When we met Elvis he was tall so Ringo had to stand on a box to shake his hand. When I wrote Yesterday I went round playing it to random people and I When we met Elvis he was tall so Ringo had to stand on a box to shake his hand. When I wrote Yesterday I went round playing it to random people and I asked them Did You Write This Song and they all said no, so I realised I’d written it in my sleep. Then it became the most recorded song of all time. I was quite surprised. In the early days we tried to keep things very simple, Love Me Do, that’s very straightforward, but She Loves You, now that’s sung by an intermediary so it’s already getting sophisticated. When we moved to London we learned words like intermediary and we discovered Stockhausen. It’s hard to believe that when I was growing up in Liverpool they had only just invented the motor car. I go back so far I’m in front of me !
John was never violent, people have got the wrong idea. He didn’t need to be – he just gave you that look and you’d beat yourself up. His Aunt Mimi was a tough lady. Twice a week she would break his guitar over his head and every time he would buy another for eleven and sixpence. That’s old money. Young people wouldn’t know what shillings and pence were, or things like radios or horses. I get told I’m a real boomer. I’m not sure why. When I was growing up there wasn’t any such thing as The Beatles. It’s hard to imagine that now. I’m a keen ornithologist.
I really enjoy dancing, cooking, driving fast, composing for large orchestras, painting, writing poetry, playing drums and meeting the Queen. She was very cool. Not as tall as Elvis. Young people today won’t remember that but she wasn’t. She asked me, did you write These Boots are Made for Walking? I said no ma’am, that was somebody else. You have to call her ma’am. And you have to walk backwards. It’s true I’ve met quite a few people, Willem de Kooning, Harold Pinter, Bertrand Russell, Dustin Hoffman, you know. But really that’s the wrong way to put it. They met me.
*
Or :
Diamond geezer, national treasure, somewhat like listening to your granddad ramble on and on, repeating some stories word for word, if your granddad is the world’s most successful musician ever....more
This was definitely a case of What Was I Thinking when I Asked for This For Christmas??
In 2013 a guy named Tom Doyle wrote an excellent book Man On thThis was definitely a case of What Was I Thinking when I Asked for This For Christmas??
In 2013 a guy named Tom Doyle wrote an excellent book Man On the Run: Paul McCartney in the 1970s. He took 285 pages to cover the whole decade. Now two other guys Kozinn and Sinclair have produced this FIRST volume of a series in which they take 700 much larger pages containing quite tiny print to cover the years 1969 to 1973. So you don’t have to be Mr Spock to deduce that there will be cataracts, geysers and torrents of brain-killing detail about every action or contemplated action performed by Paul McCartney and his immediate circle on each and every one of these 700 pages. Not all of which will be especially interesting.
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Typical of the sort of stuff you will encounter here :
Some of the mixing had been done along the way, so at the April 12 session Paul put the rest of the preliminary stereo mixing in Eirik’s hands, along with tasks like joining the still separate “Uncle Albert” and “Admiral Halsey”, and executing Eirik’s idea of splitting “Ram On” into two section, one for each side of the LP. A few days later Paul returned to check on Eirik’s progress and to do some tweaking of his own (countermanding Eirik’s idea of putting the flugelhorn solo in “Admiral Halsey” in a bed of ambient reverb, for example).
You like that? There is so much more. Our authors move smoothly from granular studio microdetail
Paul was finally pleased. Four hours of mixing yielded eight attempts, RS10 to RS17; RS14 was sent for mastering (and assigned the matrix 7YCE.21692.)
to some treacly banalities about cosy family life:
Cousin Ian Harris, son of Paul’s Aunty Gin, hosted the McCartney clan in New Brighton, where the family gathered around a burning pile of scrap wood with baked potatoes and sausages for a backyard firework display.
Or what about page 585
Their Labrador, Poppy, gave birth to seven puppies. The McCartneys kept one, which they named Captain Midnight, and gave the others to friends, including Brown Meggs, named for the vice president of Capitol Records, and the liveliest of the litter, which they named Jet, for his solid black colour.
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SHOCK AS REVIEWER CONFESSES TO LIKING THIS DRIVEL
But actually, most of the time I seem to have enjoyed this book in a weird woozy zoned-out guilty-pleasure where did all the time go kind of way. Every now and then the authors would lob something at me which caused boggling of eyes and short burst of mirth and startled me awake, as on page 459 when they tell us that having accepted the commission to write the title song for the new Bond movie Live and Let Die Paul got to work immediately :
Being a fan of Fleming’s work, Paul was already familiar with the novel, but on the weekend of September 9 he read it again, refreshing himself with the narrative’s finer points. Four chapters in, Paul fell upon a first flash of lyrical inspiration.
