Four College Lecture Hall; Lecture by Professor Michael Irwin on the Beatles

At this time w o f c r in Amherst and the Eastern educational radio network present for college lecture hall a weekly program of outstanding talks by faculty and guests at Amherst Mt. Holyoke and Smith Colleges and the University of Massachusetts. Today's guest speaker is Professor Michael Irwin lecturer at the English department of Smith College. Mr. Urban was born in London and has previously taught at Oxford University in England. The University of Tokyo Casablanca University in Washington D.C. and at universities in Poland Professor Urban's a special field is the 18th and 19th century English novel and author Henry Fielding concerning the latter he has written a book entitled Henry Fielding the tentative realist published this spring. However today Professor Irwin takes a leave of the 18th or 19th century English novels and Mr. Fielding in order to consider a contemporary music phenomenon. In a lecture he first delivered in Warsaw Poland Mr. Erwin discusses a popular shaggy haired rock'n'roll foursome in

terms of their real contributions to modern music trend. His talk recorded earlier this year isn't titled simply the Beatles. I have all the big records. I play them regularly and often. Yes and I suppose I like to justify this enthusiasm and to share it. Also I think the Beatles compositions have a special excellence and is excellent to be appreciated and I think for various reasons which I'll outline later now in danger of being undervalued by certain kinds of people. My second motive in this lecture is less important and more grandiose. I have a general sort of interest in the condition of pop culture. Not I hasten to add as an observer but as a participant. I don't look out of the window of my ivory tower to see what's going on the plane. I'm right down there on the plane so I always.

I've always been interested in the state of the hit parade. However appalling. And I must say this seems to me a very reasonable and healthy interest. Every human being likes new songs to sing or whistle if you no longer feel an interest in new songs to sing or whistle in some deep human instinct is actually fired inside you. You should be worried. And I like to think that pop culture can change and improve. It's a part of my cultural life and for many people it's the whole of their cultural life so the quality of going. So the quality of it matters. Mr Lee loving get out of the US Federal Communications Commission said this year the one thing the one thing that all concerned with the mass media must recognize is that the common man has a right to be common. My experience in the US is purely local it's limited to Hampshire County.

And I can't really say what Mr. Loving there is anxious about. In the end. I suppose there's an outside chance that one morning Phil could go crazy. And put on some bar talk or Stravinsky instead of the monkeys. But it doesn't seem to be a present danger. The common man seems safe in Northampton. If. So my objection is not really to the statement itself which is pretty abject and meaningless but the attitude implied which is the suggestion that a mass media must be a crass medium. Now this particular medium of pop music is a rather new one in its present form it depends very much on developments post-war developments in Hi-Fi music and in scale and scope. It's only been it's present so often about the last 10 years so its standards are unsettled. Now the Beatles are transformed these standards so they're important from the point of view of mass

culture and was attention anyway even apart from the fact that I'm a fan. Now the difficulty in this lecture is going to be a difficulty of vocabulary. I don't want to be too heavy pompous academic. On the other hand I don't want to be sort of groove really inarticulate. To it. Like you know Murray the K the A3. But I'm fortunate there really isn't a vocabulary for the kind of analysis I want to do. So I've got to roll my own. I'm the big temptation is for me to be Donnelly Maki relic. But I'll try and keep that this side of ad nauseum. The second difficulty is the security and one theory of the merits of Beatle music these murders are going to be either very basic or very sort of despair right. Odds are I'm going to say has this team got a good melody. Alternatively something like wasn't a

good idea keeping George's caught on the soundtrack. So I'm liable to be forced either into generalization or else into making a sort of fragmentary series of disconnected statements. But I'll try to make to let you hold together if I can. Now I said earlier the Beatles were in some danger of being undervalued. Well one reason for this is that they were hired first of course not as artists or musicians but as a phenomenon. What newspapers were interested in was Beatlemania and the bigger the disparity between the the Beatles talent and the public reaction to it the better the story. And so it was in the interest of certain reporters to suggest that the Beatles were more or less moronic. Here's a quotation from Newsweek. 24th of February 1964. It may be said here before I read the quotation of the Beatles or rather willing to go along with this because I don't think they take reporters too seriously. Newsweek said

