Reviews — Again

I just finished reading The Beatles; Off the Record by Keith Badman and I recommend it heartily to serious Beatle students. There’s quite a lot there that I haven’t found elsewhere. One thing I like is that he gives the questions and answers before and after bits that have been quoted by everybody and frequently it puts a different spin on it then it had when presented as a stand-alone. It’s a ‘heavy’ read in both length and information content and also has some very nice photos that you don’t see everywhere.

I thoroughly enjoyed a page-plus on the Mad Day Out photo session. They were/are interesting photos and the commentary from one of the photographers involved was interesting. There’s simply too much in the book to light on specifics and each of us will find diffferent things to be delighted with in any case.

I also recently got the DVD Composing the Beatles Songbook http://www.blastmagazine.net/dvd%27s/dvd%20reviews/composingthebeatlessongbook.html

They picked a dozen people, mostly musical folks and discussed John and Paul as composers. I have really fallen in love with it. I’ve played it twice, paying very close attention each time and I expect to watch it several times more. One thing that really turned me on is that one of the participants, Chris Ingham (musicologist, author, Beatles Academic) chose to really look at For No One, a Paul song that I had some time ago identified as an extremely insightful and serious song that has been completely overlooked.

You may not agree with everything on it, I certainly don’t but it does really add to an understanding of the music.

I apologize yet again. It’s obvious that I’m not going to be able to post regularly. This time it was health, family concerns and computer complications. The computer problems seem to be completely solved — at least as much as such are ever solved — and hopefully that will help keep the other things from having such a negative effect on my work.

A few quick book reviews.

The Beatles Literary Anthology; Mike Evans, Ed. I enjoyed this collection ofserious and not so serious writings about the Beatles; balanced, occasionally insightful and occasionally amusing. Worth bothering with by serious Beatles students.

Band on the Run: A History of Paul McCartney and Wings; Garry McGee. I give this a VERY low score on accuracy. More then a sentence here without acknowledgement are taken verbatim from either Solewicz or Flippo (neither of whom are more then occasionally accurate as well as being more hostile to Paul then not. It does have a few nice Photos. The chart statistics gathered in the back are interesting as his analysis of them. Very light weight and a good 20 years out of date.

Paul McCartney; 20 Years on His Own; Edward Gross. Except for a few nice quotes I havn’t seen elsewhere, copy the above review.

In My Life, Encounters with The Beatles; Edited by Robert  Cording, Shelli Jankowski-Smith and EJ Miller Laino. Another collection that in no way stands equal in interest to the above Anthology nor Read the Beatles. The ONLY book about the Beatles that plunged me into immediate and rather deep depression! A true loser in my opinion. Worn to transparency, they are the lost surviving examples of late-blooming pseudo intellectualists with sad, blurred pretensions of cool.

Paul McCartney; Behind the Myth; Ross Benson; The accurate subtitle would be “How Paul Destroyed the Beatles and Was A Failure Alone.” Possibly the ugliest of all the carefully chosen photos of Paul on the cover. The author is obsessed with the idea that Jim McCartney was what was wrong with Paul — a theory that gets old fast. his antipathy for Paul hints at a personal grudge. Among other problems, like ‘edited’ material offered between quotation marks and some untruths that appear to be the author’s own, it’s an inept hatchet job considered against similar books.

McCartney, Christopher Sandford.  It would be far easier to mark the true statements rather then the errors. Unflattering photographs abound He combines the prose of a WWII war correspondent for Hustler with the hysterical hatred as intense as the Pope’s toward Martin Luther. All in all, I wonder what the name of his failed garage band was.

Meet the Beatles, A Cultural History of the Band That Shook Youth, Gender, and the World; Steven D. Stark.  I strongly disagree with some of his sociological theories and many of the quotations  are grossly time-shifted — without acknowledgement of that fact. He attributes most jointly composed songs to John alone. Included are several weird “what ifs” that are completely pointless. He greatly overrates the “sexless” image of the early Beatles — which is NOT the way he came over to most young females! Not a bad read and he does have some interesting theories. Of the lot I reviewed this morning, only this and the Literary Anthology seem to me to be worth reading.

