I’m reading around in Ian MacDonald’s Revolution in the Head: The Eeatles’ Records and the Sixties, and it’s just as good as they say. I’d picked it up in a bookstore several years and landed on a song where MacDonald’s analysis completely rubbed me up wrong, so I put it back on the shelf. Yet ever after I keep reading how wonderful it is, and I realize I haven’t really given it a chance. This time, having just read Jonathan Gould’s great analysis/evocation/celebration/enactment of “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane” in Can’t Buy Me Love, I went straight to those songs (the greatest 45 r.p.m. release of all time, hands down) in the MacDonald book to see how Ian would measure up. His work on these masterpieces was every bit as good as Gould’s. And both of them understand the greatness of “Penny Lane,” which is a harder greatness to assess than the more obvious genius of “Strawberry Fields Forever.” That understanding means a lot to me, because I think “Penny Lane” is every bit the equal of “Strawberry Fields Forever,” with just as much depth and personal resonance and poetry and musical interest–and mind-expansion.

So I bought Revolution in the Head and brought it home. I’ve got Beatles Gear going too, and that’s a truly astonishing book in its own right–but that’s for another blog.

Tonight, I’m struck by Ian MacDonald’s description of Art School in the UK during the years preceding the 1960’s. And I’m thinking I need to find a book on the educational thought that produced these schools. If anyone knows of such a book–really, a survey of the Art School / Art College movement in the UK would be fine–please let me know. Anything that could nourish and help shape Lennon, McCartney (by association), and Townshend has my vote as a successful educational experiment. Listen to this:

The key to the English art shcool experience is that it was founded on talent rather than on official qualifications. In such an environment, one might interact wiht a wide spectrum of people, regardless of class or education, and draw from a multitude of activities often taking place in the same hall, separated only by screens. In addition to this, the quarterly dances–supplemented by more frequent one-nighters as the art schools became incorporated into the UK gig-circuit during the Sixties–provided opportunities for students to hear the top British R&B and jazz-blues groups, as well as visiting bluesmen from America. Already a crucible for creative fusion, art school as a result became the secret ingredient in the most imaginative English pop/rock.

Where do I sign?

The footnote tells a sad, familiar tale of how high-investment, high-yield education inevitable gives way to more regular, cost-effective mediocrity. To our shame, the mediocrity bears the name of the continent I live on:

After the affluent Sixties, English art schools began to follow other parts of the educational establishment by tightening supervision and examination and moving towards the North American model…. Many involved in the Punk/New Wave and early Eighties pop scene began as art students, but the number of art school ‘crossovers’ has declined markedly since then.

Let’s recap then: crucible for creative fusion and secret ingredient in the most imaginative English pop/rock vs. tightened supervision and examination, and tightened supervision and examination–the “North American model”–wins.

I guess no one guaranteed that all academic transformations would be for the better. Thank goodness the Beatles came along when we could afford John’s education. Sigh.