Annotation:

The author was an attorney in the legal department of Capitol Records, involved with Beatles-related work during much of his tenure (though he is careful to note that this was not as plum a position as it might sound and does not give in to the temptation of exaggerating, or even stressing his role) and therein lies both the book's usefulness and limitations. Tillinghast is able to shed some light on key decisions made by Capitol during the era, suggesting, for instance, that the A&R department's reluctance (or inability) to recognize the potential popularity of the Beatles in America could be chalked up not only to the poor track-record of imported pop artists, but perhaps a bit of chauvinism, as well. He is also able to provide background on the decision to reconfigure British Beatle LPs for American release and negotiations with Allen Klein and Apple, an important part of the story of the Beatles in America, but the book is, once again, frustratingly shy on detail.

It is in his attempts to flesh out his narrative where Tillinghast falls far short of the mark. Firstly, the book doesn't lend itself to discussion of the Beatles' individual personae or interpersonal relationships - that has been done better and in more depth elsewhere. Secondly, Tillinghast gets basic details simply wrong: putting George Harrison's birth date in 1946 (rather than 1943), stating that Cynthia Lennon and at least one, unnamed girlfriend of Paul McCartney's travelled with the group on tour and speculating, unbelievably, as to why Cynthia did not undergo an abortion in 1962 rather than drop out of art college to marry Lennon. These unfortunate (and inappropriate) forays, possibly added to make what should have been a magazine or journal article into a book, add nothing, bring into question the accuracy of the facts he does relate, and put the reader quite off the whole exercise.

Melissa Davis

Source: The Beatles Bibliography: A New Guide To The Literature - Michael Brocken and Melissa Davis (The Beatle Works Ltd., 2012), with acknowledgement, and used here with permission from the authors for educational and historical purposes only.

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Another classic read!

This one is fully deserving of it's reputation.

...Some of the finest writing I've ever read, even in the Translated English - Very fluid style, and very poetic.

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Book Gets to the Bottom of Beatles Legends, Lies and Offbeat Tales

Bob Ruggiero, Houston Press, 7 August 2023

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Annotation:

A photographer with probably one of the largest archives of early and mid-1960s photographs, Dezo Hoffman's book John Lennon was published in 1985 as a luxurious coffee-table book. The work contains several interesting portraits of the former Beatle, most of which had already appeared elsewhere but, in some cases, had been chopped for other publication purposes. Following the photo collection there is a section entitled 'Captions', which provides further information on the individual photos. The overall quality of the book is excellent and the photographs are both revealing and mysterious. Revealing in that Hoffman certainly seems to capture the Beatles, and especially Lennon via his expert portraiture techniques, but also mysterious in that the gestures and proxemics caught by the camera remain elusive.

Michael Brocken

Source: The Beatles Bibliography: A New Guide To The Literature - Michael Brocken and Melissa Davis (The Beatle Works Ltd., 2012), with acknowledgement, and used here with permission from the authors for educational and historical purposes only.

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Annotation:

This is a most worthy addition to the Beatles library. Barry Tashian was a member of the support band, the Remains, who opened for the Beatles during the tour. Tashian also interviews very well and his comments concerning this last tour are of great historical interest. His suggestion that, to paraphrase, the modem day touring industry began as soon as the last note of that Beatles tour ebbed away is a perceptive and emblematic remark - recommended.

Michael Brocken

Source: The Beatles Bibliography: A New Guide To The Literature - Michael Brocken and Melissa Davis (The Beatle Works Ltd., 2012), with acknowledgement, and used here with permission from the authors for educational and historical purposes only.

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Annotation:

This text is almost recommended for its utter dreadfulness. It is probably even worse than Geoffrey Ellis's I Should Have Known Better, which is saying something. Robert Rosen was a 28 year-old New York cabbie and graduate of journalism school when John Lennon's personal assistant, Fred Seaman (later fired by Yoko and prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to five years’ probation for theft), approached him to collaborate on a book about Lennon. Seaman and Rosen briefly had in their possession the personal diaries of Lennon, but Rosen's notes were stolen (and the diaries returned).