Some more book reviews

The Beatles, Unseen Archives: A very interesting book if you are particularly fond of Beatle’s photos that you haven’t seen before. Most of these were never printed from the negatives until assembled for this book. The text is more then a little sketchy and conforms to the Apple party line as seen in Anthology (which I unreservably recommend for the quotes from the Beatles and others as well as the photos.) The photo captions are good for the most part and reasonably good chronologies are included. As a Beatle picture book it seems to me to be worthwhile although I put the Anthology book and Rolling Stones Beatles book first.

Those Were The Days; an unofficial history of The Beatles Apple organization 1967-2002; Stefan Granados. I suggest this book only if you are truly interested in Apple and its ups and downs. While not everything is there a great deal of it is and some of it I have seen nowhere else. The author interviewed a great many of the people who worked for Apple except for Neil Aspinall and the Beatles themselves. Among other things, he presents a far more balanced picture of Apple’s failures and successes then I’ve seen anywhere else. It is a focused book and the four Beatles are not the focus, although acknowledged of course as the major players. It is also written in a serious deadpan style that will make it hard reading for anyone without specialized interest. Warning, I paid more for this book then I have ever paid for a used book before.

Apple to the Core; Peter Cabe and Robert D. Schonfeld. The 1971 whole truth about Apple. Well, the publication date is correct. Even taking into account that the book was written in 1970, the authors evidently didn’t bother to read Hunter Davies bio — or decided the newspaper versions were better. The only footnotes are to A Cellar Full of Noise, Brian Epstein’s none too accurate autobiography and papers filed in Paul’s suit to break the partnership and kick Klein out of Apple. They evidently did interview a selection of (ex mostly) Apple employees however, in at least one case they report an individual saying something inconsistant with that individual’s later book. I personally don’t think it’s worth the trouble of finding a copy.

The White Book, Ken Mansfield. A very nicely designed book with pages in an assortment of colors, occasionally with lack of sufficient contrast for easy reading. Thye book is more about Mansfield and Apple Records then the Beatles although he knew all of them and there are some interesting remembrances. As a person, Mansfield comes across as attractive and neither artificially humble nor proudly bombastic (as too many other Nems and Apple employee biographies have.) There were some things about Apple Records that I didn’t know although I read it after the book reviewed above. Few of the photos include the Beatles though some of them are interesting for other reasons. I do recommend it to those who are interested in the business of records but not necessarily to those who are Beatle fans.

Beatle Books I Recommend

If you are looking for a book about the Beatles because of a realization of what great music they made, begin with A Day In The Life by Mark Hartsgaard. It focuses on the music but covers enough of the life of the group to satisfy a moderate interest. The author carefully documents his facts and if he puts more trust in certain biographers then I do, well it’s a matter of opinion isn’t it? His commentary on the music is concise, readable for the non-musically educated and betrays less favoritism for one or another member of the band then most.

If you want to know more about the individuals who were members of the Beatles – but not ever possible obscure detail, read The Beatles by Hunter Davies. This is a well-written book with an added forward if you end up with one of the later editions (It was first published in 1968).  It is an authorized biography and Davies had a good deal of access to all four Beatles and most of the people around them. It was edited, in a few cases heavily, by the Beatles and/or some of their relatives (as explained in the commentary to the revised edition.)

During the live of the band, and for some years after, some facts about their beginnings, particularly details about John’s family, were deliberately suppressed. Given the world of 1963 this was an appropriate decision. Davies book reflects most of these limitation although there are some hints for the attentive reader.

For those who want nothing but the facts and all of the facts I recommend Mark Spitz The Beatles. Unless you are willing to wait for Mark Lewishon’s 3-volume history (2010 – 2020) this is about the best you can do. It is far from perfect but of those available, it’s certainly one of the best. It’s complete with 100 pages of footnotes, which I note the reviewers found quite impressive. Unfortunately, a fair number of debatable issues do not have any footnote and a large proportion of the footnotes are quite trivial.

If you are curious about what happened to John, Paul, George and Ringo after the Beatles broke up, the situation isn’t too good. The supposedly best bio of John is not only nearly as big as the Spitz book, it’s pointedly avocatory. Ray Coleman was a reporter who covered the Beatles during their popularity and he is very sympathetic to John’s point of view. I’m willing to take his word for objective facts but his focus is always as Lennon’s friend.

