Gary James' Interview With The Author Of
How The Beatles Destroyed Rock And Roll:
An Alternative History Of American Popular Music
Elijah Wald



Elijah Wald has written a book that is sure to catch the attention of Rock 'n' Roll fans. It's titled How The Beatles Destroyed Rock And Roll: An Alternative History Of American Popular Music. The Beatles destroyed Rock 'n' Roll? What is he talking about? What follows is a lively conversation with author Elijah Wald.

Q - Elijah, I'm guessing it would have been a publisher who titled your book How The Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll. Correct?

A - Nope. Not at all. That was my title when I started writing it.

Q - Maybe I would have titled the book, How The Beatles Changed Rock 'n' Roll.

A - My usual answer to that is: Somewhere in your circle of friends or relatives you probably know somebody who was playing in a Rock 'n' Roll band around 1960. And if you ask them what the title means they'll explain it to you because it was the end of that world. When The Beatles stopped playing dance music and stopped performing 'live', the world went within a very few years to a world where if you were simply a Rock 'n' Roll band you weren't working anymore.

Q - Even the bands who weren't as successful as The Beatles, maybe they just had one hit, were still working.

A - That's the point. I'm not talking about having a hit record on the charts. I'm talking about your, just a regular band that's working five nights a week, playing dances, and that disappeared. As somebody put it when I was doing interviews on radio, a call-in show, after the book came out, this woman called in and said, "You know, I remember that period perfectly, right around 1965, 1966. Definitely all the girls were in one room dancing to Motown, and all the boys were in another room getting stoned and listening to "Sgt. Pepper".

Q - "Sgt Pepper" came out in 1967.

A - '66, '67. It doesn't matter. The point is the girls were in one room dancing to Motown. And Rock 'n' Roll - not overnight, it took two or three years - for Rock 'n' Roll to cease to be dance music and become all White. But, it becomes pretty quickly. The dance music is Motown and Soul, and Rock music is White, and those are just different worlds. And understand, Paul McCartney, if you showed him my titled, would know exactly what what I meant because Paul McCartney grew up in the world of Rock 'n' Roll. By '67 it was gone. When Paul McCartney does a Rock 'n' Roll album, it's like when John Lennon did a Rock 'n' Roll album, they immediately go back to covering all the songs they played when they were a Rock 'n' Roll band.

Q - Especially John Lennon.

A - Paul McCartney just as much. Do you not know Paul McCartney's Russian album? If you don't, check it out. It's an interesting album, covering Eddie Cochran, Little Richard. The stuff that he loved.

Q - What was the title of that album?

A - The title was in Russian ("CHOBA B CCCP") It was just called "Paul McCartney". It only came out in Russia. But you can find it online. It's very much around in my world because I was playing around in Europe and back in those days if you were going to Russia you brought blue jeans because that is what Russian kids wanted to buy. And if you were a Russian coming to the West you brought Paul McCartney's Russian album. But, we all had copies of that. It's up on YouTube now. Let me say one more thing. It's not a value judgment, it's a description. Most people would say, and I'm not going to disagree with them, that when The Beatles destroyed the sound that came before them, that world ended with The Beatles, and the new world was better music than what it was in the old world. And that's a perfectly valid position. Basically my point is, anybody who completely changes the world is destroying what came before as well as building what comes next. That's just the nature of massive changes.

Q - I recall asking Connie Francis how The Beatles impacted her career, and she said it didn't. She kept right on working.

A - See, a lot of history gets written in terms of records and particularly hit records. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the world of just plain working Rock 'n' Roll bands, which is the world people forget about. I mean, most Rock 'n' Roll bands never made a record.

Q - A lot of Rock 'n' Roll bands were playing Beatles songs when The Beatles hit America in 1964.

A - When The Beatles came out, yes. I'm not saying "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" destroyed Rock 'n' Roll. "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" was an absolute masterpiece for the sound of that moment. But, within two years they weren't playing "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" anymore.

Q - When The Beatles came along they set the bar so high that few bands could compete with them. They were a hard act to follow. They really did have everything going for them.

A - If you actually look at what's happened to music since 1980, I would say that "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag" was a more influential and revolutionary record than "Sgt. Pepper". That's who no one compares them to. That's the fascinating thing to me. People talk, "Was Elvis the king of Rock 'n' Roll?" All sorts of people go, "No. It was Chuck Berry. It was Little Richard." And one can have that argument. It's a perfectly relevant argument. When you say The Beatles created the modern sound in the mid-'60s, no one says, "What are you talking about? What about James Brown?" They simply weren't judged by that standard. And if they had been judged by that standard, the Beatles couldn't play James Brown any more than James Brown could play The Beatles.

Q - The Beatles certainly adopted different styles into their music and they admitted that.

