In an autographed early photo on a program playbill, Paul McCartney had drawn an arrow pointing to his face–Walter Everett’s not sure whether out of impishness or insecurity that the viewer might not know which Beatle he was.
The faded playbill is one of forty-six rare Fab Four artifacts in a new Beatles exhibit at the music library on the third floor of the Moore Building on North Campus, where Everett teaches at the School of Music, Theatre & Dance. Drawn mostly from Everett’s personal collection, it was put up for a June symposium marking the fiftieth anniversary of the groundbreaking album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Everett, who wrote the two-volume series The Beatles as Musicians, assembled academics and authors from all over North America and England.
With some attendees in Beatles fan garb, it had the air of a nerdy grad student summer reunion with both playful and heavy academic presentations, including papers on “Is Pepper Poetry?,” “Beatles Mechanisms of Self-Irreverence,” and “Harmonizing Marmalade Skies: PL Voice Leading and the Uncanny in Pop Music.”
Everett expects the exhibit will stay up until at least the start of fall term.