Musically they're a near-disaster guitars and drums slamming out a merciless beat that does away with secondary rhythms harmony and melody. Their lyrics reprieve for Argo a valentine card romantic sentiments were rather coming musician says George. We can't sing we can't do anything at school but we're having a great laugh. They're also liable to be dismissed by some people just because their music falls into the pop category. But I'm glad as they categorize a change in the Beatles helping to change them. Now there are certain standard objections I'll dispose of objections I've heard in this very town. Some of them with a shred of truth. Some people say that the Beatle songs are like any other pop songs it of course is nonsense. Some people say that all Beatle songs sound alike. This is also nonsense. Some people say that the songs are too noisy in the beat is too strident. They used to be some truth in this I think in the early days I imagine this was largely an effect of performance conditions in the latest number of the Match

magazine teen life to which I'm not a regular subscriber to Will. There's an interview there's an interview with Rango. To shed some light on this. He says when we're doing a concert the only thing that I really think about is hitting the drums as hard as I can so that the others can hear me above the noise of the amps. In live shows I'm strictly an offbeat man. I don't play anything fancy no breaks or anything like that. I just keep going because that's the way I want it mainly. They need me to keep going I'm sure and conses that is true that such a huge rel going on the big it's got to be pretty deafening as I do less and less in the way of concert performance. I think the weight gradually subsides to its rightful place. It also said the words are inaudible. The answer to that is you can make out

95 percent of them if you really take trouble. Anyway a Beatle song as TS Eliot pointed out can communicate before it's understood. What emerges is certain key phrases which state a mood and the mood is created by the tune in the way the Beatles projectile song. It's argued that the voices are not good. This is especially argued by musicians and it in a conventional sense is true. None of the pickles got a notably strong voice or voice was a notably wide vocal range but they're adequately tuneful and their voices are very variously expressive. Now it's important to know that a Beatles song is not analyzable simply in terms of words plus backing. It's a totality including these elements but also including tone of voice harmony decorations and projection. Therefore a purely musical analysis with a great deal unsaid I believe and I'm glad I believe this because I'm not really capable of doing it for

music analysis. Nonetheless it can shed a great deal of light and so I'll start with a quotation from The Music critic of the London Times. The slow sad song about that boy which because prominently in Beatle programs is expressively unusual Richwood Rubeus music with harmonica is one of the most intriguing with its chains of diatonic clusters and the sentiment is accepted because voiced cleanly and crisply but harmonic interest is typical of the quicker songs to get the impression that they think simple tiniest of harmony and melody so firmly of the major tonic servants and knights built into their tunes and the flat sub mediant keys which is so natural. So natural is the Aeolian cadence at the end of not a second time. The chord progression which ends Mahler some of the earth. They sub midi and switches from C major into a flat major and to a lesser extent mediant ones e.g. the octave ascent in the famous I want to hold your hand for a trademark of Lennon

McCartney songs. They do not figure much in other pop repertory and I show signs of becoming a mannerism. The other trademark of their compositions is a firm and purposeful bass line with a musical life of its own. Helena McCartney divide their creative responsibilities I've yet to discover. But it is perhaps significant to poor as a bass guitarist of the group. It may also be significant a George Harrison song Don't bother me. Is harmonically a good deal more primitive than not enough presented. There is a good deal of variety oh so welcome in pop music about what they sing. You're autocratic but not by any means I'm grammatical attitude to turn ality closer to same. Peter Maxwell Davis is Carolyn a Magna mistery of the Gershwin Although ever or even Lionel Bart. The exhilarating and often instrumental vocal duet sometimes and scatter in falsetto behind a melodic line the melismas with altered valves. I saw yesterday which had not quite become manager and the discreet sometimes subtle varieties of instrumentation. A suspicion of piano organ. A few bars of garter and excursion on the claims of

miraculous the translation of African Blues or American Western idioms in baby meter. You touch sensitive Merseyside These are some of the qualities which make one wonder what with interest what the Beatles in particular Lennon McCartney would do next. They brought a distinctive and exhilarating flavor into a genre of music that was in danger of ceasing to be music at all. Now this was written in the very early days December 1963 when in England the brink of the put out one long playing record in a few singles but I think fundamentally it's very sensible and explains the Beatles basic virtues. So it's going to overlap a great deal of what I'm going to say now. The fundamental point about the Beatles as composers and performers of pop music is that they are themselves. Before the advent the typical pop song would be written by a small group of people rather extraordinary number of nineteen sixty so I would be called I love Mary by Ronzoni McTavish Goldberg and Smith. In the boy

