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In just under 1,000 pages, Spitz offers a fresh, terrifically entertaining perspective on the world's most famous rock group. The book is packed with details and anecdotes1 that bring the Fab Four to life.
Immensely talented but humanly flawed, they created remarkable2 music during an extraordinary time and were often caught up in events and circumstances beyond their control. At first amused by Beatlemania, their attitudes changed to horror when the roar of the crowds came to include death threats, and obligations became unrelenting.
Spitz retells many familiar stories: when John met Paul, the triumph in America, the infamous3 "butcher cover" of "Yesterday and Today, the debacle in Manila where the Beatles unintentionally jilted First Lady Imelda Marcos, the Beatles-are-more-popular-than-Jesus comment, the remarkable response to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, manager Brian Epstein's death, and the breakup. Good though less well known is the meeting with Elvis in the King's rented house in Bel Air, California; the Beatles, nervous in the presence of a boyhood idol4, were unsure about how to act and resorted to embarrassing silence. Spitz's group portrait should now be considered the definitive5 Beatles biography, especially for new generations of Beatles enthusiasts6.
Book review
The uproar7 among Beatles fans about this book suprises me, but it probably shouldn't. It reminds me of Ayatollah Khomenei's reaction to the Satanic Verses: anything short of hagiography is seen as vicious, and anything short of factual perfection is seen as unforgivable sloppiness8. It is true that the photo captions9 are inaccurate10 to the point of perversity11 (the editor of these sections had clearly never even read Spitz's text, where the same mistakes are not repeated). The book also bears the scars of ruthless editing to get it down from a reputed 2700pp to a mere12 850. As a result of this, sometimes things that seem to be foreshadowed (for instance, the Beatles first encounter with the Animals) never actually appear.
Despite an earlier comment, I would say that Spitz spends the most time on the Fabs early career, and tries to spend as little time as possible on the painful details of their last two or three years together. Despite another earlier comment that the book is a love-letter to Paul and a character assassination13 of John, I must respectfully disagree. Neither man emerges from Spitz's book as an especially nice person, but I found the portrait of John elicited14 more sympathy. Maybe it was just easier to relate to John's way of dealing15 with his problems, than it was McCartney's relentless16 perfectionism and bossiness17. Ringo comes off very well, and George gets high marks for his spiritual development. What really brings the book through is the storytelling. This book is about the men, not the music, insofar as it is possible to separate them. It may not be THE book on the fabs for all time, but it is a pretty good one for right now.
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Author introduction
Bob Spitz is best known for Barefoot in Babylon, his eye-opening account of the Woodstock music festival. Before that, he represented Bruce Springsteen and Elton John, for which he was awarded four gold records. The author of hundreds of articles, Spitz has been published in Life, the New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Mirabella, and the Washington Post. He lives in New York City. |
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