elijahwald

Unfortunately, this discussion started by repeating what the LA Times reviewer wrote about my book--and that review was the first time in my career that a major publication has simply lied about what I wrote. All the quotations he gives as my purported "bitter rant" against the Beatles are not from my chapter on them (as he says), but from a paragraph in my introduction in which I characterize the way a "small world of music nuts" have sometime portrayed the band. Despite its title, the book is not in any way an attack on the Beatles. The title came from a comparison of the Beatles with Paul Whiteman, and its point is that all changes create winners and losers, and what is an advance for some musicians is career-destroying for others. The book starts around 1890 and is an attempt to write nonjudgmental pop music history, looking at the effects of such phenomenally influential figures as Whiteman, Lombardo, Mitch Miller and the Beatles without rendering artistic judgments about their work. All the other reviews have been more accurate--many attack me for having a misleading title, but all the others point out that in fact I do not attack the Beatles, and I'm in a discussion with the Times about getting some kind of retraction.... Which is not to deny that my book may have plenty of problems, but I wish it could be judged on its real problems, not the ones invented for it by the Times reviewer. (And if anyone wants a better sense of it, check out my website, http://www.elijahwald.com