Biography
MacDonald briefly attended King's College, Cambridge, at first to study English, but he later transferred to Archaeology and Anthropology. He dropped out after a year. While at Cambridge, he was distantly acquainted with the singer/songwriter Nick Drake. From 1972 to 1975 he served as assistant editor at the NME. MacDonald began a songwriting collaboration as lyricist with Quiet Sun, which included his brother Bill MacCormick and future Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera. The collaboration resumed in the late 1970s, with MacDonald providing lyrics for the album Listen Now. Later, Brian Eno assisted MacDonald in producing Sub Rosa, an album of his songs released on Manzanera's label.
In his 1994 Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties, MacDonald carefully anatomised each recording by The Beatles, examining the broad themes and sources of inspiration. The book contains detailed song-by-song analysis, but is often objective and critical. Broad access to the original Beatles master tapes was allowed during the research phase, and this coupled with his forensic writing style has led to a broad agreement that Revolution in the Head is the definitive treatise on the Beatles' music.
The book also includes his essay "Fabled Foursome, Disappearing Decade", an analysis of the social and cultural changes of the 1960s and their after-effects. The entries about the Beatles' singles that topped the singles chart were released in a separate book in 2002. The edit featured a new, shorter introduction, and only featured the essays on the songs on The Beatles' chart-topping album, 1.
MacDonald wrote widely on classical music. His The New Shostakovich was one of the most talked-about classical books of the 1990s. It was the first western book that attempted to put the works of the great Russian composer in their political and social context. MacDonald's insistence on creating a cinematic scenario for every major piece—a satire on Soviet brutality and Stalinism—polarised opinion sharply. Some rated his interpretations fanciful and musicologically worthless, while others believed they held some subjective truth. MacDonald was a regular reviewer for the UK magazine Classic CD, and was known for his passionate and opinionated views on twentieth-century music.
The success of Revolution in the Head motivated him to resume popular music writing and he began contributing to Mojo and Uncut music magazines. The People's Music, an anthology of these writings, was published in July 2003 just weeks before his death. He had been working on a book entitled Birds, Beasts & Fishes: A Guide to Animal Lore and Symbolism and another about David Bowie. Neither of these has been published.
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