Nothing is Real: The Beatles Were Underrated And Other Sweeping Statements About Pop

Written by David Hepworth

Narrated by David Hepworth

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Nothing is Real: The Beatles Were Underrated and Other Sweeping Statements About Pop, written and read by David Hepworth.

Pop music’s a simple pleasure. Is it catchy? Can you dance to it? Do you fancy the singer?

What’s fascinating about pop is our relationship with it. This relationship gets more complicated the longer it goes on. It’s been going on now for 50 years.

David Hepworth is interested in the human side of pop. He’s interested in how people make the stuff and, more importantly, what it means to us.

In this wide-ranging collection of essays, he shows how it is possible to take music seriously and, at the same time, not drain the life out of it. From the legacy of the Beatles to the dramatic decline of the record shop, from top tips for bands starting out to the bewildering nomenclature of musical genres, with characteristic insight and humour, he explores the highways and byways of this vast multiverse where Nothing Is Real and yet it is, emphatically and intrinsically so. Along the way he asks some essential questions about music and about life: is it all about the drummer; are band managers misunderstood; and is it appropriate to play ‘Angels’ at funerals?

As Pope John Paul II said ‘of all the unimportant things, football is the most important’. David Hepworth believes the same to be true of music and this selection of his best writing, covering the music of last fifty years, shows you precisely why.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Transworld Digital
• Release date: Nov 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781473565388

David Hepworth

David Hepworth is an influential journalist, music writer and editor, having helped launch and edit a number of major entertainment magazines, including Q, Mojo, Empire, Heat and Word. He is the only person to have won both the Periodical Publishers Association's writer of the year and editor of the year award, and in 2004 he released a book ‘The Secret History of Entertainment’.

Reviews for Nothing is Real

[eyejaybee · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I would be hard pressed to decide whether books or music are more important to me, and I am always pleased when those two pleasures merge, as they did with this collection of articles and observations by David Hepworth. He is certainly well qualified to talk about rock and pop music having spent most of his working life in that field, whether behind the counter of record shops, or later as both a journalist and presenter on programmes such as (The Old Grey) Whistle Test.

As a teenager, The Old Grey Whistle Test was a fundamental part of my life, and the post mortem of the various acts at school the following day was just as earnest as our Monday morning discussions of the weekend’s football results. David Hepworth understands all that because, as is clear from the pieces in this book, he went through all that himself. His extensive, perhaps even encyclopaedic knowledge of popular music, acquired through his professional involvement, is matched by his enthusiasm as a fan.

In this collection Hepworth addresses a number of issues, including explains the changing nature of the role of the drummer within a band, and how the development of regular and reliable drum machines has affected the whole process of compiling a single. He also offers up a thoughtful piece on why so many veteran bands and solo performers carry on despite their advancing years, and more particularly why they continue to tour. For big bands, life on road has become almost an industry in itself, with implications for a considerable number of interested parties whose finances are also inextricably linked with those of the headline act.

Hepworth’s insight in informed, informative and engagingly written.