Product Description

Tony Bramwell's remarkable life with The Beatles began in a post-war Liverpool suburb, when he became childhood friends with John, Paul and George. By the time he unexpectedly ran into George Harrison on top of a bus, Tony was well into a life story absolutely unlike any other. At Apple Record's insistence, Tony stayed with The Beatles for every step of their meteoric rise. His story has been sought for over thirty years, and here it is, detailing with an insider's shrewd eye the incomparable success and inevitable failure of the Apple empire; Brian Epstein's frolics; Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters; Phil Spector's eccentric behaviour; as well as never-heard-before stories about Yoko Ono. It also includes details of the early songwriting & recordings and Yoko's pursuit of John and her growing influence over The Beatles' lives. From the first number one to the last, this is a comprehensive and insightful account of the swinging sixties and the four lads who shook the world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #285046 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-01
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

About the Author
Tony Bramwell grew up with George, Paul and John in Liverpool, supporting them in business, and often in their personal lives. He was the UK's first independent record promoter and formed a successful movie music company. He lives in Totnes, Devon. Born in India and now residing in London, Rosemary Kingsland is an established author of fiction, non-fiction and memoir.

Customer Reviews

Oh Yoko!
Nice addition to the mountain of books on The Beatles now decimating forests across the world. Tony knew them before they were famous, before they formed the band and before they learned to play. Entertaining memoir with some anecdotes of the early years which haven't seen the light of day until now. The only downer for me was the relentless attack on Yoko Ono. Beginning at her first appearance in the story, it never lets up. Despite the Yoko-bashing, a recommended read for Beatle fiends.

Rare Gem of a Beatle Book - Advanced Beatle History
I love this book. This is a refreshing Beatle biography, from the standpoint of someone who literally grew up with the Beatles and socialized with them from boyhood. A gifted raconteur, Bramwell draws readers into a "sense" of each Beatle as a boy; what it was like to have George Harrison have dinner at your table; to witness George pulling a very dangerous stunt as a boy and being warned about John's questionable influence on his peers.

Bramwell does a stellar job of portraying a part of musical/artistic/cultural history that will no doubt delight inveterate Beatle fans, but attract the attention of those either becoming familiar with the Beatles or who have an interest in history in general. This book is really geared for all ranging from the "advanced" Beatle fan; that is, one who has a strong background in Beatle knowledge to people wanting to learn more about them and bring them to a high level of Beatle information.

This inveterate, avid Beatles' fan gives this work a hearty endorsement and a yeah, yeah, yeah!

Bluff and entertaining, but narrow-minded and shoddy
Tony Bramwell, his co-author and his publishers make great play of the idea that he was part of the Beatles' "inner circle". He'd grown up in the same area as them, so he knew them a bit, which is presumably why they tolerated him hanging around as a fan. Because he was such a dedicated fan, Brian Epstein hired him as a personal assistant, so he got to be part of the band's organisation from early on.

This book tells a lot of stories that I, for one, hadn't heard before. Bramwell claims that the Beatles were smoking pot long before the famous occasion when Bob Dylan supposedly gave them their first taste of the stuff. There is no other evidence for this.

More importantly, at least for those who are interested in matters of the Beatles' sexuality, he breezily dismisses the notion that John Lennon ever had any kind of homosexual experience whatever with Brian Epstein during the Spanish holiday that the two took together.

Bramwell says that Lennon said that he had 'allowed Epstein to make love to him "to get it out of the way".' Bramwell comments: "Those who knew John well, who had known him for years, don't believe it for a moment." This is, on the face of it, an extraordinary remark, because if Lennon was as "aggressively heterosexual" as Bramwell says he is, why would he ever have told anyone that he had let Epstein 'make love to him'? Surely he would never have admitted to such a thing. Bramwell is prepared to dismiss Lennon's own remarks on the grounds that they do not fit his idea of what Lennon was like. This says more about Bramwell than it says about Lennon.

Moreover, Bramwell's assertion that nobody else believed Lennon is simply untrue. Pete Shotton, who had been a close friend of Lennon for a lot longer than Bramwell ever was, recounts in his book 'In My Life: John Lennon' that Lennon told him how he had allowed Epstein to give him what I can only describe as manual stimulation (this is a family site, after all). Shotton's version of the story is considerably more detailed than Bramwell's, and his relationship with Lennon was far closer. Shotton is therefore a more credible witness than Bramwell, who was on friendly terms with the band but certainly not a confidant of Lennon himself.

It seems far more likely that Lennon, knowing Epstein to be in love with him, liking Epstein as a friend, and feeling sorry for him, would allow him a brief episode of intimacy and then tell a few close friends about it, than that he would turn Epstein down but then go around telling people that he'd done something after all. Bramwell's Lennon, a rampant hetero stud who was all about the ladies and who wouldn't ever fool around with another man, would simply not have made up such a story. Shotton's Lennon is more complex, more interesting, more vulnerable and more in keeping with what we know about Lennon. And it's not at all inconsistent that Lennon should take pity on Epstein, fool around with him, tell Shotton about it with a tone of rueful amazement, and then react with shocking violence when Liverpool DJ Bob Wooler teased him about the rumour. Lennon was a complex guy. Bramwell's Lennon is not: he's a cynical, rude, sarcastic bully and not much else.

Other reviewers have noted Bramwell's somewhat neanderthal attitude towards women, and his loathing of Yoko Ono, so I won't repeat what they've said except to confirm their assessments.

As time goes by, and the mountain of Beatle books grows ever higher, it becomes ever more clear that the quality of a Beatle book depends not so much on the degree of access the writer had to the band, but the level of insight, sympathy and literary ability they bring to the task. Tony Bramwell spent years with the Beatles, but his book will tell you nothing about them that you didn't already know. American journalist Michael Braun spent a few weeks with them, but his book "Love Me Do!" is one of the first and best books ever written about them. More recently, Jonathan Gould's "Can't Buy Me Love" is by someone who presumably has never met them at all, and yet it is by a long way one of the finest books ever written about popular music in general and this band in particular.

If the Beatle Bible ever gets assembled by some future Beatle Church, this one is destined to be an apocryphal gospel. It just isn't good enough.