Hence, Rosen does not base his account on anything more than his memory of the journals he claims to have read, hearsay, and imagination. Nowhere Man is certainly a work of the imagination (much more so than Rosen is willing to admit in the opening pages) although he does concede that 'I have used no material from the diaries'. What he writes therefore should not be taken as factual in any sense.
Rosen tells us of his attempt to get inside Lennon's mind and lifestyle, which turns out to be unintentionally funny: 'I ate the foods that he ate. I fasted. [ ... ] I lived as he would have lived, but without Yoko, without Sean, without a staff of maids, cooks, governesses, chauffeurs, and their assorted servant seers and personal assistants. I lived as he would have lived, but without his Beatle past, without his superstar present, without his $150,000,000'. The deluded Rosen was not living remotely like Lennon.

Rosen also presents Sean Lennon as a junk-food scoffing cry-baby and Lennon himself is portrayed as spontaneously aggressive, 'forever complaining about the disobedience of [housemaid] Uda-San and their servants'. For Rosen, Lennon's existence in the Dakota was a 'living death'; he wanted to get away from Yoko, but 'there really was no choice'. The book ends with a distasteful invitation to get inside the mind of the man who murdered Lennon: 'Imagine Mark David Chapman in Honolulu, Hawaii'. This text is utterly puerile from start to finish.

It should be stressed that the author had apparently colluded with Lennon aide, Frederick Seaman, resulting in his prosecution and conviction for receiving stolen property by Seaman as part of an elaborate scheme to defraud Ono; in other words, 'Reader beware.'

See also Seaman, Frederick.

Melissa Davis

Source: The Beatles Bibliography: A New Guide To The Literature - Michael Brocken and Melissa Davis (The Beatle Works Ltd., 2012), with acknowledgement, and used here with permission from the authors for educational and historical purposes only.

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Annotation:

When this reader first came across Seaman's text some years ago he was indeed encouraged. The author, it seems, spent a considerable amount of personal time with John Lennon shortly before Lennon's death in December 1980 and from his position of a relative outsider offers a very interesting perspective on both John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Only photographer Bob Gruen can perhaps offer such a personal attestation to these years at the Dakota. It also appears that, according to Double Fantasy producer, Jack Douglas, Lennon loved having Seaman around. Seaman was arrested in September 1982; the charge was theft of items, including John Lennon's diaries, from the Dakota Buildings. After the hearing, Seamen commented that he did not take the properties for revenue, stating 'there are aspects of this case which have not been revealed'. As it turns out this is a witty, emotional work which, upon further re-reading, holds-up well, albeit in a rather obsequious way to the memory of John Lennon (as for Yoko, Seaman does not appear to have a great deal of time for the woman who sacked him in 1982). The Last Days of John Lennon continues to be a 'must read' for all who want to glean not only a little authentic information, but also an interesting perspective concerning Lennon's last years.

Michael Brocken

While providing a supplement to Albert Goldman's portrait of Lennon's last years, it must be noted that the author admitted abusing the trust reposed in him by John and Yoko in not only violating the confidentiality clause of his employment contract, but also in absconding with 374 photographs and private papers, including letters and a diary, belonging to Lennon, which he then sold after Lennon's death. Seaman apologized in open court as part of a settlement agreement in which he returned the photographs and the profits from the sale of the papers, as well as paying an amount in unspecified damages to Yoko Ono. His memories may add something to an understanding of Lennon during his self-styled 'house-husband' years - a note from Lennon to Seaman asking if the latter had 'sold or perhaps rented' boots indicates that Lennon may, himself, have had doubts about Seaman's trustworthiness - a caveat, perhaps, from beyond the grave.

Melissa Davis

Source: The Beatles Bibliography: A New Guide To The Literature - Michael Brocken and Melissa Davis (The Beatle Works Ltd., 2012), with acknowledgement, and used here with permission from the authors for educational and historical purposes only.

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hysterical, rather than historical fiction: the humour may be totally unintentional - but it's there. .

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tales of an inadvertently intergalactic dentist -

- not entirely serious, and good fun & educational sf - as well as fully hygienic!

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an sf action/adventure novel of bet yeager, ex-mazianni fleet marine, an unwilling conscript onto a spook ship selling information on the movement of mallory's capital ship (and allies and recruits) now defending the merchanters' alliance to ships of the mazianni - formerly earth company's - fleet, now more than semi-feral, and to anyone else as'll pay, finding her feet, and finding, and making herself a position in the pecking order - or failing to - onboard an unhappy ship, permanently on the edge, where the officers are out to get one another, the captain's at least half gone, and most of the crew bar one seem to be unwilling but cowed misfits - and even he agrees with everyone else that he's no bloody good -

- all set against - and sometimes at action stations in - the time towards the end of the company wars and its aftermath.

more-or-less contemporaneous with - a little after - ''merchanter's luck'' (1982), q.v., and with and a little after parts of the hugo award-winning major company wars novel, ''downbelow station'' (1981), q.v.

