Product Description

Find out the tricks the Beatles used in the studio, their songwriting formulas, the music they stole from others and the commercial compromises they made to get hit singles. This volume also aims to get behind the personalities of the fab four. Find out what songs should have been McCartney/Lennon rather than Lennon/McCartney, about their inter-band rivalries and how John Lennon and Paul McCartney sidelined George Harrison's songwriting.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1016751 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

From the Author
I decided to write Beatles For Sale, as none of the accounts of the Beatles music properly tallied with how I heard it or with how they recalled it.
John famously said that he would like to go back and re-record every Beatles song and referred to a handful as rubbish.
Equally no one had really tackled the issue of plagiarism in the Beatles music before and yet John, Paul and George have all openly admitted to it, indeed both John and George were sued for it.
I have only praise for Yesterday, Hey Jude, I Want To Hold Your Hand, Penny Lane, Something etc, but fans of Maxwells Silver Hammer and Rocky Racoon should beware.
Does this mean I do not love the Beatles music? Accepting someones faults is all part of loving them. A fanatic does not accept faults.

About the Author
David Rowley is an experienced journalist and has written for numerous national papers and magazines including Time Out, The Guardian and the Independent on Sunday. Last year he published his first book entitled Virgin Internet Auction Guide. He is a fanatical Beatles fan and runs the popular Beatles website www.sgtpepper.co.uk. David currently lives in London with his wife and daughter.

Customer Reviews

Poorly researched and badly written
David Rowley's book has more holes than a Swiss cheese. Rowley is quite obviously not a child of the 60s and his attempts to compare marketing techniques of early Beatle records with modern boy bands is simply ludicrous. Markets were very different then. Pop music was the preserve of the young - i.e. teens to, at most, early 20s. The Beatles - along with the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Who etc. - all aimed at the same market. The fact that Beatle music appealed to a much wider audience helped create the crossover market we have today. The two factors that set the Beatles apart from their contemporaries were the talent of John Lennon and Paul McCartney as songwriters and singers. It was, though, the latter that was more important initially. George Martin did not sign them because he thought they would be the 'greatest songwriters of the 20th century'. He was looking for the 'new' Cliff and the Shadows. In Lennon and McCartney he realised he had two rock and roll singers of exceptional quality and diversity. Listen to 'Money', 'Twist and Shout' and 'There's a Place'.
Rowley's book sheds little new light on the Beatles work and fails to set their career in context. It is poorly researched, littered with grammatical errors and offers no insight for fans, new or old.

They only did it cos of fame!
A provocative, direct, and interesting review of The Beatles' cannon from a post punk perspective. I particularly like Mr Rowley's proustian idea that a haircut might have inspired John Lennon to write 'Strawberry Fields', and his idea that Yesterday works much better as a song about death, than it does if it is interpreted as a love song is spot on. And there's lots more like this, although some of it could have been better expressed.

I don't agree with everything in the book (Mr Rowley and I obviously have different beatles music tastes - epitomised by his preference for Seargent Peppers over Revover, and his suggested single lp list of White Album tracks) , and unfortunately ultimately it is not as demystifying as the author convincingly implies in the introduction - a pity because I found it to be entirely concordant with Simon Napier-Bell's musings about the 1960s British pop scene in his 2002 semi-autobiographical 'Black Vinyl, White Powder'.

However as a Beatles fan who grew up under the cultural shadow of the punk DIY ethos and academic tide of cultural studies it made for refreshing credible reading.

What a wonderful book!
I read the book, after I purchased it a few months ago and was really impressed with not just the content, but the level of attention to detail, the parallels and contrasts and the overriding unity of music that this book demonstrated The Beatles music had with other music- it was definitely an insight- well done to the author! It was a good guide to all songs that the Beatles have ever written, but also its perspective is one which differs with other interpretations of the life of the band in that it suggests that they were a manufactured entity in fact, very clued up, and quite into making money- not the side we often hear about the boy band ,so it is quite a good insight for music lovers. It offers a fresh perspective but does not detract in any way from the simple and beautiful pleasure that one can derive from the band's music. So cynics, don't fall off your seats just yet, this is a book which takes into account not just materiality of music but how one can exist simultaneously with the other.....this is for a Beatles fan, so is well worth a look.