A - They adopted different styles into their music, but they could not keep up with what was happening in Black music. They simply didn't have the chops. The Rolling Stones didn't have the chops either, but at least they tried and I think failed. But The Beatles, there wasn't even a discussion. The Rascals, yes they could, and The Rascals' hits were in fact played on Black radio stations. But The Beatles just didn't have a decent rhythm section. I'm not saying it wasn't a good rhythm section for what it did, but once you've got James Brown and Sly And The Family Stone and all those groups, The Beatles couldn't do that. They weren't trying to do that.

Q - I once got into an argument with Jerry Blavat about whose version of "Roll Over Beethoven" was better. He said Chuck Berry. I said The Beatles. My point was the recording technology had helped make The Beatles' version sound better.

A - I'm going to say there's no point in arguing about taste. If you prefer The Beatles' version of "Roll Over Beethoven", fine. One of the things I realized many, many years ago was if people think The Beatles were the greatest band that existed, there's nothing I can say to them that they'll go, "Oh, yeah. That's better than The Beatles." The Beatles did what they did better than anyone else will ever do it. For The Rolling Stones it's not true. Somebody who thinks The Rolling Stones are the greatest band that every existed may just be somebody who's never heard of Muddy Waters or Bo Diddley or James Brown. But, if you think The Beatles are the greatest band ever, there's nothing better than that if that's what you want.

Q - Elton John once said, "The public is only interested in Frank Sinatra, Elvis and The Beatles."

A - What he's just proved is, what he means by "the public", is White people.

Q - Didn't all three have Black people has fans?

A - No. Sinatra did.

Q - And Elvis?

A - I mean, Elvis did okay with Black listeners, but he was never bigger with Black listeners than lots of other people were. And only for a very, very brief moment. Elvis was a pretty singer. I'm not saying he wasn't a pretty singer. And The Beatles? They had no Black audience. People often say, "What are you talking about?" Aretha Franklin covered The Beatles. Wilson Pickett covered The Beatles. Yeah. They were trying to get their records listened to by White kids.

Q - And don't forget, The Beatles told promoters they would not perform for segregated audiences.

A - The Beatles loved Black music. I'm not saying they didn't love it. Look, they didn't have the rhythm section. If you were dancing to The Isley Brothers, by the time The Beatles arrived in the U.S. the Soul thing had hit. The Twist had hit. Dancing was already happening, as I say, to The Isley Brothers. If you compare The Beatles to Chuck Berry, I'm with Jerry Blavat, but I'm not in an argument. I understand what you would like better about The Beatles' version of "Roll Over Beethoven", but if you listen to The Beatles' version of "Shout" next to The Isley Brothers I don't think there's any possible way anyone would say The Beatles did a better version of "Shout" than The Isley Brothers did.

Q - I used to watch American Bandstand prior to The Beatles arrival in the U.S. and quite honestly, music had gotten boring. It was stale.

A - Well, it really depends whether you're talking about White kids or Black kids. I mean, if you were listening to Frankie Avalon, it was stale and The Beatles were fresh. If you were listening to The Isley Brothers and James Brown and Mary Wells, no. I don't think they were fresher than Motown. It's just that normally they don't get compared to Motown.

Q - To me, the whole thing is about change. It's about originality.

A - Absolutely.

Q - When The Beatles came along they really turned everything upside down, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

A - Yes, The Beatles changed everything, but one of the changes they made was that people didn't compare them to Black artists. Every previous period of Rock 'n' Roll, White and Black artists were involved. We're just talking about different categories. If we weren't you could make the argument for them. Try the experiment; I did this: Listen to every number one record from 1950 to 1970. When The Beatles hit, immediately there are all these other records that sound just like The Beatles. I mean Dave Clark Five, Gerry And The Pacemakers. I'm not saying they're as good as The Beatles, but their records could be The Beatles, just not quite as good. When a James Brown record comes on you go, "Wait a minute. What's that doing on this list? That sounds like it's from three years later." It took the world much longer to catch up with James Brown then to catch up with The Beatles. And again, nobody makes that comparison.

Q - Because he didn't get the publicity or the promotion The Beatles did. Ed Sullivan brought James Brown onto his show in 1966.

A - Absolutely. What you're saying is the thing. Absolutely racism was a real thing. But also, when Elvis covered Little Richard, most people were cool with that because if you were dancing to Little Richard you could dance to Elvis. The rhythm sections weren't all that different. James Brown just took it into another world. I mean, listen to the White bands that tried to imitate James Brown. They couldn't do it. Eventually they learned how to do it. I'm not saying they never learned how to do it. By the time you get Wild Cherry doing "Play That Funky Music White Boy", they were in fact playing that funky music. I'm not arguing about it. This is just the way Rock 'n' Roll history is normally written. You simply stop including Black people around 1963, and because of that you don't have to have this conversation. But, I will say that's a choice. You don't have to write the history that way and I chose not to.





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