The Long and Winding Road from Blake to the Beatles [Hardcover]

This book traces the musical and cultural achievements of this contemporary musical phenomenon to its origin in the Romantic revolution of the 1790's in England when traditional concepts of literature, politics, education and social relationships were challenged as they were in the 1960's.Why the Beatles? The Transatlantic Genesis of Rock Romanticism The Nowhere Man and Mother Nature's Son:?Coleridge/Lennon-Wordsworth/ McCartney and the Productivity of Resentment George Harrison and Byronic In-Between-ness Ringo Starr and the Anxiety of Romantic Childhood 'What matters is the system!': The Disappearance of God and the Rise of Conspiratorial Theorizing A New British Empire

His book's best bits trace how the credo of romanticism via Coleridge and Wordsworth had uncanny but explainable parallels in the counterculture of the 1960's, and, most convincingly, in the persons of Beatles Lennon and McCartney....Schneider's wide-ranging and diligently researched book does more: it also accounts for the quasi-religious, mythological, ideaological dimensions of the Beatles. - Times Colonist

Schneider does not fear the risky but intriguing claim that Wordsworth is 'the great grandfather of country music.' This, then, is the line that takes us from late 18th-century Britain to the New World present, and it is the Beatles who carry these two-way transatlantic genetics. Schneider s wide-ranging and diligently researched book does more: it also accounts for the quasi-religious, mythological, ideological dimensions of the Beatles; it points to the importance of competition between John and Paul; it gives an archetypal reading of Ringo Starr and a Byronic account of George Harrison; it moves easily, and sometimes ingeniously, among Robbie Burns, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and Lewis Carroll. Best of all, though, Schneider speaks knowingly and passionately about the singular place of the Beatles in our ears and in our eyes. - The Vancouver Sun