Penn State Laureate Kenneth Womack visited the Berks Campus to talk about the history of The Beatles last week. He is Penn State’s sixth Laureate, an honor established in 2008 to celebrate the arts.
Womack is a Beatles scholar who has written three books about the group: “Reading the Beatles: Cultural Studies, Literary Criticism, and the Fab Four,” “Long and Winding Roads: The Evolving Artistry of the Beatles,” and “The Cambridge Companion to the Beatles,” His fourth book, “The Beatles Encyclopedia: Everything Fab Four,” will be published soon.
Womack didn’t take the typical approach to the history of The Beatles because he didn’t go through all of the years of their music and didn’t go too much into detail of their personal lives. Instead, he focused more on the unique sounds found in their music and the discussions they had in Abbey Roads Studio.
Using a multimedia display of photos, music and facts, he brought us back to 1962 in that studio and guided us through the lives of the legendary band. He started with the last images ever taken of the band when they were together in 1969.
Instead of just giving us a quick journey starting at when Paul met John, he introduced us to the Skiffle Craze: A folk-sounding genre that included more than 10,000 bands with 1,000 of them called the Black Jacks.
Womack played a piece of music that was popular at that time; it led us to July 6, 1957 when John was playing the same music with his band at St. Peter’s Church in Liverpool. This was the time and place where John and Paul first met. Womack shared a quote from John recalling the day: “I remember the day Paul looked like Elvis and I dug him.”
He talked about producer George Martin’s involvement and what happened in the studio for some of the well-known parts of the their songs, such as the Bach-sounding piano in “In My Life” and the the wound-up piano technique at the beginning of “Misery.” He ended the lecture at their first performance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in February 9, 1964.
Other interesting facts:
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Paul and John did not originally dream of being in a rock band, they dreamt of being broadway composers because John’s mom told them they could make a lot of money that way.
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The Beatles failed their original record deal because the managers at Decca Records believed “guitar music was on it’s way out.”
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Paul missed the first practice with the band because he and his brother were at Boy Scout camp.
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At “The Ed Sullivan Show,” Ringo couldn’t hear the rest of the band and kept time by watching their rear-ends bob up and down.
- “Obladi-Oblada” took 110 takes to record.