This was a passage of dialogue in which one character says ”Our policy with Mr Big is live and let live.” And the other character says “I have another motto. It’s live and let die.” Yes, Paul stumbled on the title of the novel he was reading! And this inspired him to write a song with the same title! Which was also the title of the film! Brilliant!
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THE MCCARTNEYS COULD GET ON PEOPLE’S NERVES
The authors are scrupulous in keeping their own feelings to themselves, leading to a general feeling of efficient impersonal fact-gathering busyness about this book. But they let their interviewees vent forth their anguish to the point where if our authors see McCartney coming down the street they might be best ducking down an alley until he’s gone. Here is David Lucas, New York studio owner, on Linda in 1972:
She was annoying, a complete pain in the ass… I watched Paul go way beyond acquiescing. He was subservient to this rude, indulged, entitled woman of very little or no talent.
Then there’s Glyn Johns, the producer of the second Wings album. He wasn’t impressed, and he told the unfamous members of the band
If you think because you are playing with Paul McCartney that everything you do is a gem of marvellous music, you’re wrong. It isn’t. It’s shite. Frankly, it’s a waste of tape and it’s a waste of my energy.
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MCCARTNEY’S STRANGE CAREER
After a decade of unique commercial and artistic success, praised by everyone as a pop genius and everything turning to gold, for Paul McCartney it all fell to bits in 1969. We know the unhappy story of the chaotic fractious end of the Beatles, and we know the depression that came crashing down on McCartney. He was the one it had all meant the most to, and he was the one who had to sue the other three to legally terminate the Beatles. So for a time he was Suspect Number Two (after Yoko Ono) in the hunt for the person who broke up the world’s favourite musical combo. And not surprisingly maybe, his pop genius seemed to desert him.
He thought it was a cute idea to play all the instruments on his first album, and it was, but the songs were thin and weedy*. The critics trashed that album. So he thought okay, next one will be highly produced & played by top sessionmen and will feature an impressively eclectic range of styles. This was Ram. The critics hated that one even more. Then he formed a band because he wanted to be in a band - this was a brave move, the other Beatles never did any such thing – but he recorded the first Wings album when they’d hardly had chance to say hello to each other – half of the album was based on studio jamming. No surprise, the critics hated that one too. And when you listen to it, you have to say that if there was any justice this band would never have got signed. They would have said come back when you’ve got some decent songs.**
So this most curious part of PM’s very long career is like the story of a guy having made it in the music business now trying to make it again in the music business. He tries this, tries that, one step forward, two steps back. And nobody has the nerve to tell him not to issue Mary Had a Little Lamb as a single. All the bad press of 1970-72 would have made a lesser egomaniac give up. But not this egomaniac.
AND IN THE END
Mr Kozinn and Mr Sinclair may be assured that if, as scientists believe, the Planet Earth has another five billion years to go before the sun transforms into a red giant and extinguishes all life, no one in that five billion years will have any chance of writing a more thorough account of Paul McCartney’s life between 1969 and 1973.
3.5 stars
*except for Maybe I’m Amazed **Once again, there’s one great song, Dear Friend...more
A DISTURBING BUT ULTIMATELY UPLIFTING REVIEW OF THE EXPANDED EDITION
I want to give you an idea of the true comprehensiveness of this vast book, and thA DISTURBING BUT ULTIMATELY UPLIFTING REVIEW OF THE EXPANDED EDITION
I want to give you an idea of the true comprehensiveness of this vast book, and then I want to talk about cripples. The entry for John Lennon in the index is divided into several sections including Banjo, Relationships, Songwriting, and so on. The first section is Appearance, under which we find glasses, hands, hair, tough look, Teddy Boy, picking his nose, fingernails, attitude to wearing suits, and so forth. And there is one entry entitled
“cripple” act
And here are the pages that describe this nasty sounding thing :
Yes, there are a whole lot of references to the “cripple” act. So what exactly was it, you will ask. The answer may fill you with dismay. This great book exactly, beautifully describes English working class culture and you know the phrase warts and all, well, here are the warts.
