How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music

How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music

Rating

9.0

The Pequod Review:

Don’t be turned off by the deliberately provocative title; How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll is an intelligent and detailed history of American popular music from the 1910s to the 1970s, one of the best books of its kind. There is so much of interest here — the importance and originality of 1940s and 1950s music (which is widely unappreciated today); the influence of Paul Whiteman (“Rhapsody in Blue”) and Perry Como on early rock musicians; the impact of Prohibition on big band music; and how the Beatles’ later work led rock music away from its diverse roots and in a more predictably experimental direction. I also liked Elijah Wald's line that “there are no definitive histories because the past keeps looking different as the present changes.”