{"id":333,"date":"2003-12-08T10:42:46","date_gmt":"2003-12-08T15:42:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp\/2003\/12\/sir_paul_mccartney_is_a_fool\/"},"modified":"2003-12-08T10:42:46","modified_gmt":"2003-12-08T15:42:46","slug":"sir_paul_mccartney_is_a_fool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/2003\/12\/sir_paul_mccartney_is_a_fool\/","title":{"rendered":"SIR PAUL MCCARTNEY IS A FOOL"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s a shamelessly immodest excerpt from Ron Rosenbaum’s current OBSERVER<\/A> column, which also wins LEAD OF THE MONTH:
\n

<\/p>\n

\n…Anyway, all of this was running through my mind before the delayed murder charges. (The death occurred last February; Spector later told an Esquire writer, Scott Raab, that Clarkson shot herself while toying with the gun. Now the D.A. says Spector murdered her.) Shortly before the charges were filed, a third Phil Spector development ensued: There arrived in the mail a galley of the new book from Tim Riley, Fever: How Rock & Roll Transformed Gender in America. Mr. Riley is the author of Tell Me Why, which I think is the best book yet written about Beatles songs.


\nIn this new book, he goes beyond his unique fusion of technical musical knowledge and stunningly perceptive emotional exegesis of lyrics to a wider-angled social vision that focuses in good part on the glorious complexities\u2014societal as well as musical\u2014of the “girl-group” sound, from the Chantels and the Exciters to Chrissie Hynde.


\nMr. Riley is at his very best when he comes to what Spector and Veronica Bennett (later Veronica Spector) achieved with the Ronettes. Indeed, he writes one of the best single passages I\u2019ve ever read about one of the ultimate girl-group songs: a passage that focuses on the breathtaking wordless opening of “Be My Baby,” with its dangerous heart-arrhythmia of cathartic beats: the ones Mr. Riley transliterates as “Boom! \u2026 boom-boom BLAM!”


\nI\u2019ll just quote a few words of his ecstatic exegesis of that one percussive sequence: “The defining beat, held aloft at the opening like a rhythmic magnet pulling the rest of the song along behind, is spacious and beatific\u2014it maps out a cosmic space, and it\u2019s one of the few imperious statements of rhythm alone \u2026 in rock that cannot be copied without referencing the original \u2026. But although the beat alone is vast, suggesting realms of feeling for the song to explore, what the rhythm is holding back is what gives it its power. It\u2019s the pauses between beats that give it its candid flirtatiousness, and when Ronnie Spector\u2019s voice unfurls in the opening verse, its promise is fulfilled \u2026 trumpeting a woman\u2019s desire just as confidently as any man ever had.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/P>
\n–You can’t buy that kind of plug, just be sure and remember it when the book comes out next June…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s a shamelessly immodest excerpt from Ron Rosenbaum’s current OBSERVER column, which also wins LEAD OF THE MONTH: …Anyway, all of this was running through my mind before the delayed murder charges. (The death occurred last February; Spector later told an Esquire writer, Scott Raab, that Clarkson shot herself while toying with the gun. Now […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-333","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}