So began John’s strange and prolonged obsession with deformities, one that dovetailed with his need to rattle on about anything that marked anyone out as different – blacks, Jews, queers and more… at any time now, John would contort his face up into that of a cripple or spastic, or “crip” and “spaz” – the commonly used words of the period, voiced without thought of offence by adults as well as children. He’d thrust his tongue inside his bottom lip, make “spaz” noises and limp along the street – and the stage – hunching his back and dragging a leg like Quasimodo … while John’s crips made some people nervous or uncomfortable…they often made others laugh and join in with him.
He would do this making fun of disabled people act on stage, quite frequently, for example while Paul McCartney was singing one of his corny old ballads like "September in the Rain" or "The Honeymoon Song". John got quite impatient with those.
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Okay, well – John Lennon growing up was quite an unpleasant piece of work in many ways. Even up to the point when they were a proper band he was doing this "crip" stuff. But wait, it carried on
This is from 1964, in the middle of Beatlemania. Watch it and cringe. Pretty grisly. And there’s a lot of that kind of mockery in his little books too.
But the thing is that he completely changed. From 1964 to the bedins for peace in 1969 there was a some kind of personality transplant. Acid and Yoko had something to do with it I’m sure. He demonstrated that you're not condemned to be the straightjacketed mocker of the disabled that you began life as. You can change for the better.
Well, hmm, this is a book review of the expanded edition of Tune In not a public apology for John Lennon. As you can see, the expanded edition of 1633 pages (plus 65 pages of index) is really detailed. Imagine all the references to John Lennon's nose, for instance, or Pete Best's moroseness.
There’s a whole 738 more pages than the teensy one volume version.
I wanted to get this mighty beast when it first came out but it was too expensive. So I waited for the price to come down. And waited. It never happened.
The nauseating subtitle “The Battle for the Soul of the Beatles” appears to have been replaced in a later edition by “The Beatles after the Break-Up” The nauseating subtitle “The Battle for the Soul of the Beatles” appears to have been replaced in a later edition by “The Beatles after the Break-Up” but that’s not quite right either because this is a very detailed account of the break-up itself – this is the first half of the book – followed by the history of Beatle legal complications, projects and personal bitternesses, reconciliations, stand-offs and flounce-outs during the 40 years which followed.
The first half was riveting reading because Mr Doggett is able to merge together in a clear non-editorialising way all the myriad strands of wonder, money, drugs and pain which led to the ugliness of the court case in which McCartney, the Beatle who up to late 1969 was still frantically pretending the band had a future, who was the one of the four with most invested in the idea of the Beatles, sued the other three to dissolve the partnership. Really, it’s not a pretty tale, and although I bought this in 2009 when it came out, only now have I got round to delving into the unpleasantness. Mainly because Mark Lewisohn’s definitive Beatles biography is appearing so slowly – the brilliant first volume came out in 2013, part two expected in 2020, part three who knows. So You Never Give Me Your Money is like a trailer for Lewisohn part three – no doubt his version of the end of the Beatles will be 900 pages long.
IF YOU THINK THE FOLLOWING IS RATHER DULL
So this being an account where the business machinery is a major part of the story, you have to be okay with several passages like this:
Apple were now providing full-time employment for five legal teams in London and New York… the deeper the legal minds delved into the Beatles’ affairs, the more anomalies and eccentricities they discovered…There were queries about the legality of a corporate system under which George Harrison could resign as the employee of a company that he himself ran and in which he held 99% of the shares, before deciding that he did want to work for himself after all, and applying to himself for his job back.
(Well, for all I know this kind of thing goes on all the time in corporate affairs.)
