The beatles anthology
In the decades since the Beatles’ breakup, the group’s rise and fall has been told as a myth. It’s also been told via children’s story, salacious gossip, dry history, detailed diaries, technical manuals, cartoons, and graphic novels. There are volumes dedicated to their recording equipment, encyclopedias chronicling all of the music and film the group has yet to release, collections of the photos from before they were stars—basically, if you can think of an idea related to John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, it’s been published.
This constant trickle of books can overwhelm even steadfast Beatlemaniacs, but the greatness of the music has also drawn out greatness within authors. The best books about the Beatles rank among the best pop culture writing—and criticism—ever.
Along with the band’s massive, lasting influence on music, their narrative has a clean, dramatic arc, separated into three distinct acts, each of which is worthy of deep exploration.
What is the best beatles biography movie Oliver Jeffers 4. Includes a CD featuring an hour of Kane? Lennon himself carefully choreographed the image as a pose of protest, but it is now seen as tragic and strangely prophetic. It was 40 years ago — more or less — that a 22year-old broadcast journalist from Florida was invited by manager Brian Epstein to travel with the Beatles to every stop on their first North American tours.While there are certainly more than 10 worthy books about the group, the following volumes provide the foundation of any Beatles library. These titles offer richly reported history, incisive critical analysis, detailed accounts of the quartet at work, and insider accounts that humanize a band who are still often seen as larger-than-life caricatures.
Reading any one of these books will provide insight into a phenomenon that’s often thought of only in the broadest terms. Reading all 10 will illustrate why their myth only grows stronger over the years: Their story is always the same, yet always different.
The Best Overall Introduction
Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation by Philip Norman ()
Shout! was first published 11 years after the Beatles split and, more importantly, a year after the assassination of John Lennon, during a period when conventional wisdom began to settle.
The best beatles songs Features a foreword by Dick Clark less. Hal Leonard Corp. Ask him to come and see me. Braun nails the personalities of all four of the Fabs while also capturing the chaos surrounding them, and that makes Love Me Do!Author Philip Norman received no direct input from any of the four Beatles for the book, so he relied on research and first-person interviews with people who operated in their orbit, all of whom were ready to settle scores while keeping the fires of the Beatles’ myth alight. This perspective distinguishes the swift, thorough, and entertaining Shout! over its only other single-volume bio competitor, Hunter Davies’ official account, The Beatles, and helps place the quartet’s mercurial ’60s output in the context of that tumultuous decade.
The Definitive Origin Story
Tune In: The Beatles: All These Years, Volume 1 by Mark Lewisohn ()
Tune In—the first (and, to date, only) installment in a planned three-part biography from eminent Beatles scholar Mark Lewisohn—is the opposite of Shout! Where Norman’s book moves at a rapid clip, Lewisohn intentionally recreates the rise of the Beatles at a pace so unhurried, it gives the illusion that events are unfolding in real time.
Perhaps such deliberateness is the inexorable result of a lifetime spent researching the Beatles, but the remarkable achievement of Tune In is how it makes the group’s first act, which runs from before the band’s formation until the end of , seem like their most exciting era.
All of this is due to to Lewisohn’s decision to start his research from scratch.
In doing so, he finds that printing the legend has obscured the truth: Such worn stories like Decca Records refusing to sign the Beatles, how George Martin received his assignment to produce the group, and John choosing which parent to live with simply didn’t happen the way scores of books say they did.
What is the best beatles biography A welcome addition to Beatles lore. He was homosexual when it was a felony to be so in the United Kingdom, Jewish at a time of anti-Semitism, and from Liverpool when it was considered just a dingy port town. David Sheff 4. The book contains over images, including many previously unpublished photos of the Beatles.These revelations, combined with Lewisohn’s knack at illustrating how the Beatles’ rise was not inevitable—time and time again, they hit limits on their respective circuits, and Lennon and McCartney went years without writing originals—gives Tune In a corrective punch. If Lewisohn never completes the other two volumes, at least he set the record straight for what is perhaps the murkiest period of the Beatles.
The Tales Behind Every Song
The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions: The Official Story of the Abbey Road Years by Mark Lewisohn ()
Granted unprecedented access to Abbey Road’s vaults and tape logs, Mark Lewisohn wrote The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions as a sequel to The Beatles Live!, a chronicle of all the concerts the Fabs played.
That book splits the difference between fan service and scholarship, but The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions transcends such distinctions by providing a riveting day-by-day account of how the Beatles created their art. Alternate takes are examined in detail, along with overdubs and unreleased songs, many of which wouldn’t make it out of the Abbey Road vaults until the ’90s release of the multi-part Anthology, if ever.
Lewisohn’s skills as a documentarian give this book an enthralling narrative: The songs take shape in print as he precisely details them.
The Critical Analysis
Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties by Ian MacDonald ()
With Revolution in the Head, Ian MacDonald breaks down every song the Beatles ever released, placing each one within its cultural context while sussing out the motivations behind both compositions and covers.
What is the best beatles biography book On The Road Fab is the definitive portrait of McCartney, a man of contradictions and a consummate musician far more ruthless, ambitious, and moody than his relaxed public image implies. And included in the vast array of photographs are materials from both Apple and EMI, who also opened their archives for this project. In this captivating memoir, written over five years of reflection, Robbie Robertson employs his unique storyteller's voice to weave together the journey that led him to some of the most pivotal events in music history.As a critic, MacDonald is exacting and not overly generous: He’s quick to dismiss songs he deems as throwaways, sometimes ascribing emotional attributes to the Beatles that aren’t entirely supported by the text. But these critiques hardly diminish the massive achievement of Revolution in the Head, nor its influence.
It’s a sober, compelling read that frequently questions deeply cherished beliefs, a book that lives inside the head as much as it does on the page.
The Official Story (According to Paul)
Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles ()
After years of being painted as the soft, fuzzy one in the Beatles, Paul McCartney took part in this biography written by his longtime friend Barry Miles.
It relies on never-before-published interviews between the two mates and, given this tight relationship, Many Years From Now is as close to a McCartney autobiography as we’re likely to get.