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Magic Circles: The Beatles in Dream and History
No one expressed the heart and soul of the Sixties as powerfully as the Beatles did through the words, images, and rhythms of their music. In Magic Circles Devin McKinney uncovers the secret history of a generation and a pivotal moment in twentieth-century culture. He reveals how the Beatles enacted the dream life of their time and shows how they embodied a kaleidoscope of desire and anguish for all who listened--hippies or reactionaries, teenage fans or harried parents, Bob Dylan or Charles Manson. The reader who dares to re-enter the vortex that was the Sixties will appreciate, perhaps for the first time, much of what lay beneath the social trauma of the day.
Delving into concerts and interviews, films and music, outtakes and bootlegs, Devin McKinney brings to bear the insights of history, aesthetics, sociology, psychology, and mythology to account for the depth and resonance of the Beatles' impact. His book is also a uniquely multifaceted appreciation of the group's artistic achievement, exploring their music as both timeless expression and visceral response to their historical moment. Starting in the cellars of Liverpool and Hamburg, and continuing through the triumph of Beatlemania, the groundbreaking studio albums, and the last brutal, sorrowful thrust of the White Album, Magic Circles captures both the dream and the reality of four extraordinary musicians and their substance as artists. At once an entrancing narrative and an analytical montage, the book follows the drama, comedy, mystery, irony, and curious off-ramps of investigation and inquiry that contributed to one of the most amazing odysseys in pop culture.
Delving into concerts and interviews, films and music, outtakes and bootlegs, Devin McKinney brings to bear the insights of history, aesthetics, sociology, psychology, and mythology to account for the depth and resonance of the Beatles' impact. His book is also a uniquely multifaceted appreciation of the group's artistic achievement, exploring their music as both timeless expression and visceral response to their historical moment. Starting in the cellars of Liverpool and Hamburg, and continuing through the triumph of Beatlemania, the groundbreaking studio albums, and the last brutal, sorrowful thrust of the White Album, Magic Circles captures both the dream and the reality of four extraordinary musicians and their substance as artists. At once an entrancing narrative and an analytical montage, the book follows the drama, comedy, mystery, irony, and curious off-ramps of investigation and inquiry that contributed to one of the most amazing odysseys in pop culture.
- GenresMusicNonfiction
432 pages, Paperback
First published September 15, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 12, 2019
If you’re going to make the case that the Beatles were the greatest artists of the rock era, you cannot just make a musical argument; that’s too subjective. Compare their work to too many other, worthy songs out there, and subject it to too many conflicting tastes—an exercise no artist could survive—and you might conclude the Beatles were “just a band that made it very, very big, that’s all,” as John Lennon, in an iconoclastic mood, once put it. (Although every act in his life refuted this opinion—was there ever anyone who believed in the Beatles myth more than John Lennon?) Some critics, usually with a classical background, do haul out the musical notation and try to demonstrate how the Beatles’ music is more sophisticated than typical pop music; go down that path, though, and you’re going to end up elevating the Carpenters over the Clash. We all know that great rock’n’roll is too instinctive and mysterious to be explained by such criteria and we rightfully tune such critics out. You have to look, instead, towards the band’s incomparable position in the culture: the Beatles were not just better, or the first, they were something other. They went farther than anyone else and, from that unique place, made art that no one else was even in the position to make. The Beatles’ work grappled with, and answered, questions not even put to other artists. This was not thrust on them; they made it happen. Had they never come along, no one else would have played that role; it simply wouldn’t have existed. You can agree or disagree, but these are fundamentals of Beatles exceptionalism.
[Brief interlude on other examples of exceptionalism: American exceptionalism, Shakespearean exceptionalism (also known as Bardolatry), human exceptionalism, Roman exceptionalism, African-American exceptionalism, all religions. On a personal note, consider me a Michael Jordan exceptionalist, which means I find the Jordan vs. Lebron debate as ludicrous as Beatles vs. Stones.]