WHO BROKE UP THE BEATLES? THE SIX SUSPECTS
1. JOHN LENNON
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Really, he was impossible to work with between 1967 and 1970 – depressed, fried on acid and then heroin, running hither and yon after every tin pot guru from Maharishi to Arthur Janov and then being cruelly disappointed, insisting after September 68 that he was Johnandyoko and making her part of every recording session – the list goes on. And finally he decided he’s had enough of Beatles, and left in September 69. He’s the only one of the suspects to cough for the crime :
I formed the Beatles and I broke them up. It’s as simple as that. - John Lennon
2. YOKO ONO
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She was from another planet, the Planet Avant Garde, the same place John Cale was from when he joined the Velvet Underground. This crowd had nothing to do with anything outside their own bubble. Yoko made films people immediately think of if they were asked to describe an avant garde film – a series of random naked bottoms; a fly crawling over a naked woman; and she did strange live stuff like Cut Piece where members of the audience (no doubt all of them other avant garde artists) came up on stage and cut off a piece of her clothing until she was naked. And she did a lot of atonal howling too. Being a woman and being Japanese and being weird she got the major hate from the public for breaking up the Beatles by luring John away into her weird world so that five minutes after meeting her he was doing unlistenable albums like Two Virgins which featured a naked photo of John and Yoko on the cover. On the cover! It was shocking in 1968 and it would still be pretty shocking now – imagine if let’s say Jack and Meg White had appeared completely naked on the cover of one of their albums. Pandemonium! The contumely poured forth upon Yoko was sexist and racist, leading John to write his song “Everybody’s Got Something to hide Except for Me and My Monkey” because he read one comment in the press that Yoko looked like a monkey. But accepting all of that, and the other Beatles’ macho attitudes (they were a boys’ club) her sudden omnipresence made the changed situation painfully clear like a loop tape PA announcement. If John broke up the Beatles, Yoko gave him the courage to do it.
3. PAUL MCCARTNEY
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After the death of Brian Epstein Paul became group leader by default because Lennon couldn’t be bothered. You can see this quite clearly in the A sides of the singles – on the six single A sides after John’s All you Need is Love, Paul wrote five of them. He got them to do the dubious Magical Mystery Tour film and convinced them to do the disastrous Let It Be sessions in January 69. Thing was, he liked to work and the others didn’t. He wanted a job, the others didn’t. They thought there was more to life than being fab, he didn’t. (When he realized they had really broken up he spiraled into depression – the other three felt freed from a burden.) Dragooning the Beatles like that caused much of the bad feelings which enabled John to dissolve the group with no protest from Harrison or Starr.
4. APPLE
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Starting out as a tax avoidance cheme, it was then hijacked by the Beatles themselves to become an all purpose artistic collective, in some ineffable way “anti-capitalist” but still hopefully profitable. It turned into none of these things but became a twisting serpent of complicated delusion which began to eat the Beatles’ money. They needed serious help, so Lennon found his next guru.
5. ALLEN KLEIN
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As McCartney was getting serious with Linda and thinking her dad and brother would be ideal to sort out the mess that Apple had become, the other three were agreeing that showbiz shark Klein would be the best bet. “He’s nothing but a New York gangster” said Paul. The others reacted badly to the Eastmans’ sharp suits and country club manners. Klein was street, he was their kind of guy. So Klein became the flashpoint. In order to extricate himself from any management connection with Klein, Paul had to sue the other three to dissolve the original partnership. No Klein, no lawsuit. So Klein was the reason the Beatles were legally terminated.
6. THE BEATLES
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The unique fame and pressure of being Beatles since 1963 appears to have become almost unbearable to three of the four by 1969. Every album had become a great statement, each one since Rubber Soul in a radically different style (or collection of styles) to the previous one. No one could have kept it up. What should have come after Abbey Road? Given the stuff they came out with on their first solo albums it would have been White Album part 2, a gallimaufry of clashing genres – Monkberry Moon Delight, My Sweet Lord, Mother, Power to the People…. It would not have been good. They couldn’t take it any more, there was nowhere left for them to go, they were inhabiting an art pop landscape which was nothing to do with the power trios, heavy metal guitar virtuosi and soul music of the early 70s. They left at the right time. But it was so sad to see the way it was done. ...more
This is a strange book. The author is completely obsessed with Paul McCartney. I would estimate that he is mentioned about ten times on every single pThis is a strange book. The author is completely obsessed with Paul McCartney. I would estimate that he is mentioned about ten times on every single page. It’s really crazy. Almost the only other musicians who get a mention are the people who performed on one of Paul McCartney’s many records. He has no time for anyone else at all. I mean, what about all the other great musicians who have ever lived? And he goes on and on about every single record in 429 tiny print pages plus index… I mean, is this really necessary? Did you know Paul Mccartney recorded 567 albums between 1969 and 2013? I found the whole thing claustrophobic, and I think Luca Perasi should consider booking himself some therapy sessions some time soon. I wish I could reach out to him. Luca, I would say, there is more to life than Paul McCartney. And every song gets a page. I can understand that you may wish to wax lyrical about something like Ebony and Ivory or Mull of Kintyre, but what about Tough on a Tightrope or Hotel in Benidorm? So I thought this book needed a wider perspective and really, I have to say that I do not recommend it unless you are interested in Paul McCartney....more
For a book about a guy who is often portrayed as Mr Cheerful, this opens in depression bordering on nervous breakdown and ends with 10 days spent in jFor a book about a guy who is often portrayed as Mr Cheerful, this opens in depression bordering on nervous breakdown and ends with 10 days spent in jail.
