The Beatles’ Secret to Rock Immortality

Bob and Scott weave between Meltzer’s dense prose and McLuhan’s structured media theory, using the latter to decode the former. Major themes include clichés in rock, McLuhan’s evolutionary media process, the 1960s’ accelerated cultural turnover, and rock’s visceral role in a post-literate society. The speakers aim to elevate Meltzer’s work by framing it within McLuhan’s broader insights, with the Beatles and Warhol as recurring exemplars.

Bob Dobbs is a Zappa researcher and McLuhan scholar.
Scott Woods is a critic based in Toronto who manages the websites RockCritics.com and GreilMarcus.net.

Recorded April 25, 2010

[0:00] – Introduction

[1:34] – Meltzer’s Exploration of Clichés in Rock
Bob and Scott dive into Meltzer’s text, focusing on his dense and repetitive use of the word “cliché” to describe rock music’s role in culture. Meltzer argues that rock “contextualizes everything” and is inherently tied to clichés, either manipulating them or becoming them through public exposure. The speakers read and dissect the passage, noting its complexity and Meltzer’s playful, idiosyncratic style. Bob suggests that Meltzer’s ideas, while insightful, lack a broader framework, which they plan to provide using McLuhan’s theories.

[7:27] – McLuhan’s Framework: From Cliché to Archetype
Bob introduces McLuhan’s “From Cliché to Archetype” as a lens to contextualize Meltzer’s observations. He explains McLuhan’s four-phase process—new technology as “last word,” becoming cliché, then art form, and finally archetype—using examples like the printing press, newspapers, and radio. This framework, developed with Wilfred Watson and hinted at by Howard Gossage in 1967, helps clarify how media evolve over time. Bob ties this to the rapid cultural shifts of the 1960s, suggesting Meltzer is grappling with the same dynamics intuitively.

[14:46] – Media Evolution and Cultural Turnover
The conversation expands into how media environments accelerate the cliché-to-archetype process. Bob illustrates this with examples: books becoming art forms with novels, radio archetypalizing books (e.g., Joyce’s “Ulysses”), and TV turning movies into art. He emphasizes the 1960s’ “global theater” effect, driven by satellites, where media turnover speeds up dramatically (e.g., from 500 years for books to 18 months for pop culture by 1970). The Beatles and Warhol are cited as case studies of this rapid cycling.

[23:02] – The Beatles and Collective Media Experience
Bob shifts focus to the Beatles as a prime example of McLuhan’s process in action. He describes them as a multimedia phenomenon, not just music, shaped by Brian Epstein into a collective “group mind” reflecting the satellite era’s hive mentality. Their work, like “Sgt. Pepper’s” and the “White Album,” manipulates musical clichés into art, resonating with the 1960s’ emotional multitude. This ties back to Meltzer’s idea of rock as a visceral, cliché-driven force.

[33:54] – Art, Archetype, and Post-Literate Society
Bob explores McLuhan’s distinction between cliché and archetype, noting that archetypes are a product of literate cultures, while post-literate societies (like the 1960s under satellite influence) revert to ritualized clichés. He critiques Meltzer’s conflation of art and archetype, suggesting it reflects the blurred boundaries in a fast-turnover media landscape. Examples like David Bowie and mixed media illustrate artists navigating this shift, with Meltzer intuitively sensing it.

[42:40] – Rock as Visceral Cliché and Comfort
Returning to Meltzer’s text, Bob and Scott analyze his claim that rock’s ability to engage clichés viscerally sets it apart. Bob connects this to McLuhan’s idea of electric media’s tactile, gut-level impact, positioning rock as the dominant art form of the 1960s for its immediate relevance (“comfort relevance”). They note Meltzer’s perceptive but unstructured take, planning to continue with his next point about credibility and applicability.