Darren McKinney, a Beatles exceptionalist if there ever was one, goes all in on the chosen-ones perspective. Neither strict music analysis nor biography, although adept in both, his book explores the Beatles’ necessarily brief story as popular culture’s greatest and richest myth. An intensely metaphorical writer, McKinney relays this myth through a series of symbolic connections and carefully cultivated, recurring images. The squalid early years inspire an extended toilet metaphor (read: gutter) that not only obliterates the band’s clean-cut image but underlines the underground aspect that would be indispensable to their greatness. This is more than paying your dues; this is the wilderness. The infamous, rejected “butcher cover,” with its sides of beef and broken dolls, is the basis for a meat metaphor that runs all through the chapter on that pivotal year 1966, with meat simultaneously representing both substance (e.g., challenging, conflicted music) and the Beatles as grotesque objects of public hunger. Everyone wanted a piece of the Beatles, from the fans who camped outside their hotels to the Bible Belters who burned their records. The book’s central metaphor of circles has various meanings—from an artist’s being in the zone to the danger of closed systems—but finds its fullest expression in the way the Beatles formed a community among themselves and then, rather than floating off into the aether, invited the world in—their “social greatness,” according to McKinney.
If it sounds like this is edging into religion, that’s because it is. The book is, in part, the anatomy of a social phenomenon, and one symptom of this is the cults and counter-myths breaking off on their own like gospels, from the Paul-is-dead urban legend to the twisted White Album rationale for the Manson Family murders, wherein magic circles become holes. But it’s also a love story: when McKinney notes the crossroads the Beatles encountered in the mid-60s, for example—that they would have to either “docilely serve the audience or draw it into a deeper engagement”—you can’t help noticing it sounds like a romantic infatuation shifting, against all odds, to something even heavier. Above all, it is a shared dream, at turns as magical and as grotesque as real dreams. All dreams have to end; the Beatles—unlike, say, the Stones, who inhabited no such dream—could not survive the ‘60s. “Only history could kill the Beatles,”McKinney writes, and it certainly did in the end.
The last chapter, which takes an autobiographical turn and centers on the author’s discovery of the Beatles and a yearning for the ‘60s he was born too late to experience, I can’t comment on. I am the same exact age as McKinney, and the uncanny parallels between his life and mine—from the precocious and obsessive reading of Beatles texts to the adolescence made melancholy by divorcing parents (talk about a dream ending)—was too painful for me to read.
[Brief interlude on other examples of exceptionalism: American exceptionalism, Shakespearean exceptionalism (also known as Bardolatry), human exceptionalism, Roman exceptionalism, African-American exceptionalism, all religions. On a personal note, consider me a Michael Jordan exceptionalist, which means I find the Jordan vs. Lebron debate as ludicrous as Beatles vs. Stones.]
Darren McKinney, a Beatles exceptionalist if there ever was one, goes all in on the chosen-ones perspective. Neither strict music analysis nor biography, although adept in both, his book explores the Beatles’ necessarily brief story as popular culture’s greatest and richest myth. An intensely metaphorical writer, McKinney relays this myth through a series of symbolic connections and carefully cultivated, recurring images. The squalid early years inspire an extended toilet metaphor (read: gutter) that not only obliterates the band’s clean-cut image but underlines the underground aspect that would be indispensable to their greatness. This is more than paying your dues; this is the wilderness. The infamous, rejected “butcher cover,” with its sides of beef and broken dolls, is the basis for a meat metaphor that runs all through the chapter on that pivotal year 1966, with meat simultaneously representing both substance (e.g., challenging, conflicted music) and the Beatles as grotesque objects of public hunger. Everyone wanted a piece of the Beatles, from the fans who camped outside their hotels to the Bible Belters who burned their records. The book’s central metaphor of circles has various meanings—from an artist’s being in the zone to the danger of closed systems—but finds its fullest expression in the way the Beatles formed a community among themselves and then, rather than floating off into the aether, invited the world in—their “social greatness,” according to McKinney.
If it sounds like this is edging into religion, that’s because it is. The book is, in part, the anatomy of a social phenomenon, and one symptom of this is the cults and counter-myths breaking off on their own like gospels, from the Paul-is-dead urban legend to the twisted White Album rationale for the Manson Family murders, wherein magic circles become holes. But it’s also a love story: when McKinney notes the crossroads the Beatles encountered in the mid-60s, for example—that they would have to either “docilely serve the audience or draw it into a deeper engagement”—you can’t help noticing it sounds like a romantic infatuation shifting, against all odds, to something even heavier. Above all, it is a shared dream, at turns as magical and as grotesque as real dreams. All dreams have to end; the Beatles—unlike, say, the Stones, who inhabited no such dream—could not survive the ‘60s. “Only history could kill the Beatles,”McKinney writes, and it certainly did in the end.
