New beatles biography
With The Beatles
Description
“A well-structured and comprehensive volume with plenty of meat on the bones” Best of British
“A very well balanced overview.” Dave Cousins of the Strawbs
“Patrick Humphries is one of the all-time great biographers of rock music. Few others come close. His interviews with the Beatles are ripe for revival as they allow him to present a fresh perspective on this most scrutinised and loved of bands.” Colin Hall, author of The Songs The Beatles Gave Away and custodian of ‘Mendips’ 2004–2023
“A well-structured and comprehensive volume with plenty of meat on the bones of their rise to fame, artistic climax, subsequent break-up and history of the band members.” Best of British
Patrick Humphries was there for the 1963 tsunami of Beatlemania – he still has his Fan Club membership card. Today, he feels the Beatles’ UK origins have been overlooked for too long.
Inside With the Beatles:
Previously unknown details of the Beatles’ third film are revealed… Paul talks about the controversial Lennon/McCartney songwriting credit… George reflects on Beatlemania and Ringo on his skiffle roots… Plans for Lonnie Donegan to act as go-between to coax John Lennon out of his New York exile… First-hand accounts of Liverpool and Hamburg paint a picture of the Beatles’ roots, plus an exhaustive analysis of how their American breakthrough was achieved… There are fly-on-the-wall accounts of Paul rehearsing for a world tour… and the Beatles’ Love musical in Las Vegas… There are interviews with George Martin, “fifth Beatle” Chas Newby, Cavern DJ Bob Wooler, E Street Band drummer Max Weinberg and his memories of Beatlemania, and Tom Jones discussing plans for him and Elvis Presley to recruit the Beatles as their backing band… And the last words John said to Paul.
As well as telling the story from the birth of Ringo Starr in 1940 to the group’s break-up in 1970, With the Beatles also tells the story of how the Beatles’ brand c
Mark Lewisohn is the acknowledged world authority on the Beatles. His books include Tune In (which is the first volume in his historical trilogy The Beatles: All These Years) as well as the bestselling and influential Recording Sessions, The Complete Beatles Chronicle and (as co-author) The Beatles’ London. He was consultant and researcher for all aspects – TV, DVDs, CDs and book – of The Beatles Anthology. A photographer in the little spare time he allows, his work appears in the photo book An Englishman In Mons. He also explores his Beatles history research in engrossing stage shows, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Abbey Road in 2019 with Hornsey Road, which toured UK theatres, and marking the anniversary of the Beatles’ breakthrough year with Evolver:62, which was resident at Bloomsbury Theatre, London.
The Beatles have been in our lives for half a century and surely always will be. Still, somehow, their music excites, their influence resonates, their fame sustains. New generations find and love them, and while many other great artists come and go, the Beatles are proving beyond eclipse. So who really were these people, and just how did it all happen?
This extended special edition of Mark Lewisohn's magisterial book Tune In is a true collectors' item, featuring hundreds of thousands of words of extra material, as well as many extra photographs. It is the complete, uncut and definitive biography of the Beatles' early years, from their family backgrounds through to the moment they're on the cusp of their immense breakthrough at the end of 1962.
If you were a first-hand witness to any part of the Beatles years – up to, say, 1980 – or know someone who was, Mark Lewisohn would like to hear about it, and might want to include that story in one of his books.
Paul McCartney Will Hate Their New Beatles Book (Almost as Much as He Hated Their Last One)
Forty-one years ago, they published the biggest Beatles biography of all time — The Love You Make, which spent three months in 1983 atop the New York Times best-seller list. The book would make its co-authors — former Circus magazine editor and author of 13 best-sellers Steven Gaines and onetime Brian Epstein protégé and Fab Four confidant Peter Brown — into the most famous Beatle-ologists on the planet.
Also, two of the most reviled, at least by some guy named Paul McCartney, who was said to have been so outraged by the tome’s gossipy reportage that he set his copy on fire.
As it happens, Gaines and Brown aren’t quite finished with The Beatles yet. Last month, after decades of steering clear of the subject, they released All You Need Is Love: The Beatles in Their Own Words, an oral history of the Mop Tops based on hundreds of hours of old taped interviews Gaines and Brown conducted while researching their original history, including conversations with McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison, Yoko Ono, Cynthia Lennon and scores of others.
The Hollywood Reporter sat down with the two old friends and colleagues for a long and winding discussion about their new book (which hovered on top of Amazon’s best-seller list for a month even before it was published), about how they dealt with the criticism of their old one and about their theory explaining why McCartney hated it so much (something involving venereal disease and sheep).
Your first book was a huge success — it’s considered the definitive Beatle book. Why, 40 years later, write a follow-up?
STEVENGAINES Well, I mean, there’s so much interest in The Beatles. It never ended. And I realized that although The Love You Make is the biggest-selling book about The Beatles ever — it sold over 500,000 copies — ther Authorised biography of the Beatles by Hunter Davies The Beatles: The Authorised Biography is a book written by the British author Hunter Davies and published by Heinemann in the UK in September 1968. It was written with the full cooperation of the Beatles and chronicles the band's career up until early 1968, two years before their break-up. It was the only authorised biography of the Beatles written during their career. Davies published revised editions of the book in 1978, 1982, 1985, 2002, 2009, and 2018. In 1966, Hunter Davies was working as the Atticus columnist for the Sunday Times newspaper and had written two books, one of which was the novel Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush. Moved by the Beatles' song "Eleanor Rigby", he visited Paul McCartney at the latter's house in St John's Wood, in September 1966, intending to make the song the focus of his newspaper column. At a subsequent meeting at the house, Davies hoped to persuade McCartney to write the theme song for the film adaptation of Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush. Nothing came of this idea, but the pair began discussing the possibility of an official biography of the Beatles. Recalling their conversation in 2002, Davies said that there had been just two previous books about the band, "both paperbacks, neither substantial", and he suggested to McCartney that the publication of an official history would save the Beatles having to answer many of the usual questions put to them by the media. Through McCartney's introduction, Davies met with Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager. Epstein promised Davies full access to the band members and exclusivity over any other writers wishing to write a similar biography for the next two years. Signed on 25 January 1967, their contract stipulated that the Beatles had the right to make changes to the submitted manuscript. The London-based publisher Heinemann a
The Beatles: The Authorised Biography
Background