The Fest for Beatles Fans will be held in Chicago from August 9–11, 2024 at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare. Some of the guests who will appear are Billy J. Kramer, Mickey Dolenz, Randy Bachman, Freda Kelly, Chris O’Dell, and Steve Holley and Laurence Juber of Wings. There will also be other musicians, panelists, historians, disc jockeys, experts, and writers. Bruce Spizer and Aaron Badgley are two authors who will be there who have recently published Beatles-related books. Here is a roundup of recent Beatles-related books, included those from Spizer and Badgley.
The Beatles A Hard Day’s Night & More by Bruce Spizer (498 Productions) Happening concurrently with the 60th anniversary of the release of the film A Hard Day’s Night, and related soundtrack and non-soundtrack albums, Bruce Spizer has come up with yet another indispensable book on The Beatles. Along with Mark Lewisohn, Ken Womack, and arguably a few others, Spizer is one of the most authoritative chroniclers of The Beatles.
This new book is Spizer’s eighth in his recent album series of books. The eight books prior to this series, which launched Spizer, focused on the various record labels the group recorded for during their short time together in the 1960s. This is the fourth book in the album series in which Spizer covers multiple Beatles albums.
The previous books in the series covered Please Please Me, With The Beatles, Introducing The Beatles, and Meet The Beatles; Yellow Submarine, and Magical Mystery Tour; and Rubber Soul, Revolver, and Yesterday and Today, respectively. This book is focused on the British and American versions of A Hard Days Night, The Beatles’ Second Album, and Something New.
The beautiful hardcover book begins with carefully researched writing on the four albums and singles from this period, along with album jacket art, singles sleeve art, and a healthy dose of rare memorabilia of all kinds. There is also coverage of other music that was released and, in some cases, popular at the same time, along with details on then current movies, and further context on the news and cultural makeup of the era.
As in his previous books, additional sections included are fan recollections and, as always, extensive and detailed track annotation. A perfect hardcover coffee table book, reference book and musical history lesson, it is another must-have Spizer book on The Beatles.
Dark Horse Records by Aaron Badgley (Sonic Bond) There have been books about the Beatles that focused on the record labels they recorded for, particularly Apple Records. This is the first time a book has focused on the record label of one of The Beatles as a solo artist. This book perfectly balances covering Harrison’s solo albums on Dark Horse and the work of other artists who recorded for the label.
It is insightful in the way it details how Harrison grappled with solidifying his place in music in the 1970s as a solo artist and not a Beatle. It also offers a fresh new perspective on just how many wonderful artists’ albums were released through Dark Horse. There is no question that this is the definitive book on Dark Horse Records and a significant and singular addition to the growing history of George Harrison as a man, a musician, and even a businessman.
Paul McCartney: Music is Ideas: The Stories Behind the Songs (Vol.1) 1970-1989 by Luca Perasi (Lily Publishing) This book will very much remind people of the deep scholarship that went in to Jerry Hammack’s five books on The Beatles’ recording sessions. There is an astonishing level of detail in these 525 pages. This is a reference book often unmatched in detail and scholarship on Paul McCartney, and is the perfect reference companion to the Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair first volume of their planned, three-part biography of McCartney.
Luca Perasi is the foremost Italian scholar on Paul McCartney. This is yet another mammoth tome from him. This time it is a book on Macca’s songs from the beginning of his solo career in 1970, through 1989. Perasi previously chronicled McCartney’s music from the perspective of his studio recordings. Every album and single from the McCartney album through Flowers in the Dirt is covered here. Each entry features the song listing for an album, recording information, a detailed essay, and sources cited throughout the pages, rather than in a footnote compendium at the end of the book.
Each song includes a short essay, a shorter recording information box, and a box on the musicians who contributed to the given track. No other Beatle has had his music chronicled to this level of detail and it is doubtful anyone will achieve a similar kind of work like this on McCartney. Given that McCartney is the Beatle who wrote the most music and recorded the most songs, this is quite an achievement in terms of the extent of the music covered.
In Your Mind: The Infinite Universe of Yoko Ono by Madeline Bocaro (Conceptual Books) Yoko Ono, who was of course John Lennon’s wife and collaborator, became a key person in the latter lifetime of The Beatles. She has long been a misunderstood figure. Wrongly accused of breaking up The Beatles or being a major contributor to their demise, Ono’s true self has slowly emerged since Lennon’s death, but many misconceptions about her still persist.
In what must be considered the definitive biography of Ono, Madeline Bocaro has written a book that transcends not only being a Beatles book, but also being a book about Ono. This long, unconventional, often breathless account of Ono’s long life should once and for all dispel any notion that she was simply Lennon’s wife. The book reveals in great detail her singular place in the post-war avant-garde art world, her major, yet often quiet contribution to feminism, and her place as a multi-media artist with few peers.
