Requesting help from Beatles' fans

[Starfleet Engineer]

I want to get a good biography of the group. It doesn't need to cover post Beatles careers, but, if it does, that's fine. I was hoping some of you fans could give me a few recommendations on which are considered the most accurate and cover their career as a group best.

 

[Shazam!]

The Beatles Anthology?

 

[Bad Bishop]

I did a quick library search and picked one recent listing. I have not read it:

Can't buy me love : the Beatles, Britain, and America
Gould, Jonathan, 1951-
New York : Harmony Books, c2007.

The library database had 167 titles under Subject: Beatles. It's too much to sort through. I would leave it to serious fans to recommend the best books.

 

[Timby]

Magical Mystery Tours, by Tony Bramwell, and Here, There, and Everywhere by Geoff Emerick, the band's recording engineer), are my two biggest recommendations. I recommend them both because while Bramwell's is the best-written of any Beatles book I've come across, he's very close to Paul McCartney, and the book has a certain slant as a result.. Emerick's is an incredible read, as well.

The thing with Beatles biographies is that the really good ones, written by people who were there and lived the life, really only tell one particular side of the story. The other note is that, unfortunately, to my knowledge, there is no comprehensive account of the Hamburg years. Perhaps in years to come.

 

[Starfleet Engineer]

I understand the book by Hunter Davies is popular. He interviewed them extensively in 1968 and, as I understad it, the book is an authorized bio. It doesn't cover their entire career as Beatles, but anyone have an opinion on it?

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I want to get a good biography of the group.

Shout!, by Philip Norman is considered the standard biography. He does display a pro-Lennon bias. It's also out-of-date, written as it was in the late 70s.

Bob Spitz's more recent The Beatles: The Biography, is more balanced than Norman. It's also far more massive than Norman. Until Mark Lewisohn's three-volume biography comes out sometime in the next decade, this is probably the best word on the subject. It's certainly the best single volume.

Mark Hertsgaard's A Day in the Life is a good introduction, relating each album to the band's development. Ian MacDonald's Revolution in the Head breaks down each song -- how it was recorded, what it meant to the band, what it meant to the times. I don't always agree with MacDonald, yet I think his book is an essential volume. It's not a biography, however, though there are biographical elements.

Also of interest, Mark Shipper's Paperback Writer: The Life and Times of the Beatles.

I do not recommend The Beatles Anthology book, unless you're a collector. It's a nice book. It's a pretty book. But it's not particularly edifying, and it lacks perspective.

For individual biographies...

Philip Norman's biography of Lennon, John Lennon: The Life, is worthwhile. I find Ray Coleman's Lennon to be near useless as it veers close to hagiography at times (and it's rampantly pro-Yoko). Albert Goldman's The Lives of John Lennon is brutal toward the subject and sensationalistic, not to mention blatantly fictional in places. Until Norman's book came out, I suspected that the truth about Lennon lay somewhere in between Coleman and Goldman. As an example, for Coleman nothing of interest happened to John between 1973 and 1979, except for getting his Green Card and the birth of Sean. The "Lost Weekend" goes largely uncovered in Lennon, whereas Goldman chronicles the May Pang interlude (which she herself wrote about in Loving John). Norman brings some balance to the period, which is part of why Yoko withdrew her blessing for the book.

Barry Miles' McCartney: Many Years From Now is excellent, though it ends with the end of the Beatles.

I've read a George Harrison biography, Geoffrey Giuliano's Dark Horse, but I can't recommend it. It was useless.

I can't think of a Ringo biography.

 

[Kail]

I understand the book by Hunter Davies is popular. He interviewed them extensively in 1968 and, as I understad it, the book is an authorized bio. It doesn't cover their entire career as Beatles, but anyone have an opinion on it?

It's a good book, but like Anthology, you only learn what the Beatles themselves want you to know.

 

[I am not Spock]

Hate to say it, but I'm fairly new to the Beatles, believe it or not. I knew of them, of course, but I've only begun paying serious attention to them recently. I would like a good biography of their career as well.

 

[stoneroses]

I am still waiting for one to be written that is really up to scratch.