So, the question, and it is an interesting one, is : what do you do when you’ve done it all before the age of 30? You’ve already made the greatest records, sold the most, you’re as famous as it’s possible to be, so now what? Well, it’s a strange story. I realised I only knew bits and pieces and this is a painless little book which tells the whole peculiar story.
In late 69 Paul McCartney was in a really bad space. Strange but true. Abbey Road was number one, followed by Let It Be a few months later, everyone still loved the Beatles, but here he was despised by the other three, thinking they’d gone mad and he was the only sane one, holed up in his remote Scottish farm, not seen in public for months on end, coming to the conclusion that he had to get a court order to legally wind up The Beatles, to be the one to put an end to the world’s favourite group, and, you know, sue his mates.
So, after some months he dragged himself out of bed and started doing something – anything, and there began to appear a series of strange records caused by whimsical notions of the kind no one in McCartney’s world could say no to.
After his solo album (okay-ish) and Ram (a minor masterpiece) he thought he wanted to be in a band again and so Wings was assembled (alternate names : Turpentine, The Dazzlers). Then came the first Wings album, which “was met with a colossal wave of disappointment”. Sample lyric:
Tomorrow, when we both abandon sorrow. Oh, baby, don't you let me down tomorrow, Through the week we beg and steal and borrow.
Followed by the first Wings single which was McCartney’s first and last political protest song – the cack-handed Give Ireland Back to the Irish. Not the kind of thing anyone was expecting from him. The BBC banned it. Next, Wings went on “tour” – they piled in a van and turned up randomly at English universities – “Er, scuse me, Paul McCartney and his band are outside – any chance of a gig this lunchtime?” "Wha?". After that came the infamous second Wings single Mary had a Little Lamb. Sample lyric :
Mary had a little lamb Its fleece was white as snow And everywhere that Mary went The lamb was sure to go
The explanation for why this was considered a good idea is simple – Paul and Linda were total stoners, and after an ounce or three of marijuana nursery rhymes can often be considered to be profound statements of universal truths. PM :
To me, that’s a heavy trip, those lyrics. It’s very spiritual when someone hangs around because it’s loved.
Henry McCullough, Wings lead guitarist :
Listen, how do you think I felt? I was coming off the road after three years in America with Joe Cocker and I end up playing Mary Had a Little Fucking Lamb.
The third Wings single was Hi Hi Hi and was also banned by the BBC because either it promoted drugs or it was very rude or both (“get ready for my polygon” was misheard as “get ready for my body gun” – this is what BBC employees did in those days, they morally vetted the lyrics of pop songs!)
After the weirdness of this early period the story becomes a lot more normal and a lot duller, but there are still quite a few laughs along the way.
Paul McCartney is truly a difficult artist to get any kind of handle on. It’s like he’s deliberately messing with my head, man. Being a Beatle fan I loftily dismissed all Beatle solo albums (exception made for All Things Must Pass), sneered at Band on the Run, detested Imagine and its vile title track. But then a few years ago I made myself listen to ALL of PM’s post-Beatles stuff, to see if I was right. And I was wrong. He’s all over the map. He does horrible shit like simply having a wonderful Christmastime or Mulla Kintyre or My lurve or Live and let die (this ever changing world IN which we live IN – noooo!) and Black & White, no Ebony & Ivory, whatever, – one might go on…but it's too grisly, you can't look. But if you peel away those encrustations and delve deeper, you find real gems like Letting Go, Let me Roll It, the primal screamy Call me Back Again, the lovely Distractions, and then the later nineties and 2000s albums like Driving Rain, Chaos and Creation in the Back Yard, - I’d never heard this and it was impressive; then there’s the Fireman albums which are well worth it too. So yeah, I wouldn’t like to admit this too freely, but on the quiet, in the privacy of my own home, I’m a bit of a closet McCartney fan.
This is a good book to pick up for a couple of quid in an Oxfam shop.
