Ian Inglis

Nothing You Can See That Isnt Shown : the album covers of the
Beatles
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Since the 1960s the Beatles LPs have dominated many most popular
album lists from both audiences and critics. This both maintained and
enhanced their popularity.
The album covers were ground-breaking in their visual and aesthetic
properties.
Innovative and imaginative designs.early impetus for the expansion of
graphic design industry into the imagery of popular music
Strengthened the connections between pop and art.
The introduction of the CD contributed to the decline of album art. (83)
The album covers main function is to protect the LP but they were also a
way of advertising to entice the listener. They are also an accompaniment
to the music, whether it be a photo of the performer, or a lyric sheet so an
integral component of the listening which assists and expands the
musical experience. It can also be seen as a commodity in its own right, a
type if art. (84)
As the Beatles grew ever more popular worldwide, the titles, contents and
packaging of their album releases were adapted for the variety of
markets.perhaps thousands of covers.
the sleeve as the semblance of sound.playful image maintained with
the covers of With The Beatles, A Hard Days Night (which reflected EMI
and Epsteins trajectory from trad pop records to movies) Beatles for Sale
and Help! (2nd movie)
They maintained their very British identity upon their American Invasion
commodity.
Rubber Soul was the first disruption to the effervescence of the Fab Four,
which suggested the group was prepared to explore alternatives the Top
Ten and 3 min pop song conventions..the first cover where the groups
name isnt included. Only Lennon engages with the audience through the
camera lens, the rest of the group have their gazes elsewhere asserting
their new direction and independence. Also their faces are slightly
distorted (reference to rubber soul) Evans however linked it to the groups
growing drug usage. (86)
The photographer. The distorted effect in the photo was a reflection of
the changing shape of their lives. They had begun their careers as
musicians, but the wide range of people and ideas that they had
encountered, their financial success, and the new privacy of their homes
encouraged them to take up more varied and personal interests. As a
group they were still the Beatles, but as individuals they were
experiencing a subtle chemistry of change. The direction in which they
were moving was inwards. (Freeman 1996, p. 15)
Rubber Soul was a result of the groups professional autonomy due to their
unmatched commercial success.
The stopped touring in 1966 to focus on studio work.signalled their
abrupt departure from pop to explore new directions. (86)
Huge shift from focus on Love Songs from 1963-65 (Please Please Me to
Rubber Soul) 91% to 15% of songs 1966-70 (Revolver to Let It Be).

The group's shift from the traditional and predictable theme of popular
music to the construction and performance of songs whose lyrics consider
such topics as the payment of taxes and life in a submarine, has led
several critics to comment on the significant distance of Revolver from '. . .
the conventions of commercialised pop music. Halfway between ritual and
art, it's both verbally and musically an extraordinary breakthrough (87)
The album didnt have a personality cover but instead a montage
designed by Klaus Voorman.
'songs on Revolver were performed in ways that had never before been
realised in pop music . . . the lyrical sophistication of their songs also
reached new heights' (Hertsgaard 1995, p. 176) and Evans' assertion that
its cover 'was far removed from anything the Beatles - or any other
recording artists -had attempted before' (Evans 1984~p, . 28) does
support the view that with this, their seventh album, the Beatles had
achieved a remarkable visual-musical correspondence. The discongruities
and idiosyncrasies of the cover in which the (unnamed) Beatles reject any
notions of uniformity (of location, pose or activity) were a preparation for
the varieties and innovations of the music inside it. (87)
Please Please Me was recorded in one day for 400 (Twist and Shout only
recorded once) yet Sgt Pepper took 700 hours and 25,000 with the cover
costing 1500.

REVOLVER
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It was the first record not to be banded into individual tracks. It was the
first album whose inner sleeve was not just a white paper envelope but
part of the overall package design. It was the first record to have the song
lyrics printed in full on the rear of the album cover. It was the first album
to contain an additional cardboard sheet of cut-out memorabilia. It also,
incidentally, contained the first Beatles song to be banned by the BBC - 'A
Day In The Life'. (87)
Reactions to its release showed that the Beatles had promoted the cultural
significance of popular music to a level unimaginable at the start of the
decade. Kenneth Tynan claimed that the record represented 'a decisive
moment in the history of Western civilisation' (Dowlding 1989, p. 161).
Timothy Leary believed that it compressed 'the evolutionary development
of musicology and much of the history of Eastern and Western sound in a
new tympanic complexity' (Dowlding 1989, p. 162). Mellers has judged
that it marked 'the climacteric point in the Beatles' career, their definite
break with the pop music industry . . . henceforth the world they've
created is sui generis, bringing in its own criteria' (Mellers 1973, p. 101).
And MacDonald has suggested that 'the psychic shiver which Sgt Pepper
sent through the world was nothing less than a cinematic dissolve from
one Zeitgeist to another' (MacDonald 1995, p. 198). (87)

Painting Their Room in a Colourful Way: The Beatles exploration of

timbre
Walter Everett

A working-class hero is something to be: the American Musicians

Unions attempt to ban the Beatles, 1964
Michael Roberts
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July 27th 1976- Lennon got his Green Card. He thanked his fans for helping
him win his legal battle. This was the second time his loyal fans were
instrumental in him winning a legal dispute with the US government.
Documentary, The US vs John Lennon, shows how the government along
with the AFM tried to ban the band returning to the US after their first tour
in 1964.
The article discusses cultural issues that emerged in the pop music
industry and how this created conflict between the AFM and
Beatlemaniacs. This characterised the conflict between two generations
the rise of teen rebellion. Cultural difficulties between the New Left and
the American labour movement. (3)This seems odd as RocknRoll was
born in the American working class.
Lennon considered himself a working class hero. (Plastic Ono Band, 1970)
being born working class it is natural to fear the establishment and to
fight it.
March 1964, the AFM and the BMU had an arrangement to regulate the
movement of cultural musicians between the two countries.in their
eyes rock and roll was no longer innovative and so not cultural.

Rorem

Inglis

Johnson

Sullivan

Covach

Wagner

Rifkin

Gloag

Brocken