No one expressed the heart and soul of the Sixties as powerfully as the Beatles did through the words, images, and rhythms of their music. In Magic Circles, Devin McKinney uncovers the secret history of a generation and a pivotal moment in twentieth-century culture. He reveals how the Beatles enacted the dream life of their time and shows how they embodied a kaleidoscope of desire and anguish for all who listened—hippies or reactionaries, teenage fans or harried parents, Bob Dylan or Charles Manson. The reader who dares to re-enter the vortex that was the Sixties will appreciate, perhaps for the first time, much of what lay beneath the social trauma of the day.
Delving into concerts and interviews, films and music, outtakes and bootlegs, Devin McKinney brings to bear the insights of history, aesthetics, sociology, psychology, and mythology to account for the depth and resonance of the Beatles’ impact. His book is also a uniquely multifaceted appreciation of the group’s artistic achievement, exploring their music as both timeless expression and visceral response to their historical moment. Starting in the cellars of Liverpool and Hamburg, and continuing through the triumph of Beatlemania, the groundbreaking studio albums, and the last brutal, sorrowful thrust of the White Album, Magic Circles captures both the dream and the reality of four extraordinary musicians and their substance as artists. At once an entrancing narrative and an analytical montage, the book follows the drama, comedy, mystery, irony, and curious off-ramps of investigation and inquiry that contributed to one of the most amazing odysseys in pop culture.
This is the book to read on the Beatles, whether or not you've read all the others. It is the critical look the Four have always deserved--clear-eyed, funny, daring, continually surprising, extraordinary in its reach and breadth. Devin McKinney, a generation younger than the Beatles and their core fans, is unburdened by received ideas, and he writes like a dream. — Luc Sante, author of Low Life
Howard Hampton
At its core, Magic Circles traces how the Beatles, as working-class musicians who came "out of the sticks" to transform the world by sheer force of will as well as talent, were able to enter the lives of millions of people and get under their skins as well as into their dreams. Thus McKinney argues their music both colonized and liberated their audience's imagination, laying the psychological foundation for the ecstasies and upheavals of the 1960s: the Beatles are presented as agents of desire combined with rebellion (a heady brew indeed), but who at the height of the '60s carnival-cum-revolution appeared at least in part as double agents, cover-up artists, traitors to the zeitgeist. These and other contradictions are rendered vividly here. The most original and valuable contribution that Magic Circles makes is as a map of collective sensibility: depicting the Beatles as a white hole in the fabric of official culture, disgorging meanings, fantasies, and mutations for all to share.
Ben Saunders
The Beatles occupy a unique moment in the history of popular entertainment, one in which the relationship between artist and audience undergoes a profound transformation. The Beatles mattered to people in ways that no previous (and few subsequent) popular entertainers have mattered. Sinatra may have inspired devotion, and Elvis mass hysteria, but only the Beatles inspired metaphysical debate. — Ben Saunders, University of Oregon
Kevin Dettmar
I believe Magic Circles quickly will be recognized as one of a handful of classic rock texts. This is simply a wonderful book, and I mean that quite literally - a book full of wonder. It filled me with the joy of intellectual discovery, challenged hard-set conventional notions I'd long harbored, and perhaps most surprising for a book of this kind, filled me with joy to read: it is a joyous book. — Kevin Dettmar, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
