This was a long and dense book BUT I found it utterly fascinating. I have never read about the Beatles before so most of this was fresh new information for me. Obviously I know the songs and I know about Yoko "breaking up the band" but I didn't really know anything meaningful about John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Jonathan Gould write a dense (600+ pages) book about the Beatles career, discography, and the influence that it had on America and Britain. I also loved how he went into depth about all the songs and it made it fun to listen along while I read. It was a bit of a slog BUT I have such a bigger appreciation for The Beatles and their music. I'm getting ready to go on a road trip and this book has inspired me to listen to all their albums in order. Again this book is dense and it may have info found in many of the other Beatles books, but I haven't read them and don't know - so to me it was a great introduction! ( )

This is a decent book, although it doesn’t quite live up to the hype. It’s “a combination of group biography, cultural history, and musical criticism,” as someone’s said. It’s well-written, the author’s done his homework very carefully and thoroughly, it’s pretty balanced, and the musical analysis of the songs is unusually good. He assumes his readers know what subdominants and inversions are, which was nice for me but won’t work for everyone. But that’s a fraction of it, so no big deal if you don’t have that background. Arguably, he overreaches a bit at times, like in his application of Freud’s and Max Weber’s theories to the early Beatles phenomenon. Maybe also in what he reads into some of the songs. But it’s never ridiculous and usually seems pretty plausible.

He gives more space to the early years than the later ones, which is probably appropriate as most of us are perhaps less familiar with the early story. Brian Epstein is treated very favorably, which seems fair; George Martin’s treated pretty well. The boys don’t come out looking all that great, especially John, and there’s a ring of truth to it all. A highlight (for me, anyway) is Gould’s skewering of Yoko Ono, who looks horrendous, and that with a ring of truth as well. In the end it’s kind of a sad book. Beatlemania was nuts and became no fun for the band quickly. Imagine ambitious pop musicians stretching artistically while having to perform on whirlwind tours without being able to hear themselves due to the screaming, therefore unable to sing in tune or stay in time. Being mobbed everywhere so that the only options are the limo, hotel room or stage. Then going into hiding, becoming disconnected while the egos swell. And the drugs, the charlatan guru, their business affairs and management taking a nosedive after Epstein’s death. Then the boys trying desperately to work with their old friend, who’s become more hostile and anti-social while this bizarre woman’s bolted to his elbow.

Although their songwriting went rapidly from mediocre to truly and uniquely inspired, and though they became very rich, famous, and influential, their lives weren’t all that enviable. And it all took a toll on their friendships, families, other relationships, and characters. That part’s a very old story, but it’s still a sad one. (And one it seems we always need to be reminded of, and then we still don’t get the lesson – presumably that’s human nature.) Perhaps more than otherwise might have been, they influenced the rest of us to smoke dope, take acid, be irresponsible sexually, be flippant toward institutions, authority and convention – always, regardless of whether it was really appropriate. Which might be taken for granted as cool, acceptable or just ordinary in a post-60s world, but think of Kent or Cordelia in King Lear – maybe we’ve lost something of value with our mindless and incessant questioning of authority? (Would that it were actually questioning – i.e. a rational investigation – rather than bumper sticker substitute for thought.)

Not that the Beatles should bear all the blame for the dark side of the 60s counterculture and its after-affects, but their impact was so huge it's hard not to wonder whether it would have been less dark without the Beatles phenomenon. All the same, thanks for the great songs (especially John’s psychedelic ones :)
( )

If you are thinking this is just another Beatle biography with information we have all heard time and time again, think again. This is the best Beatle book that anyone has ever written.

At the tender age of 11 years old, I heard the Beatles on the radio for the first time and I have never looked back. Beatle records, magazines and yes, even a Beatle haircut followed. I have loved them all my life and I even had the chance to see them in the second to last concert they ever performed. One would think that my Beatle knowledge would be complete having read so many books about them but I have never asked myself why I prefer one song or another. When I am asked what is your favorite Beatle song I will answer instantly without thinking but never asked myself why, why is that my favorite? This book told me why.

The author Jonathan Gould is a former musician who has found a way to communicate with someone like myself who has no musical background. I cannot read music, although my teachers tried, I know nothing about the jargon used to explain the technicality of making music but in reading Mr. Gould’s book I could hear the music in his words. He painstakingly goes through every song and tells me all the reasons I love the song. This is something I have never truly thought a writer could communicate to a musically uneducated reader, how to hear music through the written word. Even though much of the terminology Mr. Gould uses while analyzing a song is way above my head, I heard every note.

If you want to hear music, read this book! ( )

Yes, I'm that person who "hates" the Beatles. Well, I don't exactly hate them. I like some of their songs, but I've heard them all way way way too many times. If I could not hear them for 20 years or so they might sound fresh again. In fact occasionally I hear one I haven't heard in a long time and like it - that happened last week with "Hey Bulldog". Mainly I hate how people, especially those my age, think they're the be all and end all of popular music. They're good, but there's a lot of music I like much more. I'll admit, there are a lot of their songs I do hate. Mostly ones by Paul.

So they came along when I was 8 or 9 and I instantly loved them and along with my friends obsessively listened to their records and argued over which was the cutest. But then I discovered the Rolling Stones and the Beatles went into the big pile of "other stuff I like". By that time my mom was saying how cute they were, like choirboys, and that kind of put the kibosh on them.

It's been interesting, as an adult, to look back on that time and learn about adult stuff that was going on. I knew Elvis had caused a ruckus but he was old hat by the time I was aware of music. This book describes all of that - the music that influenced the Beatles, the political and social zeitgeist. It has short biographies of everyone involved and how the relationships among the group functioned - how their original presentation of themselves as a group instead of individuals spoke to young people; how for a long time they each felt understood only by the other group members; the breakup.

It has a lot of information about how their songs and albums are structured, and about John and Paul's writing process, which I found really interesting. The author was a working musician and it shows.

I still don't want to hear any Beatles for another 20 years, though.

Things I have learned:
- John was the most middle class one - I'd thought he grew up in a slum, the child of a single mother. He fooled me with that working class hero album.
- Pet Sounds didn't do well commercially, though it made up for it later.
- I thought John sang "I Get By With a Little Help from my Friends".
- Richard Lester is American; Nik Cohn, British.
- The Beatles all admired The Band and their music.
- John was an even bigger prick than I'd though. ( )

The point of the book isn't really to be about the various personalities of the Beatles themselves, but more about placing them and their music in the context of the times, showing how they were influenced and benefited by what was going on around them. And then later on, how that influence worked in both directions.

In addition to that, there's of course stuff about the time in Germany, the making of the albums, the interpersonal issues and the ultimate breakdown of the group. Some of the more interesting things to me were the sections that actually talked about the music - assessing the albums and individual songs thematically and musically. I had never realized that "Eleanor Rigby" has only two chords, or that some of the other songs had lyrics cribbed from other people's songs, or poems.

In spite of the fact that it wasn't about the individual Beatles, I will say that by the time I finished the book, I liked John Lennon a lot less than I had when I started it. I don't know that any of them particularly come out covered in glory, but his flaws certainly show large in the book.

Overall, I enjoyed most of it but occasionally the story got bogged down in seemingly tangential facts, especially in the early parts. But it made me want to listen to all of the songs again and hear the various things Gould talked about, and that's got to be a good thing. ( )