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near-future set novel of a teen(?) in an england where social order has broken down, gangs of communists and fascists are fighting and controlling large areas of inner cities, and on top of this, super-powerful aliens dictate orders sent from their ships hovering(?) above major cities - and pel's strange, wild cousin frijja comes to stay...

- i didn't get very far into this, before i had to renew it, or return it to the library. i returned it.

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Read this in a day!

Seen most, if not all the movies, so was pleased to find this in the charity shop, so I could go straight to the source at last.

It doesn't really start out that promising to be honest, as it reads in the early stages like it's going to be one of those aloof, colonial attitude pieces from the previous century or two, where the attitude of the author, expressed through his narrator might not have dated that well - more than a whiff of a kind of Shatnerian Kirk-ery:

"Captain's log... stardate _+_+_, Weeeeee've....GOT. To.... GEt, backtotheship!"

But as you read, you realise this is on purpose, as this, almost ultimate work of absolute deadpan satire, focused on just these attitudes, morals and values as expressed in those earlier kind of works are completely undermined...but again, absolutely deadpan.

...It... Apes, them :)

Some rather impressive expressions of then, recently discovered physics (albeit, the years after have rendered most. factually inaccurate).

But during the course of it's couple hundred pages of short punchy, and concise chapters, it lays out a plethora of fertile material for consideration and interpretation, so that you can see why movie makers keep going back to it...

(Remarkable, how much, although reconfigured for more modern purposes, from this original is revived even for the most recent movies - themes, names poits made etc.)

...Animal rights, psychology, sociology, social commentary, satire, allegory, metaphor, power structures, science (scientific attitudes), morality... it's all here, to be interpreted any way you like!

You could really read this a hundred times and always get something new to think about from it.

And very much like I Am Legend... nice final line! :)

1 person found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

this seems to be the only book published by earthlight publishers - but what a book!

almost all the fiction tom reamy wrote - one remained unpublished by the editor to whom he'd submitted it for first publication, so couldn't be included without being withdrawn - excluding only two°, plus his only novel, ''blind voices'', which was published ''completed, but unfinished'' (he was still polishing it) posthumously, after the heart attack which killed him.°

beautifully-written, oftimes ominous, threatening, frequently horror-inducing, fantasy; earth-set but not earthbound, and well worthy of being published in such a beautiful edition.

° - missing are:

jenny's friends (short story) fantastic worlds (fanzine) vol.2 #2, spring 1954
sting! (short play) in ''six science fiction plays'' ed. roger elwood (1976), q.v.
m is for the million things (short story) in ''new voices 4: the john w. campbell award nominees'' ed. george r. r. martin (1981), q.v.
potiphee, petey and me (novelette) (sold to harlan ellison for ''the last dangerous visions'' (unpublished); eventually appeared in ''under the hollywood sign'' tom reamy (750-copy limited edition h/cvr 2023), q.v.°°

(°° - this 2023 collection is sfaik the complete novellas, novelettes, and short stories bar one (jenny's friends), compilation - it incorporates all of ''san diego lightfoot sue and other stories'' - but is considerably scarcer, and liable to be pricey - it bears a $50.00 cover price. . .)

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Wow, what a tedious book.

Basically about intergenerational daddy issues from overbearing, religiously, and "morally" exacting parents.

Repetitive, Dull. Boring.

I've actually given up reading this through, about two thirds in, as, although I don't like to abandon a book (especially a "Classic"), I'm getting no value from it, when I could be reading something else.

