This book offers a comprehensive assessment of the music of George Harrison, revealing him as one of the most gifted and authentic singer-songwriters of his generation. The Words and Music of George Harrison is an in-depth appreciation of this often underappreciated musician, following Harrison's development as a singer-songwriter from his earliest songs with The Beatles through his final album, Brainwashed, released after his 2001 death from brain cancer. The Words and Music of George Harrison sheds new light on Harrison's 40-year career, examining his music output in the context of the enormous personal and professional changes he underwent, from the early days in Liverpool and the global explosion of Beatlemania through a solo career marked by spiritual concerns, political activism, and high-profile collaborations. As the book shows, at every stage, George Harrison's songs posed questions, provided commentaries, and looked for solutions, with results that add up to a remarkable music legacy.

Listening to popular music and watching television have become the two most common activities for postwar generations in Britain. From the experiences of programmes like Oh Boy! and Juke Box Jury, to the introduction of 24 hour music video channels, the number and variety of television outputs that consistently make use of popular music, and the importance of the small screen as a principal point of contact between audiences and performers are familiar components of contemporary media operation. Yet there have been few attempts to examine the two activities in tandem, to chart their parallel evolution, to explore the associations that unite them, or to consider the increasingly frequent ways in which the production and consumption of TV and music are linked in theory and in practice. This volume provides an invaluable critical analysis of these, and other, topics in newly-written contributions from some of Britain's leading scholars in the disciplines of television and/or popular music studies. Through a concentration on four main areas in which TV organises and presents popular music - history and heritage; performers and performances; comedy and drama; audiences and territories - the book investigates a diverse range of musical genres and styles, factual and fictional programming, historical and geographical demographics, and the constraints of commerce and technology to provide the first systematic account of the place of popular music on British television.

Listening to popular music and watching television have become the two most common activities for postwar generations in Britain. From the experiences of programmes like Oh Boy! and Juke Box Jury, to the introduction of 24 hour music video channels, the number and variety of television outputs that consistently make use of popular music, and the importance of the small screen as a principal point of contact between audiences and performers are familiar components of contemporary media operation. Yet there have been few attempts to examine the two activities in tandem, to chart their parallel evolution, to explore the associations that unite them, or to consider the increasingly frequent ways in which the production and consumption of TV and music are linked in theory and in practice. This volume provides an invaluable critical analysis of these, and other, topics in newly-written contributions from some of Britain's leading scholars in the disciplines of television and/or popular music studies. Through a concentration on four main areas in which TV organises and presents popular music - history and heritage; performers and performances; comedy and drama; audiences and territories - the book investigates a diverse range of musical genres and styles, factual and fictional programming, historical and geographical demographics, and the constraints of commerce and technology to provide the first systematic account of the place of popular music on British television.

Since the emergence of rock'n'roll in the early 1950s, there have been a number of live musical performances that were not only memorable in themselves, but became hugely influential in the way they shaped the subsequent trajectory and development of popular music. Each, in its own way, introduced new styles, confronted existing practices, shifted accepted definitions, and provided templates for others to follow. Performance and Popular Music explores these processes by focusing on some of the specific occasions when such transformations occurred. An international array of scholars reveal that it is through the (often disruptive) dynamics of performance - and the interaction between performer and audience - that patterns of musical change and innovation can best be recognised. Through multi-disciplinary analyses which consider the history, place and time of each event, the performances are located within their social and professional contexts, and their immediate and long-term musical consequences considered. From the Beatles and Bob Dylan to Michael Jackson and Madonna, from Woodstock and Monterey to Altamont and Live Aid, this book provides an indispensable assessment of the importance of live performance in the practice of popular music, and an essential guide to some of the key moments in its history.

