The creative process of The Beatles revisited
A multi-level analysis of the interaction between individual and collaborative creativity
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.v9i1.27617Keywords:
The Beatles, George Martin, creativity, songwriting, arranging, recordingAbstract
Much of both popular and academic writing about creativity in popular music has been characterized by a conflict between commercial production and artistic creativity. On the one hand, creativity has been explored with reference to the large-scale structure of the popular music industry. On the other hand, much of the writing has been based on a Romantic or individualist notion of creativity, explicit for example in the auteur theory. This line of writing has certainly been popular with respect to The Beatles. Drawing on recent research on creativity in popular music and organizational research, the article challenges this dichotomy by focusing on the interaction between individual creativity and different forms of collaborative creativity in the production of The Beatles’ records.
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Compton, Todd. 1988. ‘McCartney or Lennon: Beatle Myths and the Composing of the Lennon-McCartney Songs’. Journal of Popular Culture 22/2: 99–131. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0022-3840.1988.2202_99.x
Cross, Craig. 2004. Beatles-discography.com: Day-by-Day, Song-by-Song, Record-by-Record. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse.
Davies, Hunter. 1992. The Beatles: The Only Authorized Biography, rev. ed. London: Arrow.
Doggett, Peter. 2010. You Never Give Me Your Money: The Battle for the Soul of The Beatles. London: Vintage.
Dowlding, William J. 1989. Beatlesongs. New York: Fireside.
Drazin, Robert, Mary Ann Glynn and Robert K. Kazanijan. 1999. ‘Multi-level Theorizing about Creativity in Organizations: A Sense-Making Perspective’. Academy of Management Review 24/2: 286–307.
Everett, Walter. 2001. The Beatles as Musicians: Quarry Men through Rubber Soul. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ford, Cameron M. 1996. ‘A Theory of Individual Creative Action in Multiple Social Domains’. Academy of Management Review 21/4: 1112–42.
Frith, Simon, and Simon Zagorski-Thomas. 2012. ‘Introduction’. In The Art of Record Production: An Introductory Reader for a New Academic Field, ed. Simon Frith and Simon Zagorski-Thomas, 1–9. Aldershot: Ashgate. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781139343947.001
Hertsgaard, Mark. 1995. A Day in the Life: The Music and Artistry of The Beatles. New York: Delacorte Press.
Julien, Olivier. 2008. ‘“A Lucky Man who Made the Grade”: Sgt. Pepper and the Rise of a Phonographic Tradition in Twentieth-century Popular Music’. In Sgt. Pepper and The Beatles: It was Forty Years Ago Today, ed. Olivier Julien, 147–69. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Kealy, Edward R. 1979. ‘From Craft to Art: The Case of Sound Mixers and Popular Music’. Work and Occupations 6/3: 3–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/009392857961001
Lewisohn, Mark. 1988. The Beatles Recording Sessions: The Official Abbey Road Studio Session Notes 1962–1970. London: Hamlyn/EMI.
Martin, George, with Jeremy Hornsby. 1979. All You Need is Ears. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Martin, George, with William Pearson. 1995. Summer of Love: The Making of Sgt. Pepper. London: Pan Books.
MacDonald, Ian. 1994. Revolution in the Head: The Beatles and the Sixties Culture. London: Fourth Estate.
MacFarlane, Thomas. 2008. ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Quest for Extended Form’. In Sgt. Pepper and The Beatles: It was Forty Years Ago Today, ed. Olivier Julien, 33–44. Aldershot: Ashgate.
McIntyre, Phillip. 2011. ’Systemic Creativity: The Partnership of John Lennon and Paul McCartney’. Musicology Australia 33/2: 241–54.
Miles, Barry. 1997. Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now. London: Secker and Warburg.
Moorefield, Virgil. 2005. The Producer as Composer: Shaping the Sound of Popular Music. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Negus, Keith. 1992. Producing Pop: Culture and Conflict in the Popular Music Industry. London: Arnold.
—1996. Popular Music in Theory: An Introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Negus, Keith, and Michael Pickering. 2000. ‘Creativity and Cultural Production’. International Journal of Cultural Policy 6/2: 259–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10286630009358124
—2004. Creativity, Communication and Cultural Value. London: Sage.
Riley, Tim. 2011. Lennon: The Man, the Myth, the Music: The Definitive Life. London: Virgin.
Shuker, Roy. 1998. Key Concepts in Popular Music. London: Routledge.
—2005. Popular Music: The Key Concepts. 2nd ed. Abington: Routledge.
Toynbee, Jason. 2000. Making Popular Music: Musicians, Creativity and Institutions. London: Arnold.
—2004. ‘Authorship Meets Downpression: Translating the Wailers into Rock’. In This is Pop: In Search of the Elusive at Experience Music Project, ed. Eric Weisbard, 173–86. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Womack, Kenneth. 1998. ‘Editing The Beatles: Addressing the Roles of Authority and Editorial Theory in the Creation of Popular Music’s Most Valuable Canon’. Text 11: 189–205.
Zak, Albin J. III. 2001. The Poetics of Rock: Cutting Tracks, Making Records. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520218093.001.0001
Published
2015-09-02
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Heinonen, Y. (2015). The creative process of The Beatles revisited: A multi-level analysis of the interaction between individual and collaborative creativity. Popular Music History, 9(1), 32-47. https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.v9i1.27617
