In just under 1,000 pages, Spitz offers a fresh, terrifically
entertaining perspective on the world's most famous rock group. The book
is packed with details and anecdotes that bring the Fab Four to life.
Immensely talented but humanly flawed, they created remarkable
music during an extraordinary time and were often caught up in events and
circumstances beyond their control. At first amused by Beatlemania, their
attitudes changed to horror when the roar of the crowds came to include
death threats, and obligations became unrelenting.
Spitz retells
many familiar stories: when John met Paul, the triumph in America, the
infamous "butcher cover" of "Yesterday and Today, the debacle in Manila
where the Beatles unintentionally jilted First Lady Imelda Marcos, the
Beatles-are-more-popular-than-Jesus comment, the remarkable response to
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, manager Brian Epstein's death, and
the breakup. Good though less well known is the meeting with Elvis in the
King's rented house in Bel Air, California; the Beatles, nervous in the
presence of a boyhood idol, were unsure about how to act and resorted to
embarrassing silence. Spitz's group portrait should now be considered the
definitive Beatles biography, especially for new generations of Beatles
enthusiasts.
Book review
The
uproar among Beatles fans about this book suprises me, but it probably
shouldn't. It reminds me of Ayatollah Khomenei's reaction to the Satanic
Verses: anything short of hagiography is seen as vicious, and anything
short of factual perfection is seen as unforgivable sloppiness. It is true
that the photo captions are inaccurate to the point of perversity (the
editor of these sections had clearly never even read Spitz's text, where
the same mistakes are not repeated). The book also bears the scars of
ruthless editing to get it down from a reputed 2700pp to a mere 850. As a
result of this, sometimes things that seem to be foreshadowed (for
instance, the Beatles first encounter with the Animals) never actually
appear.
Despite an earlier comment, I would say that Spitz spends the most time
on the Fabs early career, and tries to spend as little time as possible on
the painful details of their last two or three years together. Despite
another earlier comment that the book is a love-letter to Paul and a
character assassination of John, I must respectfully disagree. Neither man
emerges from Spitz's book as an especially nice person, but I found the
portrait of John elicited more sympathy. Maybe it was just easier to
relate to John's way of dealing with his problems, than it was McCartney's
relentless perfectionism and bossiness. Ringo comes off very well, and
George gets high marks for his spiritual development. What really brings
the book through is the storytelling. This book is about the men, not the
music, insofar as it is possible to separate them. It may not be THE book
on the fabs for all time, but it is a pretty good one for right
now.
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Author
introduction
Bob Spitz is best known for Barefoot in
Babylon, his eye-opening account of the Woodstock music festival. Before
that, he represented Bruce Springsteen and Elton John, for which he was
awarded four gold records. The author of hundreds of articles, Spitz has
been published in Life, the New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Rolling
Stone, Mirabella, and the Washington Post. He lives in New York
City. |