"Beatlemania: The Real Story of the UK Tours | Fab forum

I read this book on my kindle this past week…and enjoyed it to a surprising degree, despite the dozens of Beatles-themed books I have already read. This book focuses strictly on the tours down in Great Britain, mostly in 1963 as Beatlemania was just developing and there are literally hundreds of quotes from fans at the various concerts, as well as interviews with the other performers on the bills for these package tours. It was good to read how all of the other performers adored the Beatles as people and no one had a bad thing to say about any of them (although John got rude once in a while…) Also the different reactions of the originally top-billed stars, Tommy Rowe, Roy Orbison and Chris Montez, when they had to give up their spots to the Beatles due to the fan reactions…only Chris M. had a problem with it, and to tried to jazz up his act, taking off his clothes onstage, etc…in order to elicit crown response. Roy and Tommy just did their thing and hoped for the best, but the tours were hard on the opening acts, as fans often could not help themselves for chanting for the Beatles the whole time.

The books goes into great detail (sometimes too much, unless you are interested in every detail, as I am) about where they stayed every night, what they ate, etc…the author clearly did a lot of research.

Anyway, it had a lot of stuff I had not read in other books, which is a rarity in itself.

Great review…