Considering that it takes considerable organizational skills to be a competent Beatles bibliographer, it can seem downright intimidating to be a newbie standing in front of shelves full of Fab Four literature and wondering where to start. Because some boards bend under the load.
Filled with weighty works, intriguing digressions, gossipy trivia and dense accounts of what equipment the band used, who their tailors were, how many times a year they went to the dentist, etc.
Romantic partners have commented on the story/saga side; so do competing rivals, A&R managers, siblings, business partners, laid-off companions. There is a lot of mediocrity. But when you talk about hundreds of books, there are also first-class offers.
Orientation in the Beatles bookshelf
Philip Norman is a veteran of Beatles scholarship, and his monumental biography Paul McCartney: The Life offers a good opportunity to survey these shelves of Beatles literature. Here’s a look at 10 more of the best Fab Four volumes to check out.
10. “The Beatles, Lennon and Me” by Pete Shotton
The common Beatles story goes that the ill-fated Stuart Sutcliffe was John Lennon’s best friend until his tragic death in 1962, after which Paul McCartney became Lennon’s closest companion. But Pete Shotton actually fits this role better. He was there first, ran around with Lennon as a schoolyard bully and was present at all the things boys do with each other.
Lots of mutual masturbation, among other things, in this candid, very Northern English memoir. Lennon Shotton later bought a supermarket, and the latter was excellent at telling Lennon when the rocker was talking nonsense – which happened often enough. Refreshing, rough and infused with love.
9. “The Man Who Gave the Beatles Away” by Allan Williams
Williams is the titular character, and you never have to sweat how good, how smart, how cunning he is, because he tells you so himself all the time. He was the band’s first manager when, as he puts it, no one wanted to touch them with pliers.
Not many people can boast like Williams and still come across as likable, but that’s exactly what he is: jovial, shifty to the core, but sincere, like a comic supporting character from a Fielding novel who steals an early chapter or two. Of course, later riches elude him, but he keeps showing up and even plays a role in bargaining for the criminally underrated Star Club tapes.
8. Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Beatles by Geoff Emerick
Beatles producer George Martin turned in a nice little memoir with “All You Need Is Ears,” but his mid-’60s sound engineer Geoff Emerick passed him by in the post-career Beatles book game. Emerick was largely responsible for the sound of “Revolver” and “Sgt. Pepper” – in his own way, he is as responsible for McCartney’s bass sound at the time as the bassist himself – and the band’s sonic palette has never been richer.
Here he recounts how many of these sounds were created at Abbey Road Studios, and what could have been a dry list for tech fans pulsates with “Damn, I didn’t know that!”-style narrative enthusiasm.
7. Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation by Philip Norman
The criticism of this Philip Norman biography has always been that it looks down on its protagonists, but the author’s honesty is admirable. In fact, the most compelling Beatles books are those that you can mentally battle with, disagreeing with a particular interpretation, but still enjoy because it makes you think or reevaluate.
Norman guides his readers through these rewarding exercises, and he nails the Hamburg phase better than anyone. Anyone who wants to feel the spirit of the Beatles, how they toil and toil on the Reeperbahn, as if possessed – and pumped full of pills, desperate, manic – in order to get somewhere, to become good, to become better than everyone else and finally to give the world the triumph of the best, should pick up this book.
6. The Beatles: The Authorized Biography by Hunter Davies
The volume, which many mistakenly believe to be the first Beatles book, set a high standard with its openness. Published in 1968, The Beatles was for a long time the only place where you could find examples of correspondence between John Lennon and Stuart Sutcliffe.
Consider these lines from a poem Lennon sent to his friend: “I can’t remember anything/Without a sadness/So deep that it hardly/Becomes known to me.” This is Fitzgerald’s “dark night of the soul” territory, and it comes from a time when few people thought of the Beatles as anything other than hooligans.
Don’t let the authorized access put you off – obviously these were men who needed to get rid of some truths they had been carrying around for the better part of a decade, and here they are piling up.