as the fourth. And here you have a real problem about dividing you wonder if they wrote a line each or what. Anyway by different definition this kind of music would be very much processed within the formula now because the Beatles themselves and write for themselves various consequences followed. First of all the music is highly eclectic. It reflects all sorts of pop influences of course the miracles the sheer Elza don't. Little Richard screamed. Chuck Berry Buddy Holly but also I think more interestingly it reflects various local personal influences folk songs not the kind of folk songs or the sung folk songs club clubs but the kind you are forced to sing when you're in your school. Nursery rhymes. Baby's in black is very clearly based on a nursery rhyme hymns even the kind of hymns you sing at school. It struck me the first time when preparing this lecture that the verse of Yellow Submarine seems to derive from a Catholic hymn called Sweet

sacrament divine figure. Now I'm quite sure this isn't a direct hinge. But I do think this hymn may be part of the collective Liverpool Catholic Irish memory. And all these various influences flow into Beatle music so as you listen to these songs your concert your attention is constantly caught by surprising associations which makes the tune interesting and wasn't too true of previous pop music. Similarly their words are very personal very colloquial. They produce lines like I've got no time for you right now don't bother me. You're giving me the same old line. If he turns up while I'm gone please let me know. Love has a nasty habit of disappearing overnight. She's the kind of girl who put you down when friends are there you feel awful. Father McKenzie donning his socks in the night when there's nobody there. Your pay money just to see yourself with Dr Robert. Now what's important and significant is the colloquial intonation of these lines affects the

musical intonation. A new kind of melody is produced and also docks in us oddly stressed and punctuated because these colloquial statements have got to be somehow accommodated because I'm going to chop them short into an AB hymn style verse a pop song that nearly always predicts a mood but a standard mode like I love you or I hate you. Now. Because the Beatles are writing for themselves again the moods they project the personal complex idiosyncratic point I want to make in the course of this lecture is that various parts of the Beatles song were developed to suggest various aspects of a complex mood. I'll be straight this lighter. Obviously the Beatles a got a strong melodic sense I don't think this is a thing you can argue about. I have to pass in something quite extraordinary. In four

years they've recorded ninety two of their own compositions and I've written various other songs which they themselves haven't recorded an extraordinarily high proportion of good or interesting and some amenities. Partly through this eclecticism I spoke of just now unusual. Now the sterling virtues which I'm getting about aren't so apparent in the early songs but the early songs can method. Now here we come to a slight technical problem. I hope to link up this tape recorder with the sound system of this whole this proved impossible. So in order for it to be loud enough I'm afraid the people in the front row are blasted out. If you feel yourself really suffering please. Yeah.

It was the first the first hit song of The Beatles as we know them today recorded in September 1962 at reach position August 17 an English Top 20. The words Europe heard are negligible. But it's already a characteristic Beatle tune. Odd lines of a curious unfinished effect slightly plaintive and the structure of the song is also typical of later Beatle songs. You've got the typical Beatle heart Beatle harmony there especially on the word please a favorite Beatle word and it is the important point I'd like to make this point in a Tallackson

the song is conceived in terms of harmony. The line you hear is a melody is colored by the second voice. Sometimes I hear people going about the camp or singing a Beatle song it always sounds awful because a big sum is going to be sung by two or more people usually. Songs to various parts. The guitar backing various voices and combinations of voices a solo instrument which is a mouth organ hear alternate or blend the verbalize part can't stand alone. You hear the same qualities in a second song Please Please Me which recorded in November 1962 when was it first number one hit in England. I am.

You. Please again. And that is a very cunning use of falsetto usually produce a sort of produce a sort of lyrical or rhapsodic effect. I included the verse here to suggest this point which I'm going to make again later how the different tempo and the

universal chorus suggest two distinct stages of the recognisable mood or the quality I'm going to isolate now is this quality of plaintiveness. So I'll give a few more examples of this a few more brief examples of this plaintive Beatle melody. And I thought that's a wild goose song trial hitting song. Notice it is not regret it's not diligent but regretful. In the next example again you've got this distinction between verse and chorus suggesting two stages of the mood. It's bridged by a very deft change of tempo in this whole bit.

