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Best Beatles Book?
28 April 2020
6.03pm
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meanmistermustard
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Dingle Lad said

meanmistermustard said

I have ‘The Beatles On Record’ and I read it so often as a kid I had to get my father to rebind it. Loved it.

  

The book by Mark Wallgren or the one by J.P. Russell?

  

I meant to write ‘The Beatles: An Illustrated Record’, no idea why I wrote what I did.

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Dingle Lad

"I told you everything I could about me, Told you everything I could" ('Before Believing' - Emmylou Harris)

29 April 2020
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Dingle Lad
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Gotcha. I have the book by Russell. It’s not bad. 

What is happening? And tell me how you've been.

30 April 2020
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RobGeurtsen
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Tony Japanese said 
I guess I’ll go back and look through these 10 pages. I’m mostly on the lookout for an critical study of the band’s music, but one that’s accesible for even non-musicians/ isn’t particularly weighed down by technical terms.

  

A good critical study of the band’s music that is not very well known but deserves to be a hit is “What Goes On ‘” by Tim Riley and Walter Everett. (The Beatles, their music, and their time) What Goes On – Oxford University Press , it has a great website that is a companion to the book: What Goes On – Companion Website

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Rob Geurtsen

 

I’m a hunter of footnotes. If I’m interested in a particular topic, I can disappear down a rathole of sources.
The Beatles Review of History

30 April 2020
4.30am
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RobGeurtsen
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Go get the Complete Beatles Chronicle by Mark Lewisohn and read about the songs by someone who actually cared to get it right and backs it with sources.
 

Thanks for the recomendation……I must get hold of the Complete Chronicles I feel like a good catch-up..Always sends me to the songs.
  

Oh guys, don’t go there… Lewisohn has admitted time and again he got so much wrong in his ‘Complete Recording Sessions’ book, and that is a big part of the Complete Beatles Chronicle… so if you really need correctness than please don’t go there. I love The Beatles Chronicle as the lay-out is still good, and if you like a really good publicity story than this is fine… 

But not much about the creativeness and all related to their art… 

 

Take care, stay safe, stay healthy

Rob Geurtsen

 

I’m a hunter of footnotes. If I’m interested in a particular topic, I can disappear down a rathole of sources.
The Beatles Review of History

30 April 2020
8.44am
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alittlebitolder
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I became a Beatles fan in 1976 when EMI released all the original UK singles again plus ‘Yesterday ‘ and later, ‘Back In The USSR ‘. The ‘Beatles Book’, ‘fan club’ magazines were re-released with an outer couple of pages, of current news of the solo activites, around this time and so I subscribed to those.

I think the first Beatles book I bought was ‘The Beatles Forever’ by Nicholas Schaffner, with the ‘Rubber Soul ‘ Beatles on the cover, in the late 70s, certainly before John was killed and I must have read it a million times! He was a young american fan, who saw them first on the ‘Ed Sullivan Show’ so he was writing from an American point of view and took the story up to John retiring, Paul in lift off with Wings, and George and Ringo’s careers becoming less important.

I was a teenager when I had it and can remember some of his opinions, but would love to read it again as I ‘know’ a lot more about the band now, than I did then!

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Dingle Lad, Beatlebug, Pablo Ramon
1 May 2020
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Dingle Lad
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These are all Kindle and I paid less then two fins for all three of them. I read the first one on paper a few years back and it’s fricking huge. It along with Beatles Anthology is one of the reasons I prefer Kindle now. Hunter Davies’ biography was the first book I ever read on the Beatles, back when I was thirteen (over forty years ago). The third one’s artwork reminded me of the art some of the younger members share so that was as good as a reason to buy it.

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RobGeurtsen

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7 May 2020
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alittlebitolder
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alittlebitolder said
I think the first Beatles book I bought was ‘The Beatles Forever’ by Nicholas Schaffner, with the ‘Rubber Soul ‘ Beatles on the cover, in the late 70s, certainly before John was killed and I must have read it a million times! He was a young american fan, who saw them first on the ‘Ed Sullivan Show’ so he was writing from an American point of view and took the story up to John retiring, Paul in lift off with Wings, and George and Ringo’s careers becoming less important.

I was a teenager when I had it and can remember some of his opinions, but would love to read it again as I ‘know’ a lot more about the band now, than I did then! 

I have just watched a clip on youtube, where George helps Ringo when Ringo played him ‘Octopus’s Garden ‘ in the ‘Let It Be ‘ film and was reminded of the opinion of Schaffner in his book ‘The Beatles Forever’ … he said that George may have helped Ringo, in fact they all might have had a say, but the result was that all the charm had been written out of the song! 

I don’t agree with that at all though! 

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RobGeurtsen
7 May 2020
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Pablo Ramon
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alittlebitolder said

I think the first Beatles book I bought was ‘The Beatles Forever’ by Nicholas Schaffner, with the ‘Rubber Soul ‘ Beatles on the cover, in the late 70s, certainly before John was killed and I must have read it a million times! He was a young american fan, who saw them first on the ‘Ed Sullivan Show’ so he was writing from an American point of view and took the story up to John retiring, Paul in lift off with Wings, and George and Ringo’s careers becoming less important.

I was a teenager when I had it and can remember some of his opinions, but would love to read it again as I ‘know’ a lot more about the band now, than I did then!

  

Me too!! I read it over and over until the binding broke and the pages spilled out. I was 10 years old when I bought my first Beatles album in 1977. 

I found a used hardcover copy of the Schaffner book on Amazon a few years back. In retrospect there’s some bad info in it, but that was before we had people like Mark Lewisohn applying their skills to the history. I’m still glad to have it on my shelf!

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RobGeurtsen
3 February 2021
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RobGeurtsen
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As a historian, trying to find the development of The Beatles story. What did we tell each other in the seventies. What were our sources?

Words are flowing out
Like endless rain into a paper cup
They slither wildly as
They slip away Across The Universe
Pools of sorrow, waves of joy
Are drifting through my opened mind
Possessing and caressing me
 
Words are contagious if composed well and find a perceptive audience.
Lennon’s lyrics in ‘Across The Universe ‘ encourage the belief that words of meaning and feeling, when spoken, can be passed on from person to the next just by the very sound of them …
 
Yet I am writing again. My review of the one and only Beatles historiography by Erin Torkelson Weber starts today on my blog: The Beatles Review of History.
We will touch on many books, trying to enhance, but also undermine, conceptions and perceptions of The Beatles historiography. The aim of the review series is to get a better idea about ‘doing history’, ‘learning from history’ and understanding that we don’t know much about The Beatles’ history, yet.
For me The Beatles’ story is about music. The music of The Beatles together and solo was the backbeat to the 60’s and 70’s cultural and political promise. The promise which we the people, we the fans felt. History should address that.
The review series is steeped in history, it started in the first week of 2021.
.
Enjoy the trip, it is going to be a methodological roller coaster through history and culture, and many texts.
 

 

Here is Part 2, ‘Failing the fans in the 70’s. of ‘a critique of The Beatles’ historiography’. In this episode I wonder why the sources fans used in the seventies are ignored.

 

Have fun.

 

Rob Geurtsen

 

I’m a hunter of footnotes. If I’m interested in a particular topic, I can disappear down a rathole of sources.
The Beatles Review of History

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