Please
Please Me: Sixties British Pop, Inside Out |
| Sixties British rock and pop changed music history.
While American popular music dominated the record industry
in the late fifties and early sixties, the Beatles,
the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Who, and numerous
other groups soon invaded the world at large and put
Britain at the center of the modern musical map. Please
Please Me offers an insider's view of the British
pop-music recording industry during the seminal period
of 1956 to 1968, based on personal recollections, contemporary
accounts, and all relevant data that situate this scene
in the economic, political, and social context of postwar
Britain. |
| Author Gordon Thompson weaves issues of class, age,
professional status, gender, and ethnicity into his
narrative, beginning with the rise of British beat groups
and the emergence of teenagers as consumers in postwar
Britain, and moving into the competition between performers
and the recording industry for control over the music.
He interviews session musicians who recorded anonymously
with the Beatles, Herman’s Hermits, and the Kinks,
professional musicians who toured with British bands
promoting records or providing dance music, songwriters,
music directors, and producers and engineers who worked
with the best-known performers of the era. |
| The consequences of World War Two for pop music
in the late fifties and early sixties form the backdrop for discussion
of recording equipment, musical instruments, and new jet-age transportation,
all contributors to the rise of British pop-music alongside the
personalities that more famously made entertainment news.
And these famous personalities traverse the pages of Please Please
Me as well: performing songwriters John Carter and Ken Lewis,
Lennon and McCartney, Jagger and Richards, Ray Davies, and Pete
Townshend took center stage while the production teams and session
musicians created the art of recording behind the doors of London’s
studios. Drawing his interpretation of the processes at work
during this musical revolution into a wider context, Thompson unravels
the musical change and innovation of the time with an eye on understanding
what traces individuals leave in the musical and recording process. |
| Opening up important new historical and musical understandings
in a repertoire that is at the core of rock music's history, Please
Please Me will appeal to all students, scholars, and fans of
popular music. |
| Oxford University Press, Fall 2008 |
| Addenda et Errata |
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| Comments |
Gordon Thompson's Please Please Me is authoritative,
comprehensive, and thoroughly engaging. With lots of information
gathered from interviews with the creators themselves and not
available elsewhere, Thompson contextualizes his topic with just
the right amount of historical and cultural history. Please
Please Me will be valuable for all those interested in twentieth-century
popular music, music technology, and the British Invasion.
—Walter
Everett, University of Michigan |
Where other chroniclers have dug deep into the popular
music world of the 1960s, Gordon Thompson has tunneled his way to
the center of the earth. His observations coupled with his ability
to identify with the artists, musicians, musical directors and producers
of that era make for an enlightening, entertaining and educational
book. Thompson has caught the camaraderie, excitement, stress, along
with the expertise and experimentation that made the '60s a very
special time.
—Vic Flick, Session
Guitarist |
The stories, the personalities, the attitudes, the
secrets, the blunders are all here, exactly as they happened. Not
only has the author elevated the history of '60s British Pop to
an unprecedented level of excellence, but I have been reminded of
just how bloody lucky we were to be part of it.
—Mitch
Murray, Songwriter |
I would describe your book as the antidote to pop-rock
journalism. Journalists go out looking for people to populate the
stories they or their editors have already decided they need. You
went to find the people of the sixties British pop music scene and
discovered their lives in that world.
You
write about the synergy and creative strains between the song writers
and the musicians, the producers and the engineers, getting the
balance right and in my view reminding people how the musicians,
session as well as known names, were the often publicly underestimated
core of the phenomenon. I like the choice of photos.
For
me it is also a great trip down memory lane and things and people
I had long forgotten, like Johnny Worth and a late night session
recording material for his musical that never happened: "Berlin!".
I remember a great song from that: "Ten per cent of my love" was
the title. Could have been a winner.
I
think this is a valuable book for a lot of people, Gordon, as well
as a proper history of the phenomena and the times.
