The Beatles: Get Back book (2021) | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

No problem, @Joe. It was the obvious thing to do. AG and I spent an hour or three trying to work out how to do it but just couldn’t.

I love how they set up these virtually blank holding pages that give nothing away, someone contacts the publisher and someone provides a “press release” headline description of the book. Wonder if there’s someone in a bit of bother at Callaway?

Thought it’s interesting that author and playwright Hanif Kureishi is writing the essay; at the time of the album and film’s release, a fifteen-year-old British Pakistani living with the aftermath of Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech, to which there were several responses to in these sessions, not least the early versions of Get Back . Obviously a Beatles fan though, one of his novels is called The Black Album, and in 1991 he wrote an acclaimed essay published in The Guardian, now available on the British Library website, published as “How the Beatles changed Britain,” Kureishi now calls it “Eight Arms to Hold You.”

From the British Library catalogue description:

For Kureishi, the Beatles stood for possibility. They ‘represented pleasure’. Their flamboyant clothes were ‘gloriously non-functional, identifying their creativity and the pleasures of drug indulgence’. But pop music also drew Kureishi in for its potential to create political agitation. Pop was a democratising force, breaking down social hierarchies and creating a new, exciting culture. Kureishi believes that ‘it is pop that has spoken of ordinary experience with far more precision, real knowledge and wit than, say, British fiction of the equivalent period’.

It’s a fascinating insight into the Beatles cultural and social impact, the old guard, within and outside Britain. I love this paragraph:

By 1966 the Beatles behaved as if they spoke directly to the whole world. This was not a mistake: they were at the centre of life for millions of young people in the West. And certainly they’re the only mere pop group you could remove from history and suggest that culturally, without them, things would have been significantly different. All this meant that what they did was influential and important. At this time, before people were aware of the power of the media, the social changes the Beatles sanctioned had happened practically before anyone noticed.

As to weight, remember Anthology has quite heavyweight pages, so depends on the paper.

I think we could have quite a few Beatles releases this year, and that’s before we get on to what will be done for the hated 40th John anniversary.

I could easily see in May…

Giles 50th anniversary remix [1CD];
Giles 50th anniversary remix deluxe [2CD];
Jackson’s “Get Back ” cinema release (followed by “exclusive” on Netflix or something a month later);
“Get Back ” soundtrack album [1-2CD?];
Super Deluxe Giles 50th including his remix, the Jackson soundtrack, and at least a couple of discs of additional outtakes to what’s new in Jackson’s film.

October we get to a DVD/Blu-ray release, this book is the companion to, and what we could see is:

Lindsay-Hogg’s remastered “Let It Be ” [1 disc] (and I have a ? over that, ‘cos it only says made available, and that could be as a bonus on Jackson’s);
Jackson’s “Get Back ” [1-2 discs]
Jackson’s Super Deluxe “Get Back ” [4-6 discs, including the remastered Lindsay-Hogg as a bonus feature).

Totally expected. While they couldn’t head off a couple of major articles in music monthlies that have added a little to what we know of the film, the book would give too much away ahead of the release. We had so much Beatles to look forward to this year when I started this thread back in January…

Just noticed the new thread title change and LMAO. Never expected it to be used, and was pleased to see the “(due August 2021 – probably)” version.

However, whichever of you naughty mods decided my alternate title was a go, I am hugely disappointed in you as well…

app=desktop