Today (11 September 2019) we have an article in the Guardian about Mark Lewisohn and about Abbey Road and it includes the following :
Constant dUpdate:
Today (11 September 2019) we have an article in the Guardian about Mark Lewisohn and about Abbey Road and it includes the following :
Constant demands to know when Turn On (covering 1963-66) and Drop Out (1967-69) might appear are met with a sigh: “I’m 61, and I’ve got 14 or 15 years left on these books. I’ll be in my mid-70s when I finish.”
So my speculations (and others' too) about the titles of the next two books are proved correct! That doesn't mean I like these titles any more though. And (groan) it seems like we're going to be waiting for YEARS for the next books.
A five star book with a one star title and a no star cover, so let’s get that out of the way now – Mark, what were you thinking? Tune In? It’s from Timothy Leary, right? So I am assuming that your three volumes will be Tune In, Turn On and Drop Out. It must have sounded cute to you. Not to me. It’s a wretched idea. And the cover – there are gorgeous photos of the young Beatles on the inside cover, where they can’t be seen. They would have done wonderfully. Or anything except what you ended up with! What a horrible cover.
Rant over. Review now follows.
A THOUSAND PAGES, GIVE OR TAKE A FEW
Like a stunning camera obscura or one of those enormous 19th century travelling dioramas, this huge book recreates a particular British working-class past in abundant, lavish, sensuous and psychological detail. Yes, you’ve all been here before – here’s sisters Mimi and Julia, posh Cyn, sullen Pete, and tragic Stu, and there’s sickly Richy, and arty Astrud, indeed the whole kit and caboodle, really the act you really have known for all these years. But in this incarnation, instead of whizzing by at speeds too fast to take everything in, everything is slowed down to the point where you can walk right round the events as they unfold, and see them in three dimensions, like one of those exploded diagrams of car engines. You can peer into the drawers in all the rooms, you can poke around the piles of rubbish in 3 Gambier Terrace or stick your head through the bedroom door of 20 Forthlin Road and overhear something interesting, do you recognise it ? Is it I’ll be On My Way? And is that one Hello Little Girl? There are fights, divorces, pregnancies, friendships, betrayals, cruelties, goodheartedness, viciousness, wit, boorishness, nothing papered over, everything admitted.
When I heard about this book I thought : yes, it will have all the facts, it will be the complete story, but will you be able to read it? How do we know that Mark Lewisohn can actually write? It takes more than a giant Beatle database to make a good book. Well, this is no Ellman’s-James-Joyce and probably not even Guralnik’s-Elvis but it’s just fine. He’s infinitely affable without being ingratiating; it’s like being in the company of an openhearted friend. Occasionally he can turn in a sentence like :
The show’s second half had the professional talent, and here at last was Gene Vincent – gut full of liquor, eyes full of mania, body full of pain – throwing himself about the stage in psychotically energetic defiance of his injuries and grief, just seventeen nights after surviving the death crash.
But more typical Lewisentences are :
Stuart so enjoyed Astrid’s black leather suit – the tight trousers and jacket – that she arranged to have an identical pair tailor –made for him. This was done at Hamburger Ledermodern, a smart, expensive leather store downtown, and it cost her DM1500 (about £128).
This book may be unique in one other respect too – no one will read it unless they want to know the arse end of every last possible Beatle fact, and so no reader will be disappointed. Can’t see anyone throwing it down on page 450 saying “Oh God, this is too much!” – if you don’t want nearly 1000 pages about the young pre-fame Beatles, then this is not the Christmas present for you, because that it what this is.
SUPERSTRINGS
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You can tell that the Beatles were committed. The first 400 pages of Tune In is the story of them gradually burning all their bridges, leaving school, or being thrown out, with no qualifications (McCartney got one single A level). They were going to be in a rock band or they were going to end up as van drivers and building site labourers. They were deadbeats, the despair of their parents. At the beginning of 1960 they weren’t even in the top five groups in Liverpool. And the continual merry-go-round of members, never being able to find bass players or drummers, so that by mid 1960, they had John’s friend Stu on bass because he could afford to buy one and he was John’s friend, otherwise he had never played an instrument before in his life; and some kid they didn’t know on drums because his rich mum had bought him a set – that was Pete Best. It was, really, pitiful stuff, a shambles.
In 1961, the shambles was driven in a van to Hamburg and there an alchemical process began to turn base metal into something incandescent.
