Please Please Me

The Towards Freedom series is an endeavour to document the years leading to Independence. It goes beyond the overtly political activities of the time and the notion of Independence as 'transfer of power'. The volumes of this series underscore the fact that the struggle for Independence was not just about attaining freedom from a colonial power-it also comprised efforts to seek social justice, economic empowerment, and cultural autonomy. With meticulously selectedhistorical material from 1937 to 1947, the volumes bring to the fore the activities, attitudes, and ideas of diverse sections of Indian society. The 1947 volume, published in three parts, covers the major socio-political processes of that fateful year. The first part highlights the main political events that took place in the three-way conflict between imperialist, nationalist, and communal forces. The story continues in the second part, which takes up the partition award and the actual process of partition, the settlement of boundaries, the rehabilitation of refugees, and the developments in the princely states. The third part bringsto the fore themes such as the future of the Congress, peasants' and workers' struggles, caste, minorities, language and literature, the position of women, the economic consequences of partition, foreign relations, and the celebrations of 15th August. In this part, the second in the 1947 volume, the story of India's independence and partition unfurls through documents ranging from newspapers, private papers, and letters, to speeches, maps, cartoons, and colonial archives. The documents relate to the Constituent Assembly, the partition award, partition in Bengal and Punjab, the referendum in the Northwest Frontier Provinces and Sylhet, and the princely states, as also those on the Interim Government and the India Independence Bill. This partalso highlights the problem of communalism which became so pronounced in several regions of India during this period that even the parties which stood for unity, such as the Congress, had little option but to accept partition.Sixties British rock and pop changed music history. While American popular music dominated the record industry in the late fifties and early sixties, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Who, and numerous other groups soon invaded the world at large and put Britain at the center of the modern musical map. Please Please Me offers an insider's view of the British pop-music recording industry during the seminal period of 1956 to 1968, based onpersonal recollections, contemporary accounts, and all relevant data that situate this scene in the economic, political, and social context of postwar Britain. Author Gordon Thompson weaves issues of class, age, professional status, gender, and ethnicity into his narrative, beginning with the rise of British beat groups and the emergence of teenagers as consumers in postwar Britain, and moving into the competition between performers and the recording industry for control over the music. He interviews session musicians who recorded anonymously with the Beatles, Hermans Hermits, and the Kinks, professional musicians who toured with British bandspromoting records or providing dance music, songwriters, music directors, and producers and engineers who worked with the best-known performers of the era. The consequences of World War Two for pop music in the late fifties and early sixties form the backdrop for discussion of recording equipment, musicalinstruments, and new jet-age transportation, all contributors to the rise of British pop-music alongside the personalities that more famously made entertainment news. And these famous personalities traverse the pages of Please Please Me as well: performing songwriters John Carter and Ken Lewis, Lennon and McCartney, Jagger and Richards, Ray Davies, and Pete Townshend took center stage while the production teams and session musicians created the art of recording behind the doors ofLondon's studios. Drawing his interpretation of the processes at work during this musical revolution into a wider context, Thompson unravels the musical change and innovation of the time with an eye on understanding what traces individuals leave in the musical and recording process. Opening up important new historical and musical understandings in a repertoire that is at the core of rock music's history, Please Please Me will appeal to all students, scholars, and fans of popular music.