Book suggestions.. | Page 3 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

haha! I love a withering review of a bad book! It’s pathetic, really, how someone with even the most tenuous connection with a celebrity tries to re-write history to put their own self at the center of attention, or spew out their decades-old grievances about people who are deceased or couldn’t bother to dignify their trash with a statement that only gives it more publicity.

Thanks for the warning – one might have thought someone like Bramwell could put an interesting narrative together without embellishment of facts or maligning others; there are enough fine books about The Beatles that a true fan can usually spot the bad ones.

When in doubt, try your local library!

Can’t Buy Me Love is an excellent choice, linkjws. Like you described, I put off buying this book for a Long, Long Time simply because I thought it would be too depressing to read about the ‘aftermath’ and post-Beatles years – but this is the one to read after you’ve ingested a few other books that deal mainly with The Beatles‘ history from childhood to breakup.

I’ve read Philip Norman’s Shout! a couple of times, and think it’s a very good source — for it’s time, that is. But at 30 (!) years old, I wouldn’t recommend it as a start for a newer Beatles reader. Peter Brown/Steven Gaines The Love You Make came out just a couple of years later (1983), and it was a lot more fun to read all the salacious gossip and tawdry stories in that one after the more conservative and scrupulously detailed Shout! A lot of people were talking about it at its initial publication, and the surviving ex-Beatles & their close friends were furious at the writers- and rightly so, in many instances, because it isn’t very flattering but probably more honest than not!

Back at the beginning of this Topic, Joe said, “personally I’d wait for Mark Lewisohn’s Beatles biog.” Well, Joe wrote that over two and a half years ago; it was due over a year ago, and Lewisohn recently said it will more likely be released around the end of 2013! I hope some poor soul out there hasn’t held off from reading another Beatles book waiting on this one. But anything by Lewisohn about The Beatles is worth waiting for, and the one I most highly recommend is going to be discussed separately right after I finish this.

Also from Joe: “I’ve heard very good things about Jonathan Gould’s Can’t Buy Me Love (which I own but have yet to read).” While there’s a lot of good stuff in this to read, Gould (and this is just my opinion) seems kind of “off” in his overall tone, like he wants to get it right, and he’s very sincere in his attempt. But when he gets sidetracked on something like the commercially-unreleased ‘That Means A Lot ‘, he goes overboard in his praise, hailing this ‘adequate’ McCartney tune as an overlooked masterpiece. I tried to catch some of his enthusiasm for this song as he went on and on about it, but I got the sense he was trying to come off as a ‘unique’ appreciator of music that the ordinary, ‘unschooled’ Beatles fan couldn’t quite comprehend. Gould didn’t just stumble on some hidden treasure that the rest of us overlooked – it’s like my trying to convince you that ‘You Know What To Do’ would have catapulted George Harrison to the pinnacle of singer-songwriting status and forever alter The Beatles‘ Lennon/McCartney dynamic had it only been included on one of their LPs.

BUT, I can’t not recommend this book, because of some passages that truly rival the best of the Beatle biographies – there is not a more riveting, or heartbreaking, event in the history of The Beatles‘ early years, nor a better description of it, than Gould’s recounting of how a very young, confused, and frightened John was actually forced to choose between staying with his mother and leaving with his father, right there and then, in their presence, when he hadn’t even reached the age of 10.

“I’ve also enjoyed Spitz’s biography The Beatles: The Biography, but I’ve heard some complaints about it. I thought it was a good read, but my eyebrows went up a couple of times, like when he made reference to “Harry the Horse” in the song “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite.” Would a real Beatles follower make that blunder? And shouldn’t the author of a Beatles biography at least be a solid follower of their work?”  Peter Weatherby 02/23/10

Again, I wanted to like this book more than I did. The 800-plus pages made me that much more anxious to dive in and get lost in it. I wanted it to be definitive and unequalled in it’s epicness. It wasn’t, and it isn’t. Not a waste of time, but not worth reading 800-plus pages that could just as easily have been edited to half of that without leaving out a single detail.

I have spent FIVE. HOURS. just typing this tonight. I don’t want to stop, but there are responsibilities and general hygiene issues I should really attend to before bedtime.

I’ll continue tomorrow, so if anyone wants to read more or avoid it altogether, just look for my name and three screens worth of words, always a dead giveaway!

I’m sorry, linkjws, in my last comment I mistakenly wrote Can’t Buy Me Love when I was thinking of You Never Give Me Your Money – Huge Mistake. The latter is far superior to the former, so let me correct this: You Never Give Me Your Money ‘is the one to read after you’ve ingested a few other books that deal mainly with The Beatles‘ history from childhood to breakup.’

There are some really sad moments in You Never Give Me Your Money , and some that will make a fan furious, such as this passage regarding three ex-Beatles attending Eric Clapton and Patti Boyd’s wedding in May 1979:

“…Starkey, McCartney and Harrison made music for the first time since January 1970 – drunken, shambolic music, but together nonetheless.” “Clapton recalled, ‘John later phoned me to say that he would have been there too if he had known about it,’ but no one thought to invite him.” Which is further proof that Clapton is not God – just an idiot.

The author also writes about one final occasion where John and Paul were going to meet, and Yoko prevented it from happening. I would look that part up in the book, too, but I remember being so disgusted when I originally read it that I’d rather not get all worked up about it again if I can help it. The book as a whole, though, is a great read.