In so many ways, the rise of the Beatles is as unlikely as the rise of Christianity, almost to the point where a person might start believing in divine tinkering. I do not mean to be Lennonanistically blasphemous, but it was not likely that a tiny despised sect of an obscure ethnic group in the vast Roman Empire should become an unstoppable force to the point where it took over the entire Empire. It was also not likely that a bunch of four scallies from a poor Northern provincial town who were only the 12th best group in Liverpool in 1959 (out of 18) should become an unstoppable force and take over a large part of the world within a few years. I wish to point out the majorly curious coincidence of three brilliant songwriters being born at roughly the same time in the same city, and ending up in the same group. It’s one thing for Leiber and Stoller to meet up in LA or Rodgers and Hammerstein to discover each other in NYC, these are gigantic cities where all the top talent gravitates. Liverpool was the sticks. What came out of Liverpool? Ken Dodd and chip butties.
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The formation of the Beatles therefore lends considerable weight to the fine-tuned universe argument - which is in this case a fine-tuned Liverpool argument, even more of a case for intelligent design.
8% HAD A FRIDGE
Mark Lewisohn promoted his book by saying that there would be revelations at every turn. My daughter Georgia who is 17 and a Beatle fan because brainwashing really does work said “Oh we’ll find out they had beans on toast when the other books said they had egg and chips” – she can be a little dismissive – but yes, I wouldn’t call this book rammed with explosive myth-busting info – but here is the full detail, all the twists and shouts, and there are a whole lot of curious crannies to the story, and every one is filled in and made to fit with all the other elements. As you read you can hear the cogs and gear wheels clicking in to place to create the gestalt event known as The Beatles – first John, then John brings in Paul, then Paul brings in George, then George brings in Ringo; Hamburg – click; the haircut, click; the manager, clackclack; the suits, click clack, whirr hummm; meanwhile offstage, a vast population of 10 and 11 year old kids waiting to become 13 and 14 year old kids when they will all go off their heads at the sight of what was, during the course of these 870 pages not counting the notes and index, being assembled, by means of unerring improvisation.
Mr Lewisohn also remarks on his website that he likes to think of this book as a social history of England with the Beatles at the centre. I see what he means. This must be the most detailed account of English provincial working class day to day life from the 40s to the 60s, as refracted through the lives of six or so scuffling wannabe pop musicians. The fags, the boozers (Ringo : “My parents were alcoholics and I didn’t realise it.”), the kneetremblers, the scouse, the unrelieved poverty of these lives. In 1960 only 18% of British households had a washing machine. And as for the refrigerator - by 1950 90% of American homes had one. By 1960, only 8% of British homes did.
In this story there is a lot of people not getting on with each other. J P & G did not get on with Pete Best, whose fans, when he was sacked, stomped and yelled “Pete Best forever, Ringo never” whilst standing in front of Ringo when he played his first Beatles gig. They were banned from various venues in Liverpool because of loutish behaviour and missing the odd concert. Mimi fell out with Julia and hated Cynthia. Paul was frosty with Brian for a while. And all parents disliked and feared John Lennon. But all of that, that’s life. Also part of life is death, and they got their fair share of people dying on them, from parents (Julia and Mary) to heroes (Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran) to Stuart Sutcliffe.
I NEVER LIKED IT
The chronology is startling. ML points out that their first night in Hamburg, 17 August 1960, was the exact 20th anniversary of the first Nazi attack on Liverpool. He can’t resist a little bit of preaching at this point, and I can’t resist quoting it :
Rock and roll music was taken to Hamburg by the children of the survivors, to be heard in turn by the children who’d outlived the Allies’ revenge blitz of 1943. Scorned by adult society as a force for evil and the work of the devil, black rhythm music out of America – and before there, of course, out of Africa – was bringing harmony where once had been hatred.
Well, yeah, harmony and fistfights!
Coming in at the tail end of this Brobdingnagian biography, they actually manage to release a record, Love Me Do, which I never liked, and neither did George Martin. It’s a pretty feeble song. The following year was when the music suddenly went up a few gears, and we’ll get that story in another 5 or 10 years when volume 2 comes out. But I suspect this book will be the best of the three. Wonderful stuff....more
Being a fan is a hapless thing. I’ve been a fan of a few musicians in my time. You can tell you’re a fan because you have to have everything pretty muBeing a fan is a hapless thing. I’ve been a fan of a few musicians in my time. You can tell you’re a fan because you have to have everything pretty much. All the albums, all the stuff that was never on an album, the bootlegs, the videos, the bootleg videos, the books, the ephemera, the badges, stickers, life-sized cutouts, all of that junk. Okay, I was never quite like that, but I have been pretty much a music completist of several bands and artists. When it’s someone like Jimmie Rodgers, the Singing Brakeman, being a completist is easy peasy lemon squeezy, you just buy the 6 cd complete works and the biography by Nolan Porterfield, and the memoir by Carrie Rodgers and you’re done. Being a Beatle fan, though, is a life sentence. It’s something I may need to get counselling about. I mean, I should not be buying a book like this one – Fab Four FAQ indeed.
