I’ve been pondering how many books about The Beatles I’ve read and which were good. Actually they were all good. I would include books about solo Beatles. I’ve been guided by the Nothing Is Real podcast and reviews here and there so I’ve avoided stinkers. My favourites are Revolution In The Head, Dreaming The Beatles, Beatles ’66, You Never Give Me My Money, and Tune In.
I am listing everything I can remember:
Tune In, Revolution In The Head, Beatles ’66, Dreaming The Beatles, The Longest Cocktail Party, And In The End (the last days), As Time Goes By (Derek Taylor), Man On The Run (Paul McCartney In The 1970s), Lennon (Philip Norman, You Never Give Me Your Money, The Love You Make.
That’s 11 that I can recall. How about you?
Close bracket after Philip Norman, can’t seem to edit.
There’s this:
First 3 I read have a place in my heart:
The Illustrated Record – Carr/Tyler
The Beatles – Hunter Davies
Beatles Forever – Schaffner
Have also owned at least a dozen others:
Most Lewisohn (Tune In is a masterpiece)
Many Years From Now – Barry Miles with McCartney
Anthology
Beatles in their Own Words
Revolution in the Head – McDonald
Etc
Recently enjoyed a Mojo red/blue albums special, a compilation with a lot of great writers.
Also picked up Tony Barrow’s book recently in a charity shop, might be interesting.
Also Love Me Do – The Beatles Progress – Braun, my copy has disappeared along with a few others , bloody divorce …
In Their Own Words – yes, that’s the one I was going to mention. It’s terrific, but maybe I’m biased because it was the first Beatles book I ever read. It was my first great insight into who they actually were, rather than just hearing the music and staring at the album covers. (“You mean they actually SWEAR?”)
Yes to the above. See also:
And In The End – Ken McNab
1 2 3 4 – Craig Brown
Many Years From Now – Barry Miles
Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney – Howard Souness
The Sounes book was a strange on wasn’t it. He certainly, and rightly in my opinion, didn’t have much time for Heather, but he also didn’t have much time for Linda and, to be honest, I wasn’t sure he cared much for Paul!
It told the story, not any real new insights to be honest. But clearly told – did feel a bit contractual and detached though.
He’s been embroiled in a bit of a row with Clinton Heylin recently, when Heylin said his books are more hatchet jobs than biographies, but Heylin doesn’t really seem to respect any Dylan writer whose name doesn’t begin with Clinton! I attended a talk by Heylin a few years ago and had a brief chat with him, where I realised that a lot of the things he says that look a bit arrogant in print are actually said with his tongue in his cheek.
For me, Heylin’s obsession with Dylan facts, facts, facts gives his writing all the flair of a telephone directory. His persistent dismissal of Sounes and others in the Double Life doesn’t come across as tongue in cheek in any way. It is downright unpleasant and made an already turgid book pretty much unreadable.
I believe he is not the most reliable narrator
https://falsememoryfoam.blogspot.com/2021/06/beatlemania-dept-thirty-shades-of-gray.html
For several years as a teenage I read nothing but Beatles books. I bought every one I could get my hands on and borrowed everything Barnsley library had that I didn’t. The first one I read was Philip Norman’s Shout and then I borrowed Hunter Davies’ book from the library. Another early one I got was Beatles at the Beeb. I was desperate to hear all those songs they performed at the BBC. Eventually there was a special show on Radio 1 or 2, so I recorded that and installed Soldier of Love as my favourite track they’d never released.
About that time there was the 20th anniversary reissue of the Beatles singles, as well as a new Greatest Hits album, so a few more books started appearing, as well as the reprints/updated tiny Beatles Monthly magazines. I had the whole lot, but flogged them (add that to my vinyl collection, which was Beatles heavy, my Subbuteo and all my Panini albums on my list of things I wish I still had). The Beatles: An Illustrated Diary was a fave, as was Pete Shotton’s book. And release of Ray Coleman’s two volume Lennon biography was a major event for me. I think I’d read the first one three or four times whilst waiting for the second,
Love Me Do was as close as a book could get me to actually being there in the 60s. And I loved Lennon’s two books, that I picked up for next to nothing at a car boot sale. Epstein’s book was another I got around that time. Lennon Remembers, The Lennon Tapes and The Playboy Interviews were great reads and I treasured two books that were expanded discographies of The Beatles output (The Long and Winding Road) and then their solo records (Working Class Heroes). I used those as shopping lists. A few years later I got hold of a book called Fixing a Hole about all the unreleased recordings. I got that about the time I moved to Liverpool, but bootleg buying was very hit and miss. They were expensive and so much of it was of dreadful quality. When I was in my mid-teens the son of my mum’s friend was an even bigger Beatles freak than me. He was several years older and had quite a few bootlegs, so to get to hear (and tape) some of that stuff was so exciting. I wish I could nip back to 1984 and hand the hundreds of Beatles bootlegs I have now to the 15 year old me. I’d never have left the house.
