The Beatles

The Beatles by Bob Spitz - My interest in the music of the last half century or so comes from lots of different sources. First of all, its the music I grew up with. Secondly, Dan has decided that the Blues, especially from the 40s and 50s is going to be one his specialties. More recently, Carolyn and I are underwriting a series of lectures at the Uptown Theatre in Marble Falls by Clifford Antone. Clifford is the founder and owner of Antone's in Austin -- one of the premier blues clubs in the country for the last 30+ years. He's in the Blues Hall of Fame and knows just about everybody in the business personally. Clifford is giving four talks in Marble Falls -- he talks about the music and we hear and see samples and then an area bad gives about a half concert of the music he's talking about. So far, we've heard him talk about Sun Records in the first lecture (Elvis, Johnny Cash) and Stax and Atlantic in this week's lecture (Ray Charles, Aretha, Sam & Dave and, the greatest of all time - Otis Reading). (By the way, Clifford also does a semester long version of this class at UT where last year, before he started teaching, Dan was his TA).

OK - cool, but what does that have to do with book reviews? Well, I think that one of themes for this summer is going to end up being books about blues, rock and the artists that perform them. I've got books about Jimi Hendrix, Howlin' Wolf queued up and looking for a good one on Stax. In the meantime, the series of music books starts with an incredible biography of The Beatles by the music writer (and artist manager) Bob Spitz.

First warning about this book -- it's a big commitment coming in at 860 pages not counting the notes and citations. Second warning -- if your primary interest is the music itself, this probably isn't the right book for you. Spitz does talk briefly about lots of the music in the incredible Beatles songbook, but this book is mostly about the people. Obviously, that means mostly John, Paul, George and Ringo, but also others who played major and minor rolls in what is clearly one of the biggest rags to riches stories of the 20th century. We get good views of Brian Epstein - the disturbed son of a department store owner who became the Beatles first manager; George Martin - the guy who produced almost all of the Beatles records; Pete Best - the original drummer and, of course, Yoko Ono, who many people (probably incorrectly) accuse of breaking up the band.

You get to watch these amazingly talented teenagers come together to make music (and drink, have sex and do drugs). A lot of time is spent talking about the pre-Beatlemania scenes in Liverpool, where the Fab Four started and in Hamburg, Germany where they really honed their act. You get deeply in to the song writing of Lennon/McCarty along with the personal interplays, jealousies and battles among the boys and their hangers-on.

For those of us "of a certain" age who grew up with this music (the Beatles hit the U.S. when I was in high school), our image is of the suited, mop-haired quartet that we saw on the Ed Sullivan show. While our parents didn't think so, in hindsight this was a really clean cut group of kids, at least until they discovered LSD later in the decade. We believed that John and Paul were two halves of the same person and that George and Ringo were pretty much along for the ride. We learn about the battles between John's anti-establishment personality and Paul's much more ambitious pop focus. We learn that, George's guitar and, more importantly, Ringo's drums, helped changed this group from an entertaining club bad in to mega-stars. While George could be incredibly moody (and later a great songwriter), Ringo was just what he appeared to be -- a happy-go-luck guy who loved what he was doing.

The book stretches from the late 50s to the early 70s when the band broke up. It really is a bio of the group (and the extended group) that uses individual lives to provide the framework. It stops cold when the group stops - so the book doesn't cover anything about the post-Beatles lives of the boys.

Obviously, I really liked this one. The information was dense and, in looking at other reviews of the book, mostly accurate. I'll throw one freebie in to give you an idea -- there are actually two stories about how "Hey Jude", one of the best ever, came to be. They may, in fact, both be true. The song was written almost exclusively by Paul after the days of intense colaboration between John and Paul were over. John had recently dumped his wife Cynthia and son, Julian, for Yoko. Paul decided to be a friend a go out to visit the ex-wife and son of his partner who were being treated pretty shabbily. In the car on the way out, he created, in his head, a song called "Hey Jules" to console Julian. The words were later changed to be more generic. The other part of the story is that John always believed that the phrase in the song "You have found her/Now go and get her" was Paul's way of giving his blessing to the John/Yoko relationship!

In closing this really strong recommendation, I also have to tell you that Spitz is a very talented writer. This book, besides being extremely interesting, is beautifully written.