Revolution in the Head

The Beatles Records and the Sixties

By: Ian MacDonald

Narrated by: David Morrissey, Robyn Hitchcock, Danny Baker, Peter Curran, Matt Berry, David Hepworth, Geoff Lloyd

Regarded as the greatest and most revealing account of how the Beatles recorded every one of their songs, Revolution in the Head is brimming with details of the personal highs and lows experienced by Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr as they made some of the most enduring popular music ever created.

©1994 The estate of Ian MacDonald (P)2014 Talking Music

just read the book!

Very irritating reader doing impressions which were awful. Just read the story spare me ad-libbing!

Not worth it

The author is a shadow of the artists he's just critiquing.
Reads like a bitter failed artist (who eventually takes his own life in 2003) who can't tell a very good story and so resorts to arbitrarily "breaking down" each song in the beatles discography.
So boring and his "insight" to the beatles personal life is outdated to say the least.

Robyn Hitchcock is fantastic!

Lots of different voices and accents, some reading better than others, all charming... Robyn Hitchcock is best though!

For any Beatles fan or pop-rock music lover

Once I realized most of the book was comprised of chronological synopses of each song, I accepted and enjoyed the content, even while I disagreed with some of the author's more scathing critiques. The variety of readers was necessary and made the listening more enjoyable.

As good as it gets.

Going deep into all the songs, and into the personalities of the musicians and their connection to their times, this is as good as it gets.
Great narration as well.

Brilliant

Loved every minute. Took a long time to get through it because I had to stop as each track was introduced and listen to the song. As such, it creates a cumulative sense of the Beatles’ development as artists. It’s organized by recording session rather than album track number, so if you ARE trying to follow along with the music, you have to hop around a bit.

Fortunately the audiobook omits some of the session and technical details from the book, easy to represent in tabular or list form on the page but very hard to get across effectively in audio. From my standpoint that’s a plus.

Yes, I differ with the author in his take on specific songs, but that would be true no matter who was writing it and how good it was. Like anybody else, the Beatles produced some turkeys; best to be honest about it.

Robyn Hitchcock blows away the other narrators

Still an enjoyable trip through the Beatles catalog. For true fans only. I learned a lot.

Audio is not the best medium for this book

This is a great book. But it's best experienced as an actual book for reference. The audio book just doesn't translate into a satisfying listening experience. The author will keep you guessing as to what he's going to like as he has some strange favourites, and some shocking negative views of amazing songs. The narration runs from brilliant (Matt Berry anyone?) to downright almost unlistenable (the woman who did the White Album time period). So go buy this in a book store and save your credits here on the near perfect "Solid State" if you need a Beatles fix that works in the audio format.

A Strange Listen

I've been on a bit of a Beatles binge recently, and several other authors spoke highly of this book, so I thought I'd give it a try. Strange, but enjoyable. It starts out with an essay that argues that the cultural trends the Beatles helped foster in the 1960s were responsible for everything nasty in Western society by the 1990s -- essentially the rise of Reaganism/Thatcherism and the decline of Western Civilization. After this incredibly pessimistic opening, the book itself is a discography-style covering of every track they recorded -- when and where, how many takes, instrumentation, mixing and so on. Only a few of these essays have anything to do with Macdonald's introductory thesis. His opinions can be contrarian to the point of being infuriating -- one minute trashing Across the Universe, the next claiming that Hey Bulldog was one of Lennon's best songs. He virtually skips over Here Comes the Sun, and goes on forever about Revolution 9. For extra weirdness, the audiobook changes narrators every few chapters -- some are ok, some just drone on in various monotones. There's a ton of great information here and I enjoyed it, but it's definitely one of the more unusual audiobooks you'll ever listen to.

Fantastic Book – Lots of details on their records

I highly recommend this book, “Revolution in the Head: The Beatles Records and the Sixties”

Ian MacDonald wrote a super interesting account of all the Beatles’ music.

I have a lot of the Beatles' music and some of their bootlegs, so I knew most of the songs that Ian MacDonald talked about. He has very good insights.

I read that this was the second-best book on the Beatles. I rank it very high—in the top 5 Beatle books. My favorite is Mark Lewison’s “The Beatles Recording Sessions,” which I loved and was fascinated by. My second favorite is Mark Lewison’s “Tune In.”

Ian MacDonald first talked about when the Beatles’ songs were recorded. Then Ian follows with details, descriptions, and backgrounds—sometimes a lot of them, sometimes he barely mentions anything about the song. He ended with his opinion on the song. Very interesting.

Overall comments?
A fun and interesting book. I think those who enjoy the Beatles will like this book. I don’t think you will need to be a die-hard Beatles fan.

Would you consider the audio edition to be better than the print version?
Yes. The different narrators do a great job.