—James
Baring, Regent Sound Studios |
Most comprehensive, Gordon. You really have shed
light on many aspects of the business and the people involved that
are missing from other publications, e.g., revealing peoples' personalities.
When I'm reading the book I'm right back there again, re-living
the joy, the boredom, the rip offs, the nuts, but essentially remembering
the many people I knew so well. We were like a big family actually.
This is my new reading material at
night. Your book will require a number of readings, and that's
a joy, it shows it has depth to it. Nothing trite or flippant.
Again, my sincere congratulations
on a work that reflects your diligence, thoroughness, and which
illustrates beautifully how you managed to get "below the surface"
of the info which you had available to you.
—Joe Moretti, Session
Guitarist ("Shakin' All Over") |
Just finished your book. The accuracy was spot on
and I was transported back to the sixties. The memories were as
if it was yesterday.
—Margo Quantrell (The
Breakaways) |
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| Reviews |
ExpressMilwaukee. "...Please Please Me defines British pop in ways sparklingly accurate and brilliantly insightful. The author gets it all in order with quality writing and an endless quantity of resource material. Thompson does more for this music than anyone has yet to achieve. His study is the best of history and theory combined. In fact, no other book on this subject comes close."
— Martin Jack Rosenblum |
PopMatters. "...Thompson’s exhaustive research and expertise make Please Please Me one of the most thorough, as well as one of the most entertaining and engaging, treatises on the topic yet written."
— Christel Loar |
Blogcritics Magazine. "...a rich and surprisingly nuanced portrait, a vivid fly-on-the-wall view of how those iconic records of the 1960s got made.... [Thompson] gets to the heart of pop music’s collaborative nature, something that’s just as true today as it was during the British beat revolution. For all of us boomers who still harbor dreams of becoming rock stars ('fess up, now), Please Please Me is just the ticket.
— Holly Hughes |
Shindig!"...wildly enjoyable."
— Brian Greene |
Goldmine. "Sneak an insider's peak at the British pop music recording industry from 1956-1968 with author Gordon Thompson who provides personal recollections, contemporary accounts and information about the economic, political, and social contexts of postwar Britain."
— Susan Sliwicki (24 April 2009) |
Journal of Popular Music Studies. "Please Please Me is a well-informed, thoughtful commentary on the cultural factors and human relationships responsible for the worldwide prominence of British rock; I would recommend it to all scholars and students of the repertoire."
— Christopher Doll, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey |
Harvard Business History Review (Winter 2009, Issue 4). "His carefully crafted study, grounded in a wide range of interviews..., provides a marvelously elegant construction of the process by which music was made, packaged, and sold."
— Richard Coopey, Aberystwyth University and London School of Economics, UK |
Journal of Contemporary British History (Volume 23, Issue 3, 2009). "...a genuine and important contribution to the cannon of 1960s musical literature..., the book offers a highly readable and clearly conveyed account of how the pop industry worked in its most fertile and experimental decade."
— Paul Martin, Ruskin College, UK |
The Beat magazine. "...this meaty paperback is an academic, but thoroughly engrossing study of the UK recording industry in the 60s... His text blends facts, personal recollections, and period flavour, with enlightening first-hand quotes woven throughout its pages helping to capture the special atmosphere."
— Russell Newmark |
Popular Music History. "Key shifts in music history are less often examined through changes in fundamental material practices such as those that occur in recording studios. This
is what Gordon Thompson has done for the rise of the new British pop of the
early 1960s..., [providing] a fascinating account of what
happened when self-sufficient groups replaced solo singers plus orchestras as the
primary source of hit records.... [T]his
work is highly original and adds significantly to our knowledge of the 1960s.
—David Laing, University of Liverpool |
| Howard Massey (The Great British Recording Studios, 2015). "Authoritative." |
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| Academic
Detritus | Return
to Thompson Homepage |
31 May, 2018
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