Books like this – and there are many, many others – are like Pringles or ginger biscuits – an hour goes by and my god, they’re gone how could I have that was disgraceful the whole packet by yourself and you didn’t even notice it was like you were in this daze or fugue state and two thousand calories passed into your welcoming orifice. If only I was bulemic and could vomit forth all the Beatle books I have read. Bleurrrghhhh – out would gush Mick Jagger singing in the crowd in All You need is Love, Jane Asher telling the world the engagement was off, out would spew the giggling Maharishi and the Indian 78s of Love Me Do, pictures of Patti Boyd and her equally swinging sister posing for Mademoiselle, April 1967 issue, David Mason’s piccolo trumpet, the noise only dogs can hear on the run-out groove, cranberry sauce, Brian Epstein’s rough trade, the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, about eleven fifth Beatles, Cilla Black’s screech, Mary Hopkin’s minidresses, bonfires in Alabama, Aunt Mimi’s false teeth, Stu Sutcliffe’s paintings, Astrud Kirchner’s photographs, Lizzie Bravo and Gayleen Pease, and an apple scruff drowing helplessly in a gloopy psychedelic stream of reverbed, vari-speeded, tape-looped flanging ending in a giant E chord in which the very heartbeat of the universe can be monitored if you shove your head up close enough.
Well, I only read the last half, to see what jolly Bob Spitz could do with the tale of hippy woe which is the decline & fall of the four jolly boys. IWell, I only read the last half, to see what jolly Bob Spitz could do with the tale of hippy woe which is the decline & fall of the four jolly boys. I was expecting a whole lot of fun to be had in the style of Bob's outrageous biography of the other Bob, Dylan. In that one, Spitz makes up whole conversations, assumes things when he hasn't got any facts or sources, jumps into Dylan's head to riff on what he "probably" would have been thinking, kicks him when he's down, and all in all has a right good laugh. But in this Beatles tome disappointingly he plays it completely straight. So it comes off as pretty good, pretty comprehensive, nothing that you didn't already know but you can probably give half of your other Beatles books to Oxfam now because it's all in here....more
This is as close to a ghost-written autobiography as you'll get and is a companion - and riposte - to the giant Lennon Remembers Rolling Stone interThis is as close to a ghost-written autobiography as you'll get and is a companion - and riposte - to the giant Lennon Remembers Rolling Stone interviews (essential reading, even for non-Beatle fans). So old Macca comes across as being heartily sick of the Saint Lennon myth and decides to give his version of events - yes, McCartney was a rocker too, yes, he was avant-garde too blah blah. All quite true.
One thing the world isn't short of : unnecessary Beatle books.
I didn't even want to read this! I just remembered! A friend of ours left it here! I just picked it up and thought oh I wonder what he says about Yoko... and why did he think he had to sue the others in 1970.. etc etc.
I saw another book on the Beatles right there on the shelf in the shop next to 45 others.. I went home and I sat down at my white piano and sang
ImaginI saw another book on the Beatles right there on the shelf in the shop next to 45 others.. I went home and I sat down at my white piano and sang
Imagine no more films, plays or books about John Lennon or the Beatles It's easy if you try Nothing to groan at or queue for No more tickets to buy Imagine all the people that read books about music Watching and reading something else instead Ah, you-oo-ooo - you may say I'm a dreamer But I'm not the only one I hope someday you will join us And the world will be a slightly better place
I wrote a review which was the usual incisive disquisition not on the actual book but on the topic the book was about, namely Beatles lyrics, and as II wrote a review which was the usual incisive disquisition not on the actual book but on the topic the book was about, namely Beatles lyrics, and as I clicked on SAVE this hallowed website freaked out and fell over so my incisive disquisition was lost. But maybe I should stop using Goodreads as a substitute blog anyway....more
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