Here I suppose you could explain the plaintive effect musically to alternates between major and minor. The Beatles work Instinctively I don't think this kind of explanation is very

helpful. I think the melancholy quality is part of their eclecticism it's a Liverpool thing and I think the next song maybe sheds a little bit of light on them. I'm clued in actually for this passage at the end I may be getting fanciful here but to me this

passage has a simple quality. And I think it's a seaport quality that you can feel in many of the Beatle songs. Melancholy farewell shanties on the quay valedictory ship sirens. Anyway this kind of wistfulness are you going to some of the Beatles earlier songs of the gentle later songs like yesterday and Michelle and here there and everywhere don't really come as a surprise. Now the basic components I spoke of in relation to please please me and love me do the harmony the instrumental solo and this division into independent parts all these develop mightily and independently and each one changes as it develops and changes the whole character of the Beatles songs. I'll begin with harmony and deal with it very briefly because it's too complex for my limited resources for the beginning. Harmony. Probably derives from the absence of an obvious lead singer among the Beatles. And I think that has been rather lucky for them because you saw that with Eric Burdon and the

animals. So the result is a produced all sorts of permutations of their three voices. You know I'm a loser which I just played the harmony is used only in the refrain while the verse is solo so the attention is concentrated on the words and this is not untypical in the early Beatle songs the harmony is one of a number of decorative devices but gradually the harmony develops until it's a major part of the Beatle song overlying underlying the melody and you get something like this. The latest songs such as this one Paperback Writer and rain inside the would become purely exercises in

harmony. But by the time of Revolver it seemed to me that harmony is recreated again into being and the other two elements I spoke are also developing autonomously as the Times critic pointed out. Biggles always had a talent for instrumental decorations to their songs in the early days it was a mouthful. They seem to have missed forsaken the mouth open in the last two or three records and of course there's always been guitar solos by George and some of these waxed quite large such as this one. That's from my loving NSA record sleeve says listen to Jordi is superb slightly Country and Western guitar solo an intriguing picture unlikely. But gradually other instruments came to be added.

First an organ later afloat in Hide Your Love Away in your cities and in my life we have what seems to be a piano hobbled to sound like a popsicle. Just a smidge you know do it yourself. Beatles. On revolver of course you've got a very fine home solo by Alan civil and for no one. And then of course there's this. No other parts of this song are George's voice and the tabla played by an Indian. In other words isn't a

Beatle song in the accepted sense a toll and make you wonder the Beatles a reach some kind of limit here. Now even before this late stage the interrelating of these various parts have become more and more complex. The lead voice the background voices the guitar backing these instrumental solos were all tonight they'd merge. They'd overlap the counterpoint. It's probably another aspect of the Beatles composing through performance. Ideas seem constantly to be added to the basic tune. Here's an example of the developed method. You get a characteristic little rhapsodic falsetto please. Now here

they are messing around with the various parties presumably only in the interests of musical variety but gradually these various parts are used Illustrated Lee now in Ticket to Ride which I'm about to play the beginning of. The Beatles stop with the solo guitar which adjoined by the drums which is then joined by solo voice which is then joined by background voices effect of train growing nearer. Several of the harmonized words especially to die down and made to sound like a train whistle noise and a verse has is given the rhythm of a train in motion. So this is a sort of programme song. I am. Yes. Yes yes.

Yes. Yes. I am. I am yes. Yes yes. Yes. Yes. Yes I am. I am. Now there's local ingenuity of the Beatles it seems to me is taking them into a rather odd and unexpected

direction. I'm going to play the last part of this record rain the year 2066 was a big year for some of the rain is relevant to the previous example because the backing really sounds like rain forming and the harmonized rain sounds like an absolute downpour. Incidentally it's also made to sound like a bagpipe which is another example of Beatle eclecticism but the new element is in the climate the climate winds down to a drumbeat and then winds up again and you get a curious curious little tail piece which I'd like you to listen to carefully. Saying thank you.

Yeah yeah yeah yeah. Yeah so I Hate A Oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah. OK. I it. Yeah. OK OK OK. OK. OK OK OK OK. I am ok now. I am the OK. Yes. Yeah yeah.

Oh. I missed this piece consists of the first line of the song played backwards. When the rain comes I run into the shade as you hear when you play a tape recording of it I quit. In other words this is an extra musical effect the sound engineering effect. I think it's the points forward to the peculiar electronic noises and revolver. I want to play a part of my money so I'm only sleeping now. You've got a musical you want in the world upstream. And a reel of your own in a rather muddled way. You got a shaking effect when Joan sings No don't shake me. But above all you've got a little electronic means at the end of a song you've got a whole host of electronic noises which presumably represent succumbing to the arms of yours. Yeah.

This is all part of an interest in electronic sound revealed throughout the Revolver album.