There’s also a fab book by Rolling Stone called The Ballad of John and Yoko which I enjoyed, and shortly after arriving in Liverpool I went to a book fair at the Bluecoat Chambers and picked up two Japanese Lennon books for next to nothing. I got rid of most of my Beatles books a few years later (I would add that to my list of regrets, but I’ve since bought them all back!), but thankfully I kept those two, as I’ve never seen them anywhere else.
There were other books in my first wave of Beatles reading, but those were the main ones. I’ve since built my collection back up to a ‘more than I’ll ever need’ level. Funnily enough I counted them only last week and it came to 73. The ones I enjoyed most in the second wave (I.e. when I started earning enough to cover going out, going to gigs, going to the footy, buying loads of CDs, going to the pictures and still have enough money left to start collecting other inessential items that will eventually take over the house) were You Never Give Me Your Money, Can’t Buy Me Love: The Beatles and America, Revolution in the Head and The Beatles After The Breakup 1970-2000 – this was excellent, because, Lennon aside, I hadn’t previously forensically studied the other three, post-split. There’s also a brill book called The Beatles Gear, all about their instruments. I’m not a musician or a guitar nerd, but I love that book. There’s a Stones one too that’s worth getting, if that’s your thing.
The big problem with me and books nowadays is that I stopped travelling to and from work 9 or 10 years ago, so that was 4 hours reading time per day that disappeared. I therefore have hundreds of books left unread, cos I still buy them at the same rate. This includes Tune In and One Two Three Four, amongst other Beatles related books. I’ve recently had changes in my life that have basically left me with 24 hours per day to do exactly whatever I want, so after getting the last few bits of the new house sorted, making the changes I need to start reading this library that is my bedroom (seriously, it’s a bed and 9 bookshelves) is a priority. The list of changes is a very short one – 1) stop staying up so sodding late 2) er, that’s about it. So hopefully, if we have this same conversation in a few years time I’ll have another dozen or so Beatles books to add to my favourites list. I’m looking forward to reading the graphic novel The Fifth Beatle: The Brian Epstein Story, even though any fool knows that George Martin was the fifth Beatle.
I think they could both have that claim. Without either they would have got nowhere near the same heights
Fantastic! Welcome back, Paul…
Many of the above, plus ‘Riding So High: The Beatles And Drugs’ by Joe Goodden, and the doyen of these books, the latterly-reappraised ‘Shout! The True History Of Why John Lennon WAS The Beatles And Paul McCartney Wasted His Talent On Granny Music’ by Philip Norman (who, to be fair, has since recanted and offered a mea culpa in his McCartney biog).
Philip Norman said Macca has talent? When did this shit happen?
When he bumped into McCartney at some event and pleaded for him to endorse another moneyspinner, sorry, considered appraisal of one of the Fabs.
The pettiness of Norman in refusing to acknowledge the facts dug up by his one-time protege Mark Lewisohn’s research into Macca’s early life that had been unearthed in Tune In is quite remarkable.
I think he’s a knob, but his Lennon book is very good.
Not going to read any Norman stuff, tw@t
Give the Lennon book a try, it’s good. He’s mean to George (what’s he gonna do? he’s dead!) but Macca did actually collaborate in a small way. Bongo comes out well – this being the common denominator of all Beatles books, which arguably tells you something.
Nah, I heard an interview with him when it came out and he was very unconvincing. Plus I don’ t think I want to read any more biographies of them apart from the one(s) we know are coming some time in the next 20 years ….
How much of the NHS’s budget has been earmarked to keeping Mark Lewisohn alive indefinitely?
However much it is….. it’s not enough!!
I hope he was first on the list to get a vaccine. He is an essential worker after all …
Yes I think the Lennon book is good. He acknowledges the less attractive aspects of his behaviour as well as the achievements.
I absolutely loved 1 2 3 4. It felt slightly irreverent when so much Beatle-related stuff is increasingly po-faced. Also great that it shone a light on some of the outliers of the story. Poor Helen Shapiro and Jimmy Nicol amongst others. It wasn’t always fun to be in their universe.
Geoffrey Giuliano? Dude’s a nutter. And the books are terrible. Interesting, but terrible.
A Cellar Full Of Goys…
Out of Me Head.
A Spaniel in the Works.
… oh no, that was one of mine…
My first Beatles book was Philip Norman’s Shout in about 1984, so I would have been about 16. It wasn’t a great time for The Fabs, they certainly weren’t at their most fashionable, but I didn’t really care about that as I’d just discovered Rubber Soul, Revolver and The White Album. (Sergeant Pepper I’d known for years.)
