’s Shoreline,
Toxteth. Near the centre of the glass onion, then, is a place which is real. This chapter has reviewed the
key texts which have contributed to knowledge and understanding concerning the Beatles. The area
which remains least understood in relation to their work and achievements is arguably the heart of the
glass onion: the Beatles’ Liverpool origins.

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14
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15
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16
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Acknowledgements

Sincere thanks are due to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding my research, and to Ron
Ellis, George Roberts and Candace Smith for sharing their recollections with me and allowing me to quote
from these.

17
Dr James McGrath lectures in Cultural Studies at Leeds Metropolitan University. His PhD
compared Lennon and McCartney’s songwriting. He has published in Interdisciplinary Literary
Studies, PN Review, Estudios Irlandeses, The Independent, Guardian Higher, Soundscapes, The
Big Issue, Popular Music and The Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies. His
current research explores how Literary Theory may aid understandings of Asperger Syndrome.

18