Author: Ian Macdonald (1994)
A book to keep you company for the rest of your life. Even if you don’t always agree with the late great Ian MacDonald’s (The People’s Music) assessments of the Beatles’ songs (I thought paperbak classic When I Get Home was unfairly dismissed as throwaway filler – but this is all part of the fun) you can only marvel at take, negative or positive. The man hears things I hadn’t noticed (vocal fluffs, mistakes un-erased).
Bid farewell to you social life, because Revolution in the Head will keep you reading and send you back to your guitar and piano, determined to master these beautiful songs.
Taking all the elements which combined to create each song as it was captured on vinyl – the songwriting process, the stimuli of contemporary pop hits and events, the evolving input from each of the Four, the brilliant innovations pulled off in the studio and, ultimately, the twisting grip of psychedelic drugs – the Beatles are pinpointed, record by record, in precise and fascinating detail against the backdrop of that vibrant era.