The last chapter, which takes an autobiographical turn and centers on the author’s discovery of the Beatles and a yearning for the ‘60s he was born too late to experience, I can’t comment on. I am the same exact age as McKinney, and the uncanny parallels between his life and mine—from the precocious and obsessive reading of Beatles texts to the adolescence made melancholy by divorcing parents (talk about a dream ending)—was too painful for me to read.
August 1, 2023
I read this for school about eight years ago and, even as a lifelong Beatles fan, found myself continually surprised by McKinney's theses, observations, and interpretations. It was his long discussion of the White Album that finally helped me appreciate that monster, and it was this bold claim that made me sit up and pay attention: "The Beatles is their most fractured album, and their ugliest; their most unsettling and their most moving. It's their best album, and nothing else in rock and roll has ever come close to it." Okay then!
What I most enjoyed about my second reading -- other than the opportunity to appreciate all the White Album stuff again, this time having listened to the album much more -- was the last section, "Fantasy into Flesh," which is much more personal and touches on themes that interest me a great deal, such as the nature of listening to music made before your own time, appreciating and longing for an era into which you weren't born, etc. I was also struck by the similarity of McKinney's approach, in some ways, to Greil Marcus's in Mystery Train. The writing is just as dense and mysterious, and just as concerned with mythology. The "dream and history" part of the subtitle is very accurate.
For the record, I think there are four essential Beatles books: Revolution in the Head, Paperback Writer, Lewisohn's book about the recording sessions, and this one.
What I most enjoyed about my second reading -- other than the opportunity to appreciate all the White Album stuff again, this time having listened to the album much more -- was the last section, "Fantasy into Flesh," which is much more personal and touches on themes that interest me a great deal, such as the nature of listening to music made before your own time, appreciating and longing for an era into which you weren't born, etc. I was also struck by the similarity of McKinney's approach, in some ways, to Greil Marcus's in Mystery Train. The writing is just as dense and mysterious, and just as concerned with mythology. The "dream and history" part of the subtitle is very accurate.
For the record, I think there are four essential Beatles books: Revolution in the Head, Paperback Writer, Lewisohn's book about the recording sessions, and this one.
August 18, 2015
As someone who has read at least a couple of dozen Beatles-related books, I had to delve into this one. This book deals with the cultural effects the group had on their times, and vice-versa. There are some thought-provoking observations (i.e. the sudden increase in dissonant notes and distorted sounds in their music on Rubber Soul), but my interest waned about halfway through. I got tired of the material about the "Paul is dead" hoax and Manson murders, and I didn't really care about the author's personal experiences.
January 19, 2021
What a joy this book is. You tell me you’ve heard every sound there is (at least when it comes to Beatles criticism), but then there’s this. On every page, I found myself initially shaking my head in disbelief (“Fixing a Hole” as the key to “Pepper “?) but then nodding in agreement. If you liked “Dreaming the Beatles,” but wanted something meatier (on a whole lot of levels), this is it.
May 22, 2017
well - weird, nuts, exciting, learned and stupid. Deeply researched, deeply personal, deeply daft. More later...
November 24, 2007
The first half of this book digs deep into the mythology of the Beatles, and how they influenced the 1960's. The style is rich and grandiose, and very little of life during that period of history is not somehow woven back inward on the Beatles and their music.... for a fan, this highly dramatic and exciting, for others it might just be overblown and ridiculous. The second half of the book, which dovetails the Manson Family Murders, the Paul-Is-Dead hoax, and the author's own personal relationship to the Beatles myth, is even more tenuous but still holds up as insightful and critical reading of the effect that the Beatles have had on a more intimate level in people's lives.
September 20, 2023
When I saw that Greil Marcus had described this as "the best book on the Beatles", that was all I needed to hear -- and this to me is like the book he'd write about the Beatles. Meaning it's over the top, wild, crazy, and superbly written, extremely effective, and hard to put down.
I think McKinney misses on "Sgt. Pepper" (Gould's "Can't Buy Me Love" is the best rebuttal), but before and after that, it all seems pretty profound. You haven't "read them all" without experiencing this one.
I think McKinney misses on "Sgt. Pepper" (Gould's "Can't Buy Me Love" is the best rebuttal), but before and after that, it all seems pretty profound. You haven't "read them all" without experiencing this one.
April 15, 2015
It's a book about The Beatles what do you expect?
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews