Lennon and McCartney

Rezensionen / Stimmen

'Every page is teeming with info carefully woven into an enjoyable narrative. After reading this I feel I have lived through every song with them - I was a "fly on the wall" of the Beatles' studio-as-workshop gallery from 1963 to today. Painting With Sound is an enjoyable mix of fact and the creative impulse. Looking at the intricate balances of songwriting techniques (tension, release, contrast, transition, atypical melodic/chordal choices) chosen to serve naked emotion and aligned with a germinating idea in the Beatles' music, we begin to see what makes our typically casual listening experience special.

If the Beatles helped change the way we think about music, Painting With Sound helps us change the way we think about the creative process in general. The many influences that shaped the Lennon-McCartney aesthetic so thoughtfully described herein (visual, cinematic, poetic, literary) widen our appreciation of every artist and the influences they each undoubtedly encounter.'

Sonny Kompanek, Brooklyn College, City University of New York

'This book revisits the connections between art schools and 1960s British pop music from a too often neglected perspective in popular music studies-namely music analysis. Building on "the notion that a music recording is essentially a hybrid art form comprising traditional musical elements and spatial effects generated by electronic means," MacFarlane uses what he calls songscape analysis to shed new light on Lennon and McCartney's creative process. By the same token, he shows how the latter process was shaped by their interest in art from the Beatles through their solo careers, offering an innovative and refreshing approach to the work of two songwriters whose output has been covered in so many books and essays over the past 60 years.'

Olivier Julien, Sorbonne Universite