Product Description

This massive new biography of the Beatles will undoubtedly become the definitive book on the band. Not only has the author conducted literally hundreds of interviews, sometimes with people who have never spoken before about their links with the Beatles, or have never spoken so candidly before; he has also told the story of their entire career, tour by tour, gig by gig, with an enthralling narrative drive. His re-creation, for example, of the Beatles' exhausting early years playing in Hamburg in Germany - performing set-after-set all night, every night, to often violent audiences, and living in squalid conditions at the mercy of rapacious promoters, is a tour de force. The book also casts new light on many aspects of a story which most people might assume has been done to death - especially by talking to the band members friends and family, as well as all those musicians whose paths crossed with the Beatles over the years. Here is Ringo's boyhood best friend, George's first girlfriend, Paul's first serious love (never before interviewed), and every one of John's art school mates. Here is Terry Doran, the Apple executive and George's confidante, who has never before spoken about that era, and a whole host of archival material never before consulted. It will be an essential purchase for every Beatles lover.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #448514 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-25
• Released on: 2006-04-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 924 pages

About the Author
Robert Spitz is the author of Dylan: a Biography and Barefoot in Babylon, about the legendary Woodstock music festival in 1969.

Customer Reviews

Not bad, but not definitive
To start with the positive - the first third of this book provides the best account of the Beatles' formative years thus far, and is everything that good biography should be - well researched, thorough, objective yet affecting. However, virtually all of these virtues are turned on their heads by the end. The latter part in particular,covering the years 1968-1970, is riddled with errors and inconsistencies, and there is a real feeling that the author (or possibly the editor) just couldn't be bothered by the end. Added to this is the irritating moralising that increasingly creeps in. No opportunity to pour vitriol, of a kind not seen in this country since the late 1960's, on the head of Yoko is missed. The author clearly feels that the Beatles were silly, immature young men. Whilst this may or may not have been the case, he clearly also feels that being in a pop group (albeit the Beatles) is far more important than being in a marriage (John and Yoko), and if THAT isn't a silly and immature attitude then I'm not sure what is. It is also something, of course, that John spent much of the 1970's attempting to argue down.
To sum up, whilst there is a lot of interesting stuff here (particularly the darker version of the tales of Pete Shotton), there are also a lot of mistakes and too much intrusion of the author's old maid-ish attitudes. We still don't have a truly definitive biography of the Beatles that accurately presents ALL the facts as they happened, and furthermore trusts the reader to make up his or her own mind. Perhaps the 3 volume Lewisohn which is in the offing will be the one? Sadly, despite a strong start, this isn't.

To make the Beatles seem boring is the main achievement of this book
This book is epic in size and ambition. Bob Spitz has spent a significant chunk of his life researching the Beatles and then pouring this information into hundreds of pages of prose. The problem is his talent, as a writer does not match Bob's ambition. Despite all the information, and this is almost certainly the most comprehensive study of the Beatles ever published, the writer comprehensively fails to communicate the excitement of the rise of the Beatles, to explain the genius of the musicians themselves and instead bludgeons the reader into boring submission. I am a Beatles junkie but this wore more out. There is simply no light and shade and no insight into the greatest cultural phenomenon of the 20th century. The main achievement of this book is to make an epic story a bore.

In fairness the sheer effort at leaving no stone unturned does uncover the odd interesting insight but these are submerged by the grotesque lack of editing. It used to be said the White Album was a good single album fighting to get out of a double - wrongly I think - but maybe this is a good and much shorter book fighting to get out of an obese monster. Bob Spitz clearly loves the Beatles but sometimes love is not all you need.

THE BEATLES - THE MOVIE...!!
A weighty tome that cries out to be the "definitve" story of The Beatles and whilst there are some nuggets of new early years information, it is woefully short of being the definitive story. It is possible that such a book is impossible to write although there is no question that extensive research has gone into its preparation - it's just quite fanciful in places and overly dramatic and often reads like a proposal for "The Beatles - The Movie". Mistakes occur throughout, particularly the picture captions. It is recommended for the new information but not as a definitive biography.