It would not be an overstatement to place Ono the avant-garde, multi-media artist in the same company as Andy Warhol, Brian Eno, and Nam June Paik. While she has never been regarded as a peer of these artists who enjoyed wide recognition, her fearlessness, versatility, and pioneering works in art and music cannot be denied.
This is not a conventional biography and the author doesn’t hide her great affection and love for Ono. It is this approach, though, that allows Ono the very complicated person to come through. The use of Ono’s haiku-like quotes and even twitter posts reflect the simplicity with which Ono can make such grand statements easily understandable. The way Ono and Lennon used political sloganeering and events or happenings was also an innovative breakthrough.
Being ahead of one’s time can often be a curse and in the past, many writers and especially visual artists suffered in their lifetime for acceptance and recognition and to simply earn a living. Ono has shared some of these same challenges. This is an extraordinary work in how the author fully opens her heart to Ono’s often difficult, yet profound art.
She also shows how Ono influenced Lennon, way more than Lennon ever did Ono. This is a book that will take time for some to get into, given its length, scope, and singular approach to a lightning-rod figure. Over time, it is likely to become a cult classic of art and an extraordinary life.
I Saw Them Standing There by Debbie Gendler (Backbeat) This heartfelt memoir chronicles the story of a young New Jersey girl in the ’60s, who went from Beatles fan, to fan club secretary, to meeting her idols when she was teenager, to a lifetime in the music and media world that at times intersected with The Beatles.
This is not simply a fan’s note, breathlessly recounting her love for The Beatles as a young girl. This is a story about how The Beatles spearheaded a revolution that impacted many people’s lives and resulted in a creative world that instead of shunning women, embraced and empowered them.
The book reminded me of a somewhat similar and just as well-done tome, Diary of a Beatlemaniac, by Patricia Gallo-Stenman. Other recent books about The Beatles by women, such as Deirdre Kelly and Christine Feldman-Barrett, provide a fresh new perspective on the phenomenon that is The Beatles, which has often been too dominated by male writers. Add to them memoirs from Cynthia Lennon, Patti Boyd and others, and a more well-rounded and personal picture of the group emerges.
All You Need Is Love: The Beatles in Their Own Words by Peter Brown and Steven Gaines (St. Martin’s Press) Steven Gaines and Peter Brown’s The Love You Make published in 1983 was one of the first exhaustive and fulsome books on The Beatles, co-written by one of the group’s insiders and including enormous access to interviews with others who were there, either insiders like Brown, or those around the group and its time.
Gaines is a New York-based writer whose Philistines at The Hedgerow published in 1999 was a huge bestseller and his Heroes and Villains on The Beach Boys from 1995 is an important book on that group. Brown of course was one of Brian Epstein’s most trusted and long-running NEMS executives, who was also a key member of Apple Records. He is name-checked in the song “The Ballad of John and Yoko.”
Oral histories can be fascinating reads and unfortunately the literary genre has almost completely fallen out of favor. While many oral histories are formatted in chronological order or by a particular subject, this book offers complete interviews in no real order. The Love You Make, which these interviews were conducted for, was published after John Lennon died, so all of The Beatles are represented here except him, although all of the interviews in this book are drawn from many years of interviews, including from before the two authors started working on the book.
Maureen Starkey, Cynthia Lennon, Pattie Boyd, and Yoko Ono are included here, along with May Pang, but Jane Asher and Linda McCartney aren’t. Many others who were there in Liverpool or London, at NEMS or at Apple, such as Brian Epstein, Alistair Taylor, Queenie Epstein, Allan Williams, Bob Wooler, Dick James, Geoffrey Ellis, Neil Aspinall, Ron Kass and Allan Klein, were all interviewed.
It’s from this much-later-in- time perspective that makes reading these interviews even more fascinating today. Other than a short introduction by Brown, it’s all just the words of those who were in the center of the storm. This is a nice addition to the voluminous history of The Beatles and a source that will be used in future books on the group yet to come.
The Beatles on the Charts: All Group and Solo Albums and Singles Ranked by Popularity by Michael A. Ventrella (McFarland) For anyone who loves to be able to have an accessible compendium of how albums from The Beatles as a group and as solo artists charted, this book is for you. The author is able to boil all of this information down to just under 250 pages, which makes locating information easy.
The book presents a chapter each on the singles of the group, as solo artists, and on the albums. What follows is an alternate countdown, a Beatles challenge, a discography, and the charts. Adding to this are extensive label and single and album cover art throughout. This approach makes for a factual but also analytical approach and one that adds a bit of a different view that is informative and fun.
