A Day In The Life / The Music and Artistry of the Beatles - Hardcover

Hertsgaard, Mark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0333628241 ISBN 13: 9780333628249

Publisher: Delacorte Press, 1995

Synopsis

A Day in the Life: The Music and Artistry of the Beatles

About this title

From the Publisher:

The Beatles are the most popular and accomplished musical artists of this century. Beloved by millions, their music changed the world. A Day In The Life is the first serious biography of that music: a hip, intelligent, inside account of how it was created, how it evolved over time, what the Beatles said and did inside the studio while recording it, and what the Beatles themselves thought about what they had wrought. Remarkably, the Beatles released only ten and a half hours of music in their eight-year studio career. Inside the Beatles archives at Abbey Road Studios in London, however, are more than 400 hours of recordings--the rough drafts of the songs the world knows and loves. Mark Hertsgaard became the first outside journalist to gain access to these archives, enabling him to take readers inside the Beatles'creative process like no author before. Part grand survey, part listeners guide, A Day In The Life is one of the most illuminating and factually reliable accounts yet published of the personal and professional influences that shaped the Beatles music. Combining literary analysis and investigative reporting with we.11-paced storytelling and musical explication A Day In The Life offers a fresh, fascinating account of the central people, events, and artistic achievements in the lives of the greatest musicians of our time, the Beatlcs. The opening chapter of A Day In The Life first appeared in the January 24, 1994, issue of The New Yorker, where author Mark Hertsgaard broke the story that Paul, George, and Ringo had begun working together for the first time since the band's break-up in 1970. The results of this collaboration, a video-format Beatles autobiography, along with one or more CDs of previously unissued recordings, are scheduled for release in spring 1995.

From the Inside Flap:

They are the most popular and accomplished musical artists of this century. But for more than three decades, the secrets behind the Beatles' unparalleled artistic evolution were beyond reach--sealed in a locked room at London's Abbey Road Studios.  In this comprehensive and brilliantly rendered book the only "outsider" to gain access to these invaluable musical archives provides a new, fascinating look at the music and artistry of the Beatles, revealing how four untrained musicians merged their collective genius into a single creative force, how they came together to paint pictures with sound...and how album by album, the Beatles transformed the landscape of popular music forever.

Combining literary analysis and investigative reporting with page-turning storytelling and musical explication, author Mark Hertsgaard has written the first serious biography of the music of the Beatles.  A Day in the Life takes readers inside the Beatles' creative process as never before, from the first tentative run-throughs in the studio of such classics as "Eleanor Rigby" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" to the final master tapes.

Here we learn how George Harrison's stirring composition "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" was completely transformed from an achingly meditative acoustic masterpiece to a hard-rocking hit--in forty-four takes.  We recall how the fantastic final mix of "Strawberry Fields Forever" opens the door to a psychedelic utopia, but discover it is the haunting solo version that takes us down to the core of John Lennon's disillusioned soul.  And only here do we see how the Beatles' audacious ability to reinvent themselves stamped the group's unfolding ingenuity on each album like a fingerprint.

With rare insight, Mark Hertsgaard unlocks the mystery of the century's most dynamic musical collaboration: the competitive and creative partnership of John Lennon and Paul McCartney.  A Day in the Life traces the way Lennon and McCartney worked together and paints an intricate picture of the composers as we have never seen them before: Paul, the optimistic foil who made John's ominous fragments whole...John, the natural poet who injected raw sexuality into "I Saw Her Standing There" by making a simple five word change.

Smart, fresh, compulsively readable, A Day in the Life reveals John, Paul, George, and Ringo not as celebrities or cultural icons but as musicians whose work will be remembered as some of the most important art of the twentieth century.
From the Trade Paperback edition.

About this edition

• Publisher: Delacorte Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0333628241
• ISBN 13: 9780333628249
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1