Long and Winding Roads, Revised Edition: The Evolving Artistry of the Beatles

by Kenneth Womack

Overview

In Long and Winding Roads: The Evolving Artistry of the Beatles, Revised Edition, Kenneth Womack brings the band's story vividly to life-from their salad days as a Liverpool Skiffle group and their apprenticeship in the nightclubs and mean streets of Hamburg through their early triumphs at the legendary Cavern Club and the massive onslaught of Beatlemania itself. By mapping the group's development as an artistic fusion, Womack traces the Beatles' creative arc from their first, primitive recordings through Abbey Road and the twilight of their career.

In this revised edition, Womack addresses new insights in Beatles-related scholarship since the original publication of Long and Winding Roads, along with hundreds of the group's outtakes released in the intervening years. The updated edition also affords attention to the Beatles' musical debt to Rhythm and Blues, as well as to key recent discoveries that vastly shift our understanding of formative events in the band's timeless story.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501387050
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	01/12/2023
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	913,583
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.85(d)

About the Author

Kenneth Womack is one of the world's foremost writers and thinkers about the Beatles. He is Professor of English and Popular Music at Monmouth University, USA. He also serves as the Music Culture critic for Salon, as well as a contributor to a host of print and web outlets, including Slate, Billboard, Time, Variety, USA Today, The Guardian, Smithsonian Magazine, The Independent, NBC News, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. He is the author of The Beatles Encyclopedia (2014), Maximum Volume (2017), Sound Pictures (2018), Solid State (2019), and John Lennon 1980 (2020). In October 2020, Rolling Stone magazine published a feature story outlining Womack's groundbreaking research associated with Lennon's life and work.

Table of Contents

Prologue: The End
1. The Beginning
2. A Cellarful of Noise
3. And the Band Begins to Play
4. Rock and Roll Music
5. The Biggest Showbiz Town Ever
6. War-Weary
7. Yesterday and Today
8. Plastic Soul
9. The End of the Road
10. The Act You've Known for All These Years
11. Roll Up for the Mystery Tour
12. Whiter Shades of Pale
13. Getting Back
14. The Dream Is Over
Epilogue: Long Live the Dream
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

Combining masterful storytelling and intellectual rigor, Kenneth Womack takes readers on a spellbinding tour of Beatles history. Jourbaneying through the band's music-making album by album, this revised edition of Long and Winding Roads: The Evolving Artistry of the Beatles captures all the dynamism, poignancy, and magic behind the now-iconic discography. An engaging and invaluable text, Womack demonstrates once more why he is a leading voice in Beatles scholarship.” —Christine Feldman-Barrett, author of A Women's History of the Beatles (Bloomsbury, 2021)

“Follow the Beatles down their Long and Winding Roads with Kenneth Womack as guide. This is the Goldilocks choice of Beatles books: meticulous sourcing and highly readable prose strike a just-right balance. Incorporating the latest research in an ever-growing field, the revised edition continues to be the choice for scholars and students of the band. Offering an authoritative reference and a book to tuck into, Womack will have you turbaning the pages of a story you only thought you knew.” —Katie Kapurch, co-editor of New Critical Perspectives on the Beatles (2016)

From the Publisher