I think the best book on Paul is Barry Miles Many Years From Now although it does not give you much on Paul’s post-Beatles career. It focuses on the things Paul was doing besides being a Beatle and is written by someone who was there and a friend. Howard Elson’s McCartney, Songwriter, is the best of the books I’ve read that includes Paul’s post-Beatle career although it was written and published in 86 and therefore a good bit isn’t there.

I haven’t found a good book on either George or Ringo. The books I’ve read that attempt to follow all four of them after the breakup are extremely sketchy. I have to say that you’ll probably get more out of a study of their official websites and the better of the fan websites.

Review, Lennon In His Own Words; Lawrence

John Lennon: In His Own Words:by Ken Lawrence: Andrews McMeel Publishing: October 1, 2005. Beautifully produced, This Gospel of St. John the Rocker is a remarkable example of the highest quality of the printer’s art. The size is neat, economical and friendly to the hand. The binding is firm and colors definite and appealing. The dust jacket is well designed with a competently computer abstracted photo of the saint. The typeface is attractive and graceful while retaining perfect clarity and the layout well satisfies the eye. The paper is thick, creamy and lovely.
The introductory text is particularly to be noted for the even spread of inaccuracies – between one and three errors in every paragraph. It provides to the aficionado the unparalleled pleasure of exclaiming “Wrong, that was so and so at such and such a place at least eight months earlier” frequently enough to produce satiation. What more can one ask?

Review of Magic Circles; The Beatles in Dream and History

I”m sorry for not keeping up with a daily post for those few of you who have found this blog. I’ve been trying to set up the little bit of code that would let you request updates by email. Unfortunately, the softwear is doing something strange and I’ve asked support to see if they can fix it. Meanwhile, I’m going to stop frustrating myself and shall attempt to begin publicizing this blog a bit. There’s an incomplete subscription opportunity in the margin that is the trouble maker. I’m leaving it as it is for the moment in the hope that support will be able to find the glitch. Certainly I’ll do my best to get that and the feeds installed as soon as I can figure out the FAQs while I keep reminding myself that programmers aren’t writers.

I gave myself a few Beatles books this month and have read one of them: Magic Circles, The Beatles in Dream and History by Devin McKinney;Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2003. I looked Mr.McKinney up and the only biographical information I found is that he is “an independant scholar living in Brookelyn.” Google’s results indicate that he frequently reviews books, movies and music.

The book is driven by long, hard-hitting adjectives and surely crashes by faster than most tomes produced by the presses of a great universitiy. One problem with Freudians is that they become so relentlessly Freudian. Why is it that phallic symbols are always tall, straight things pointing at the sky? Seems to me the last four or five inches of a sun-warmed garden hose hanging off the edge of the porch looks at least as much like a penis as the Washington Monument does. But no, it’s always something tall, slim and straight like the middle finger pointing at the heavens.

One very strange chapter intercuts an account of the Paul Is Dead madness with the Manson murders, separated by quotes from a book titled Holes and Other Superficialities, a book by two philosophers managing to discuss the history of philosophy in terms of holes in things. Goes with all the phallic stuff at any rate! The reason for mixing up these two situations appears to be the author’s desire to call attention to the fact that both aberations were fantasies others have about the Beatles, not something the Beatles had anything to do with. Seems to me there really are less confusing ways to accomplish this. Paragraphs on some Beatle imitation songs got in there also.

This book is in very little danger of being ravaged by us fan-addicts for mistakes in the Beatlesl history as it relates almost none of it. The book is an attempt to find how much of the relationship between the Beatles and the events of the later 60s were matters of cause and effect and if so, which way it flowed. There are some good ideas in it although most of the best are in the first chapter where they tend to get covered by the author’s purile enjoyment of toilet references.

He makes a very valliant attempt to understand the 60s. but as he says, it’s impossible to recreate the feelings if you weren’t there. Unfortunately, he concentrates on the 60s types that got in the news a lot and the everyday lives of most people floats under his radar. Less excusable is his almost total avoidance of the feminist movement which is left off the the lists of ‘what was going on’ in almost every instance. That’s rather a sad omission as it and integration are just about the only movements that were successful in the long run.

I’m not going to recommend this book to anyone; it’s very difficult reading and information isn’t all that thick on the ground. He does have a few ideas and interpretations and I’m not at all sorry to have read it. It’s quite possible in the end I’ll decide it’s the funniest book ever written about the Beatles. Only time will tell that though. I’m still sorting through his suggestions to see if any of them ring true for me.