With hindsight, Shout is a bit Paul denying to say the least, but as I was probably in the John camp I enjoyed it at the time, as the Macca of 1984 was, to these ears, the guy who put out stuff like The Frog Chorus and came across like a dreadful, embarrassing old uncle, who thought the kids all loved him. With even more hindsight I can see how stupid I was not to equate the Macca of the mid-eighties with the man who’d written so many classics. The stupidity of youth…
Tune In is my favourite though. Forensic, painstaking and beautifully written. Bring on the next volume please.
I loved the shorter version of Tune In. A great story well told. Tried the longer version later and gave up as it read like research notes.
I listened to Tune In as an audio book while taking the bus from downtown Ottawa to my place of work over several weeks, I started to look forward to those hour plus journeys. Amazing book. I have the extended version on my kindle but didn’t get around to reading it yet. Maybe I will do it just before 2nd volume comes out (if we both live that long)
Who was the reader? Out of interest.
Assuming it wasn’t somebody like Stan Boardman or Eddie Yates.
It was Clive Mantle, formerly of Casualty,
Good call. He was a great turn on A Bit of Fry and Laurie. Seriously!
He was good at doing all the different accents. Not just Liverpudlian
A couple of Beatles books that are a bit more niche but great alway
The Beatles Recording Sessions – Mark Lewisohn
Beatles Gear – Andy Babiuk
The first catalogues all their sessions with input from George Martin and all the engineers. Great if you want to know how they got all those amazing sounds. – also quite an eye opener to see in what order the songs were done, how the studio use changed from producer and engineers being totally in control, fixed session times and lunch breaks to being a much more fluid environment.
Beatles Gear documents all their instruments from they early cheap models they learnt to play on right up to some eye watering expensive Moog synthesisers. Loads of photos of iconic instruments, some archive and some of the specific instruments themselves, Epiphone, Hofner, Gretsch, Rickenbacker, Fender, Gibson, Ludwig, if you’re an instrument geek then this is really recommended
Ooh ooh yes, another thumbs up from me for the Recording Sessions one. I think it’s out of print now, isn’t it?? It was condensed and cannibalised into that other diary-type book whcih covered all their live appearances as well. But I prefer the Recording Sessions one – I dip into it all the time. It has Mark Lewisohn’s usual engaging writing style and attention to detail.
Great book. At the end he interviewed Macca and asked him what his favourite Fabs song was: Thumbs told him it was You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)….
I think 2nd hand copies of the paperback version are still fairly cheap
Essential if you’re the kind of person that wants to know Lennon liked his voice double-tracked through a Fairchild compressor and ADT was invented so he didn’t have to track his vocals manually.
Oohh… “Fairchild compressor”
*rubs thighs*
I’ve been a very dull boy, Miss.
Will it flatten your trousers?
Can you use it to make a cheese toastie?
I’m asking for a hungry friend with crumpled slacks.
Not sure about a cheese toastie, but oddly enough this is another revelation from the book.
There’s something quite reassuring that despite having enough money to finance a rolling 24 hour buffet of truffles, caviar and quails eggs washed down with champagne they appear to have spent their entire recording career sustained by beans on toast, pie and chips, cups of tea, Peter Stuyvesant gaspers and the occasional jazz cigarette.
Tea always supplied in those turquoise utility teacups that were ubiquitous in all British workplaces and public buildings until about 1990.
And tea did become the main reason for Pepper and heavily influenced the whole psychedelic era…
I’ve just ordered Craig Brown’s “1, 2, 3, 4”.
Hope it’s good ….
You’ll enjoy it. It’s a lot of fun and very informative.
Beatle Books and [something] hooks..
Brought this to mind
“Beatle bones ‘n’ smokin’ Stones
The dry sands fall
The strawberry mouth; strawberry moth; strawberry caterpillar
Strawberry butterfly; strawberry fields
The winged eel slither on the heels of today’s children
Strawberry feels forever”
I love what he does to his voice at “strawberry caterpillar” – like… “Wait, this isn’t weird enough, I need to take it up a notch”
‘Who Killed John Lennon’ by Lesley-Ann Jones is quite the feminist take.
I’ve got a few good tips on what else to read so thanks. I’m also reasonably optimistic that new books will be published and one or two will have merit. I think the one year in the life of the band is a good approach. So much packed in to a few months or weeks.
Wrote this a few years ago. Not a hundred per cent factual mind…
Nice one. Came across it the other day when searching for “The Beatles and Wales”
Cheers Dai. There was a radio adaptation too. I’ll see if I can find a link.
I enjoyed the Fab Fools book, the Beatles and ventures in comedy.
I enjoyed this one from their first manager, think I paid about a quid for it in Liverpool in 1980, now 90 quid!! Of course I no longer own it 🙁