Has the Village Voice said in a rather kind of way. It Rubber Soul opened up areas of baroque progression and Oriental instrumentation to pop commercialisation revolver does the same to electronic music. Much of the sound of the new LP is atonal and a good deal of the vocal is dissonant instead of granting poor voices an echo chamber acoustics revolver presents the mechanics of pop music openly as an integral part of musical competence. Composition. I think again here there's a possibility that the push something to its limit. It's hard to see what they'll do with it next. Now to turn to a new topic I hope you noticed the sleepy quality of John's voice and I'm only sleeping. Now this use of the quality of the voice is a big trademark again. It's all part of a complex way of stating a mood. I want to play next right now for no reply and this is a really developed example of the point I was mentioning earlier of the various parts of the song being equivalent of parts of the real life around the verses the explanations that are protesting. I saw the light and I nearly died of

screams of battled her fury. And then comes a more lyrical part if I were you which piled on the emotion is the equivalent of saying I came out to see you last night your mother said you were out and I knew damn well you were in all the time I in fact one. Vicious bitch i in. So don't you know how much I love you from the east. Yeah. You.

Can't eat. Why does the Beatles respect for the verses of their songs. The usual pop song is a sandwich consisting of two identical hunks of processed meat with a skinny slice of stale bread in between the bread of course being the verse in the two pieces of meat the chorus in a Beatles song The verse is usually at least as interesting as a chorus in fight. No reply again you got this used to vocal coloration to suggest

despair passion. So on. Similarly when I'm looking through you which I'm about the plight peculiarly vicious song this is the second most vicious song on Rubber Soul. It doesn't actually threaten murder like the most witches one but John adopts a suitably malevolent tone. And again there's this question of shaping the baby you've changed at the end of the line becomes a sort of spontaneous overflow of content. There's a nice stumbling introduction and there's a good busy sort of backing. Now the words of the Beatles songs also developed the text longer and more complex. There's

also a move towards objectivity in a book called The Biggles progress by Michael Barone. There's a quotation from a press conference an American reporter asked why all the Beatle songs have the words I me or you in them should it be I want to hold its hand so ya know he loves the Iraqi. I'm sure John is right that what you do have now in Beatles songs is statements like Eleanor Rigby once told somebody and. Now all these comments as I prophesied have been pregnant three. When these various elements that I've described manatees unusual harmony some strange story being told some distinctive vocal vocal coloration some purity or instrumental backing when all these are functioning together the total effect the very heart was size. I think Norwegian would have been some very dark interpretations of Norwegian would you go.

It's only an ambiguous song which is interesting in itself imagine an ambiguous Pat Boone song was. I simply take it in the writer's sexual hopes of foiled by what's called a day trip a big teaser and for revenge he burns down her Ghai. Yeah yeah.

Yeah yeah. It seems to me very difficult to assess the effect of a strong wind at.

The gramophone. In reviewing revolver says it isn't easy to describe what's here. It's as much of it involves things which are right the new music which is being properly applied for the first time which can helpfully be compared with anything. To me I suppose the total effect of that song is something rather like a short story. You got this. Detached slightly vicious narrator and an exotic background as suggested by the sea itself. I imagine it being told of a whisky and soda in an all white club in some peculiarly got the second part of north. But it doesn't really matter how you interpret it the point is it your entry because you're being in several different ways from several different angles. And therefore your interest in the song to sum up what I've suggested here and there about the Beatles development. Harmony becomes more

important and complex the instrumentation becomes more varied interest in sound Perseid including an electronic sound develops the words become more ambitious. The emotional range becomes much wider. Different Kinds of a song or children song as in Yellow Submarine Satel and Dr. Robert storey summers in Norwegian Wood. The question arises What do the Beatles do now. It's not all clear to me how far they can control their compositions from now on. Very few of the songs on Revolver are orthodox performances. In some cases you got back by. A String Quartet in one instance seems violin French hone one of the best concert French horn players in England by the way. So it's not really a Beatle song one another as I mentioned you've got George and another Indian instrument playing alone. What other songs in your field engineers must take over.

The Beatles can write music and I can write it down so I'm not quite clear how this is handled. An interesting point would be how much is a responsibility of George Martin who seems strange spend golly sort of figure. But anyway it becomes far from clear where the Beatles could go from here. So I've said that I'll treat each of the previous three records and like to finish but I lost some revolver Tomorrow Never Knows because it's the most modern and complex film. The key words of this particularly difficult catch So let me read them as far as I could disentangle myself. Turn off your mind relax and float downstream it is not dying lay down all thought surrender to the void it is shining that you may see the meaning of within it is being that love is all and love is everyone it is knowing that ignorance and hate my more than the date or the day I'm not sure which it is believing. Listen to the color of your dream it is not living or play the game existence to the end of the beginning.

