Beatles biographies?

Another good new interview with our guy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0fXa1DTR6U

Watched Eight Days a Week over the weekend. Good fun, but not a lot of new ground covered.

really enjoying this book:

https://books.google.com/books/content/images/frontcover/8geICwAAQBAJ?fife=w300-rw

Some really entertaining anecdotes including Paul playing Tomorrow Never Knows for Bob Dylan before Revolver came out (Bob's response "Oh I get it. You don't want to be cute anymore."), interesting context around Yellow Submarine / infantilism in mid-sixties London and infighting during the recording of She Said She Said.

interesting -- jon savage also recently wrote a book about the year 1966.

Just listened to audio book of Barry Miles' new Zapple history. Very cool history but the Fabs - at least John, Paul and George - come across a bit assholish at times.

is there a worse contemporaneous critical body of work than the stuff written about the Beatles? Granted rock crit was in its infancy, but going back and reading reviews from the time (esp as the Beatles got further into their career) the amount of misguided invective and just retrospectively bizarre opinions is mind-boggling. Feels sort of similar to how Zep and Sabbath eventually got ret-conned into the canon at Rolling Stone - at some point critical consensus coalesced into acceptance + much higher degree of acclaim

(tbf this occurred to me while scanning the critical reception of McCartney's first two solo albums but larger point stands)

nik cohn famously panned both the white album and abbey road:

https://static01.nyt.com/packages/pdf/arts/nikcohn1968.pdf
http://www.nytimes.com/library/music/100569lennon-beat.html

and then there was this gem: http://screwrocknroll.tumblr.com/post/482115454/we-still-need-the-beatles-but

I know they got a lot of positive press too, but sometimes that isn't any better, as it's just vapid and adoring. Rolling Stone did p well in general, but some of the other stuff that was floating around is p dire.

Nice take on Beggars Bandquet in that first Cohn link though

i'd seen that richard goldstein pan of pepper mentioned countless places but had never actually read it till now -- i don't agree w/ most of his take on the album but it is actually a more thoughtful, less kneejerk dismissal than i would've assumed. i did kind of lol at this line --

Musically, there are already indications that the intense atonality of “A Day in the Life” is a key to the sound of 1967.

-- because it reminds me of the "maybe he's an early clue to the new direction!" scene in a hard day's night.

Golstein piece isn't dumb but it does reach bizarre conclusions. Like tying their aesthetic legitimacy to their willingness to be shouted at by masses of teenagers, for ex.

We need the Beatles, not as cloistered composers, but as companions. And they need us. In substituting the studio conservatory for an audience, they have ceased being folk artists, and the change is what makes their new, album a monologue.

I'm not a big Beatles fan, one way or the other, but I've got to give a lecture on them as part of a wider course on the sixties this week, so I've been digging around. I'd read both the Norman book and Revolution in the Head before, and had reasonable memories of them, bu returning to them....Shout! is wildly inaccurate about lots of details, which make you doubt the whole thing - Dick James had a office on the corner of Denmark St and Old Compton St? they don't intersect - Epstein wend to school in Beaconsfield, which Norman carelessly relocates in Kent etc. loads more. RitH is full fo journalistic cliche - McCartney and his celtic blood etc....everytime I read something now by the NM writers I grew up with I realise how bad that shit was.

I don't regret reading the first part of Mark Lewisohn's All These Years, will probably read the next volume when it's out. You can't fault him for accuracy, it's such a tome that any great insight tends to get lost somewhere, but still plenty I remember, especially as two of the Beatles grew up just round the corner from my mum, so I know all the places. The only real complaint I have is the way he tries to lighten the tone with bits of scouse slang, this really begins to grate after a few hundred pages.

nothing touches Lewisohn for scope and accuracy imo

agree

I'm just about finished the Lewisohn book. The nearest analogue in my experience is the Lord of the Rings — it's an astonishingly detailed epic, in a vivid setting (complete with map!), with its own dialect, amazing characters and a propulsive narrative that just builds and builds.

Been seeing Lewisohn commenting on Youtube in a couple of interviews that Vol2 won't be ready for next year, more like 2020 or later :(

Many Years from Now is a good one for McCartney's perspective.

I think I said this upthread but the biggest achievement of the Lewisohn book is re-investing me in their story. Like, I pretty much know how they met and I was still excitedly anticipating the moments when they meet up in the book. and peeling the mythology back to them being fairly normal teenagers etc.

Yeah, that whole "three guitarists, one amplifier" stuff put me right in the room.

Like, I pretty much know how they met and I was still excitedly anticipating the moments when they meet up in the book.

That was a big part of what I loved about the book, too. But also, there were the parts of the story I thought I knew being turned on their head, e.g., "George Martin heard them and said, 'not great, but not bad, I'll sign you'" is now "George Martin was having an affair with his secretary, which his bosses punished him for by forcing him to record a band EMI had only signed for songwriting publishing purposes."

To say nothing of "Japage 3" and all those other band names that pre-date the Qs

I thought the story in Lewisohn of "Love Me Do"'s climb and run on the charts was equally compelling and shocking in how much it had never been told before.

yeah i agree

https://open.spotify.com/episode/66u8d0xhy1mDMAxzpYkibZ?fbclid=IwAR0aRIrcVwMRiRfN27c9qX1LlkS2DTvzk82QTnt081KFJ2sKNd_tBNj2BXg

There's a first part to this, too, but I was just listening to this.

(Lewisohn on Beatles '69)

Thanks a lot for that! It's hard enough to wait for the next volume, much less whichever one will cover the final years, so that was a nice taste. I too tried to go through all the Nagra tapes but fell behind a day or two and never caught up. Here's hoping whatever companion to the Jackson film or anniversary sets will cherry pick the best of it (including conversations). Some incomplete but pretty interesting efforts here: Get Back to Let It Be Dissected and They May Be Parted. Definitely for the hardcore only, but I found it engrossing.

Thanks so much for that! I love Dutch radio DJ voices!

i think of myself as fairly hardcore in terms of the beatles, but close readings of the nagra tapes are just too much for me. can't get past the writing style on "they may be parted" or the appalling web design on "dissected".

Yeah, the web design on "dissected" is like a peek into a world where GeoCities still rules the net. And those goofy images!

fbclid=IwAR0aRIrcVwMRiRfN27c9qX1LlkS2DTvzk82QTnt081KFJ2sKNd_tBNj2BXg

I teetered on the edge of exploring those nagra tapes and then said fuck it I'll let the hobbit guy explain it all to me later

Lewisohn's narrative is kinda interesting, he's examined the nagra reels and suggests that the Twickenham sessions (and by extension, most of the events of '69) weren't at all as gloomy as history has made it to be, far from it, in fact.

i don't know, maybe it wasn't! what i've heard from the sessions is dire, miserable music, but they certainly could have been enjoying themselves while indulging in those terrible aimless jams! i mean i guess it's not actually _worse_ than "thanks for the pepperoni"...

kind of curious as to what lewisohn makes of "a toot and a snore in '74"

I enjoyed that They May Be Parted site but lol that 7+ years later and he's still only covered the first week of recordings