Since the emergence of rock'n'roll in the early 1950s, there have been a number of live musical performances that were not only memorable in themselves, but became hugely influential in the way they shaped the subsequent trajectory and development of popular music. Each, in its own way, introduced new styles, confronted existing practices, shifted accepted definitions, and provided templates for others to follow. Performance and Popular Music explores these processes by focusing on some of the specific occasions when such transformations occurred. An international array of scholars reveal that it is through the (often disruptive) dynamics of performance - and the interaction between performer and audience - that patterns of musical change and innovation can best be recognised. Through multi-disciplinary analyses which consider the history, place and time of each event, the performances are located within their social and professional contexts, and their immediate and long-term musical consequences considered. From the Beatles and Bob Dylan to Michael Jackson and Madonna, from Woodstock and Monterey to Altamont and Live Aid, this book provides an indispensable assessment of the importance of live performance in the practice of popular music, and an essential guide to some of the key moments in its history.

Of all pop music's icons, the Beatles have attracted more attention and generated more discussion than any other performers. The group's transformation from a semi-professional skiffle group in Liverpool to one of the twentieth century's key historical and cultural events has been told and re-told in numerous forms - on the cinema screen, in print, on stage, on TV and radio. Details of their personal and private histories are familiar to audiences and fans around the world. Their songs are among the best known and most critically acclaimed of the rock'n'roll era. The ways in which they dismantled many routine assumptions about the role of 'pop stars' in the 1960s helped to substantially re-direct the structures and cultures of the popular music industry in subsequent decades. Sixty years after their formation, interest in the group and its music remains as strong as ever.Because of the unprecedented nature of their success, their perennial associations with the century's most beguiling decade, the range of their extra-musical activity, and the dramatic postscripts to a career that effectively ended in 1970, many accounts of the Beatles have adopted a tone that veers between the sensational and the reverential. In addition, such accounts often overlook the significance of the professional, geographical, historical and technological constraints within which the Beatles worked, and which shaped their live and recorded musical output. In this book, Ian Inglis provides a succinct critical appreciation of the group that is balanced, informative and objective. It concentrates above all on the music of the Beatles, the context in which it was created, performed and recorded, and its rapid and often startling evolution which, powered by the formidable writing talents of John Lennon & Paul McCartney, moved from early cover versions through the conventions of the two- or three-minute love song to the lyrical variety and musical innovations of their post-touring years.His account separates myth from reality, documents the uneasy relationship between creativity and control that acted as a catalyst for their artistic development, and supplies fresh insights into the aspirations and achievements of the world's most celebrated popular musicians.

This book offers a comprehensive assessment of the music of George Harrison, revealing him as one of the most gifted and authentic singer-songwriters of his generation. The Words and Music of George Harrison is an in-depth appreciation of this often underappreciated musician, following Harrison's development as a singer-songwriter from his earliest songs with The Beatles through his final album, Brainwashed, released after his 2001 death from brain cancer. The Words and Music of George Harrison sheds new light on Harrison's 40-year career, examining his music output in the context of the enormous personal and professional changes he underwent, from the early days in Liverpool and the global explosion of Beatlemania through a solo career marked by spiritual concerns, political activism, and high-profile collaborations. As the book shows, at every stage, George Harrison's songs posed questions, provided commentaries, and looked for solutions, with results that add up to a remarkable music legacy.

'The Beatles are coming! The Beatles are coming!' While the chant will be familiar to any Beatles fan, there was a time before the band took the world by storm, when they were little more than an inexperienced, though talented, semi-professional group of musicians in dire need of practice. Their agent Allen Williams first sent them to Germany in August 1960 and through their experiences and difficulties in Hamburg, the Beatles not only became proficient musicians, but more importantly began to build the reputation that would eventually make them the most popular band in the world. The Beatles in Hamburg is the first detailed, objective analysis of the events and personalities that shaped the Beatles as performers, composers and musicians, and the role that Hamburg itself played in their remarkable story. Ian Inglis illuminates this obscure period in Beatles history, providing a revealing view of a crucial, formative period for the group. Written by one of the world's leading scholars of the Beatles and their music, the book will be of immense interest to fans of the group, as well as those interested in the history of popular music and the social history of the 1960s.