This has been widely proclaimed as a classic of psychedelic music especially of course in Village Voice. But even a write in Punch magazine which is also Doxes magazines go in England is a kind of magazine for the Church of England clergyman. Says. The music comes and goes in mysterious vertiginous waves creating a frightening with thrilling sense of what space and time like a supernatural unconscious vision operate in an operating theatre. And certainly John had just read a book by Timothy Leary when this song was composed. Again it's hard to define what the effect of all this is. I imagine a lofty minaret with John as a man weighs in on the pinnacle. Down below there's a drunken Symphony Orchestra. Tuning up in a seagull infested jungle. Thank.

You. YEAH

YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH I AM I AM I AM I AM. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. As a man in the gramophone cited record contains things that are new to pop music and can't be compared

with anything. Penetration and uplift. I admit that the Beatles were written some bad songs such as THANK YOU GO she's a woman. Maybe you can drive my car Nowhere Man for example. There was already some bad lines and I use some terrible rhyme sometimes missing and listen is one articulate objective. But there's something here for really enthusiasm and respect. They put out in England seven long playing records each one better than the last one. The more you listen to each of them the more you hear there's no rubbish on a big record not like the record put out by the pop groups a tremendous value for money. The record a well-produced song the world juxtaposed displays are well designed to give you something to look forward to a new record a new movie currently making one now. But more than that they've transformed the whole world of pop music which God knows need transforming. I should say parenthetically of course that when other influences hear especially quayside folk singers but the majority of hit record you hear now are manifestly Beatle influenced melody harmony general attitude

arrangement. The changes immensely for the better. The influence is a liberating one. The Beatles say in effect let a hundred groups bloom to a great extent. Pop music now is no longer purely commercial or is it some kind of self-expression. The younger generation is cool and there's really quite a number of talented groups around the Rolling Stones Loving Spoonful Mamas and Papas Simon and Garfunkel even latterly the Beach Boys are capable of producing good things. Naturally. This new sound is going to be commercialized. But even more it has been commercialized. The resulting product has been much better than the pretty people equivalent. Several of the songs of the Monkees for example are surprisingly not too bad. Also the commercialised is always going to be one step behind I'm sure Ronzoni and his colleagues are now desperately learning the sitar at the end. By the time I master that we will have to cope with electronic music which might run too far as I

said at the beginning of this lecture pop culture matters are matters to me at least. Ruskin or somebody said man becomes what he sees. By the same token I suppose he becomes what he hears. Ten years ago this was a bit particularly bleak prospect. However this time you've made this point Mr loving I would have said well the common man has a right to be common bad. Now this attitude represents a widespread pseudo religion. The suggestion is a great mass of people as a Dane impervious mentally stunted from the advertisers. Now there's a repulsive because writing of people culturally has always been dangerously associated with writing a novel together. But I must say learning has had a good case until recently because a book called The popular art spyhole and while published in 1964 and the two authors were leaning over backwards trying to find some virtue in pop music but rather failing. But music has a certain vigor. There's lack of variety is staggering. Most of the ballads tend to sound the same even to a sympathetic ear. There are often variations on a basic set of chords and chord sequences

where old favorites have been reshaped to the beat style they have lost everything and gained very little in the transposition except an occasional yodel musical formulae have been applied here mercilessly. Variety of tempo theme instrumentation or effect are rare. The prospect of pop music is a genuine popular art point. Now of course things have fundamentally changed. The battle is far from won the number 1 tune of last year with the ballad of the Green Beret ye. But all the same Here's an area of mass culture which is really not doing a tour badly. The standards have been transformed in a couple of years and the whole definition of pop music is now shifting. And after all as I said at the beginning the record business as we know it now has been going for long. It's turning into a a reasonable little art form Pragmatism is the fashionable modern attitude Well here's a case where pragmatism can lead to a kind of optimism without being ideological or utopian. It's possible to imagine a pop culture where all the commercials are as good as the beer commercials and all the comic strips as good as the peanuts and all the pop songs are as

good as the Beatles. Thank you thank you. Id like. That was Professor Michael Irwin a visiting lecturer of the English department at Smith College. As he spoke on the Beatles Professor Irwin who has also taught at Oxford University in England and Kathak University in Washington D.C. He was born in London and as is an authority on 18th the 19th century English novels and author and revealing his book called Henry Fielding the tentative realist published by the Oxford Press is Professor Irwin's latest effort. You have been listening to four college lecture hall a weekly program of outstanding talks by faculty and guests at Amherst Mount Holyoke and Smith Colleges and the University of Massachusetts. This is the eastern educational radio network.