The Beatles and McLuhan

In the 1960s, The Beatles would address like no other musical act a radical shift in the cultural mindset of the late twentieth century. Through tools of "electric technology," this shift encompassed the decline of visual modes of perception and the emergence of a "way-of-knowing" based increasingly on sound. In this respect, the musical works of The Beatles would come to resonate with and ultimately reflect Marshall McLuhan's ideas on the transition into a culture of "all-at-once-ness": a simultaneous world in which immersion in vibrant global community increasingly trumps the fixed viewpoint of the individual.
By engaging with recording technologies in a way that no popular act had before, The Beatles opened up for exploration the acoustical space precipitated by this shift. In The Beatles and McLuhan: Understanding the Electric Age, scholar and musician Thomas MacFarlane examines how the incorporation of electric technology in The Beatles' art would enhance their musical impact. MacFarlane surveys the relationship between McLuhan's ideas on the nature and effects of electric technology and The Beatles own engagement of that technology; offers analyses of key works from The Beatles' studio years, with particular attention paid to the presence of cultural metaphors embedded in the medium of multi-track recording; and collates these data to offer stunning conclusions about The Beatles' creative process in the recording studio and its cultural implications. This work also features the first published transcriptions ever of the complete filmed conversation between John Lennon and Marshall McLuhan on their respective ideas, as well as an interview between MacFarlane and McLuhan's son and executor, Michael McLuhan, on his father's and the Beatles' legacy.
The Beatles and McLuhan will interest scholars and students of music and music history, recording technology, media studies, communications, and popular culture.

Thom MacFarlane is an independent author and composer based in New Jeresy, USA. His research has focused on the relationship between music, sound recording, and human culture. His doctoral dissertation on the Beatles' Abbey Road Medley was adapted into a book in 2007. In 2012, he completed The Beatles and McLuhan: Understanding the Electric Age, in which the ideas of Marshall McLuhan were employed to explore the aesthetic qualities of multi-track recording. That book also featured the first complete published transcription of a conversation between John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and Marshall McLuhan on their respective ideas. In 2016, he created a listener's companion on the works of singer-songwriter Billy Joel, and in 2019, a study on the music of George Harrison. His latest book, Lennon and McCartney: Painting with Sound, explores connections between music, sound recording, and the visual arts.