Overview

The Beatles are known for cheeky punchlines, but understanding their humor goes beyond laughing at John Lennon’s memorable “rattle your jewelry” dig at the Royal Variety Performance in 1963. From the beginning, the Beatles’ music was full of wordplay and winks, guided by comedic influences ranging from rhythm and blues, British radio, and the Liverpool pub scene. Gifted with timing and deadpan wit, the band habitually relied on irony, sarcasm, and nonsense. Early jokes revealed an aptitude for improvisation and self-awareness, techniques honed throughout the 1960s and into solo careers. Experts in the art of play, including musical experimentation, the Beatles’ shared sense of humor is a key ingredient to their appeal during the 1960s—and to their endurance. The Beatles and Humour offers innovative takes on the serious art of Beatle fun, an instrument of social, political, and economic critique. Chapters also situate the band alongside British and non-British predecessors and collaborators, such as Billy Preston and Yoko Ono, uncovering diverse components and unexpected effects of the Beatles’ output.

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9781501379345

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Reviews

The Beatles and Humour makes a welcome addition to the critical study of the Beatles as a cultural phenomenon. Contributors to the volume provide wide-ranging analyses that not only explore how the Beatles contributed (and still contribute) to popular culture but also how they were influenced by the humour, language and attitudes of postwar Liverpool and Britain. * Holly Tessler, Senior Lecturer in Music Industries, Programme Leader for the MA The Beatles, Music Industry and Heritage, and co-editor of the Journal of Beatles Studies, University of Liverpool, UK * The Beatles changed the world in so many ways—one of them was changing how the world laughs. The Beatles and Humour is a fascinating study of the Fabs’ madcap comic innovations, from A Midsummer Night’s Dream to 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer.' * Rob Sheffield, Senior Writer, Rolling Stone and author of Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World (2017) * Kapurch, Mills, and Heyman’s wide-ranging edited volume proves the Beatles were legendary not just for their music, but for their wit. Whether larking about took the form of wordplay, spoofs, sarcasm, insightful satire, or surreal, absurd nonsense, the Fab Four continually affirmed that comedy was a central weapon in their entertainment arsenal. The real beauty of this book, though, is that it demonstrates precisely how the band’s humour was used, exactly what that reveals. After all, humour is never quite humour. Improvised comedy instead communicates things about creativity, play, gender, nationality, class, community, locality, and tradition. As a pioneering book on the subject, Kapurch, Mills, and Heyman’s volume will become a model in future not just for how scholars talk about the Beatles having a laugh, but rather for how we can engage with the whole subject of popular music and comedy. * Mark Duffett, Associate Professor of Music, Media and Performance, University of Chester, UK * This is an overdue work, one of the many reasons the Beatles made such a strong and lasting impression was that they came across as four good natured and witty young men. This collection uncovers the many factors that made them that way. * Michael Jones, Reader in Music Industry, University of Liverpool, UK *

Kapurch, Mills, and Heyman's wide-ranging edited volume proves the Beatles were legendary not just for their music, but for their wit. Whether larking about took the form of wordplay, spoofs, sarcasm, insightful satire, or surreal, absurd nonsense, the Fab Four continually affirmed that comedy was a central weapon in their entertainment arsenal. The real beauty of this book, though, is that it demonstrates precisely how the band's humour was used, exactly what that reveals. After all, humour is never quite humour. Improvised comedy instead communicates things about creativity, play, gender, nationality, class, community, locality, and tradition. As a pioneering book on the subject, Kapurch, Mills, and Heyman's volume will become a model in future not just for how scholars talk about the Beatles having a laugh, but rather for how we can engage with the whole subject of popular music and comedy. * Mark Duffett, Associate Professor of Music, Media and Performance, University of Chester, UK *

Author Information

Katie Kapurch is Associate Professor of English at Texas State University, USA. Her books include Victorian Melodrama in the Twenty-First Century (2016), New Critical Perspectives on the Beatles (2016 with Kenneth Womack), and Blackbird: How Black Musicians Sang the Beatles into Being (2023). Forthcoming books include Disney Plus Beatles with Bloomsbury Academic. Richard Mills is Senior Lecturer in Literature and Popular Culture at St Mary’s University, UK. He is the author of The Beatles and Fandom: Sex, Death and Progressive Nostalgia (2019) and co-editor of Mad Dogs and Englishness (2017). Forthcoming books include The Beatles and Black Music: Post-colonial Theory, Musicology and Remix Culture with Bloomsbury Academic. Matthias Heyman is Assistant Professor in the Arts at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Lecturer at Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel, where he is the Vice-chair of Research. He also is Postdoctoral Fellow at LUCA School of Arts, Leuven and freelances as a double bassist. He has a forthcoming monograph on jazz bassist Jimmie Blanton.

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