5. “Lennon Remembers” by Jann S. Wenner
The Beatles have just broken up, and Rolling Stone founder Wenner sits down with Lennon for a confessional conversation that is at once a harsh attack, a spiritual cleansing, a study of how songs came to be, and ultimately a kind of lament for something that was the defining journey of a life and should never be equaled again. Lennon seems more hurt than angry as he throws stones at the stained glass windows of the Beatle world.
Ironically, for all the bravado, the book presents McCartney as the most talented member of the Beatles, reflecting a respect that Lennon clearly feels. It tells you – not always correctly – who wrote what. But beyond hurt feelings and cloudy memories, a clarity of thought emerges, almost in spite of the man himself.
As he says: “And the thing about rock and roll, good rock and roll, whatever good means, etc., ha-ha, and all that shit, is that it’s real. And realism gets through to you, despite yourself. You recognize something in it which is true, like all true art.” There is nothing to add to that.
4. “The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions” by Mark Lewisohn
You wouldn’t think that you could turn what is essentially a logbook of every Beatles session at EMI studios – with details of producer, engineer, songs, backing tracks or overdubs – into an exciting reading experience, but that’s exactly what happens here.
Lewisohn, whose monumental “Tune In” – the first volume in a three-part Beatles series – came out a few years ago, has never been particularly strong at explaining why a song works or doesn’t, but he has a talent for transporting you to a place. When you read “Recording Sessions” you are mentally sitting in the studio as the band starts the next take.
It was also here that readers first got a feel for the treasures that lay locked away in Abbey Road, for the gems that appeared on numerous bootlegs and further changed the understanding of the band.
3. “The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of the Beatles” by Peter Brown and Steven Gaines
The scandalous choice. Released in 1983, this gossip-fest was a huge sales success and provided plenty of dirt thanks to Brian Epstein’s assistant Peter Brown. Is it comparable to gibbon? No – it’s very clickbait, paperback style, but it captures the spirit of the Beatles as a unit and as individuals like little else.
You could even say as good as the Beatles themselves did. The band had a strange alchemy: there was something about them and their music that produced work that wasn’t theirs but was still very Beatlesque. The movie “Yellow Submarine” is another example. Reading “The Love You Make” feels illicit at times, and if any book can trigger a hookup rush, this is it.
2. “Revolution in the Head” by Ian MacDonald
It’s a pity that MacDonald didn’t write more – he took his own life in 2003 – but this work is significant far beyond the Beatles book repository. He takes on every song, and some sacred cows are led to the slaughter, never to return. One wonders how such dissections would be received in the Internet age.
MacDonald has no problem saying that he thinks some beloved works are weak – Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, for example – and that’s fine, but what’s more important is that he explains why. Do you have to agree? Not at all. It’s not about agreeing, but about experience: thinking, challenging old platitudes, seeing what you love in a new and better way. The teacher who changed your life wasn’t the one who handed out easy A’s, but the one who challenged you – and MacDonald is a tough examiner. This is the Beatles book you should read a dozen times.
Every passage brings something new. Furthermore, while Sgt. Pepper’s critical reputation has faded in recent years in favor of Revolver, Rubber Soul and Abbey Road, while The White Album and A Hard Day’s Night are also catching up, MacDonald simply understands this album better than any other writer. Even as he criticizes individual parts, he knows – and helps you understand – that the whole is something completely different and represents one of the key documents of Western civilization.
1. “Love Me Do! The Beatles’ Progress” by Michael Braun
The first and, in my opinion, best Beatles book is one that is unknown even to most Beatles fans. It doesn’t help that it’s often out of print, but this is as close to a ride with the Beatles as you can get: American author Michael Braun follows the band in late 1963 and through the early stages of the US invasion the following year.
Lennon himself highlighted this book in the Wenner volume as better than Davies’ – a real book that showed them as they were: as bastards, in his words. And yes, there is some of that. They make jokes at the expense of Jews, people with disabilities, gays. A lot of it happens in the spirit of letting off steam, and Braun impressively conveys the unrelenting pressure the group was under. In some ways they cannot cope with it and oversleep large portions of the time.
In another sense, they do what they do and write songs that no one can match. The Beatles wit is captured better here than in any other book, and if the four of them effectively formed a hermetically sealed unit with their exchange of blows in order to better face the world, then this is your opportunity to break that seal.