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this is a very well written, but always difficult to keep tracking, wildly uncommercial book;
and it's probably the least popular of joanna russ' books: though it's a single story, it isn't a novel.

it isn't a novel, because it doesn't - and couldn't, by its very nature - follow the rules-of-thumb that simplified longer works of fiction, making them more easily read and so more widely-saleable to people lacking the time or inclination to - for particular example - puzzle out and follow a story repeatedly jumping from one character's viewpoint to another's;

''and chaos died'' is confusing - and that's even though there is only one central character.

she's a young woman finding it increasingly impossible to cope with the emotional and spiritual crowding of inner-city life, as she becomes ever more assailed by the needs, desires, hopes, lusts and hatreds of the strangers streaming by her in the constant crush -

- she's becoming ever-increasingly sensitive mentally - to the point of feeling she may be going mad -

- she's becoming a receiving telepath -

- and she can't cut the constant bombardment of subconscious and conscious thoughts and emotions -

- or even be certain which are her own.

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A well written overview by Ron Cook.

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Very readable and enjoyable. Finished it in a day.

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Annotation:

British reporters and press photographers in the early-mid 1960s had it made. The Beatles were among the hardest-working groups around, and were eager to offer interviews and pose for pictures amid the endless rounds of recording, performance and travelling. At this time, the Daily Mirror was Britain's highest-selling tabloid, and, being aimed at the more working class readership, the paper was quick to capitalise on the Beatles' growing success. Many of the photographs in this text are from the Mirror archive and have never been seen before; others were first published in The Beatles Files, by Andy Davis (1998), a text now out of print. Some also came from the long defunct Daily Herald, the Sunday tabloid The People, and from the agency Syndication International.

Here, Andy Neill chronicles the Beatles' live performances from what he sees as their first days to their final tour dates of 1966, accompanied by archival photographs. As such, the book begins in September 1963, which is a major pity, for the Beatles' live performances before this, chronicled elsewhere in local press accounts such as Mersey Beat and the Liverpool Echo are omitted. Therefore, while Neill accounts for stage appearances day-by- day from September 1963 with accounts and photographs from what he views as the most significant dates, information concerning the group's formative successes (not simply their formative years) is lacking.

As a result, we have a classic example of how not to chronicle anything: via expediency of suitable archive availability. Here we have the potential for an interesting chronicle, but it is all of little use, if important Beatles live activities (such as their television appearances prior to September 1963, for example) and the accompanying reportage are simply omitted on the basis of this expediency. Neill can only prove the researcher with a partial history - which is ultimately insubstantial. The reader is given the impression that the group's fame effectively 'started' when the book begins - which of course is far from the case. So it is not 'all here' (as the blurb suggests), and such claims should not be made. Daily Mirror reporter Don Short (see separate entry) provides an introduction to this disappointing text.

Michael Brocken

Source: The Beatles Bibliography: A New Guide To The Literature - Michael Brocken and Melissa Davis (The Beatle Works Ltd., 2012), with acknowledgement, and used here with permission from the authors for educational and historical purposes only.

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the major critical assessment of the works of robert a. heinlein (to date of publication);
imnsho this is well worth reading and thinking about the observations and analyses of this major author's sf & fantasy.

it could not, of course, consider the later works; but these are mostly a record of his sad decline - with occasional (partial) recoveries.

hated by diehard heinleinian fanatics, of which there were many; and also by robert a. heinlein - unread!

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This book is effectively a poor re-write of the whole entry for George Harrison in Wikipedia
without the explanatory notes, citations, and general and cited sources one would normally find at the bottom of the Wikipedia entry.

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the story is both unique - neither a novelisation of, nor turned into one of the fourteen-or-so novel length dan dare cartoon/comic stories told over a year or longer in eagle comic - and it is incompatible with the canonical dan dare mars, as detailed in the second eagle comic dan dare story, ''dan dare: the red moon mystery'' (serialised in eagle comic 5/10/1951-20/6/1952, also collected as a graphic novel (dragon's dream 1979).

it is set in 2002 in the dan dare future, after ''operation saturn'', which basil dawson wrote some of, under the pen-name of don riley, when frank hampson collapsed through overwork, and before ''prisoners of space'', but the novel wasn't published until dan & co. were on cryptos, towards halfway through the longest and greatest of the comic's stories, ''the man from nowhere'' and ''rogue planet'', by which time i suspect the readership had grown up with dan dare and his colleagues, and the well-developed vision of this future, sufficiently to expect a novel presenting altogether more substantial a story, with significantly greater depth of thought than this ''fair, but unambitious'' mystery adventure.

(tbc: plot hook / set-up to be composed and added; but there's a bus or two to be caught soon, and some shopping to be done...)

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Annotation:

The author looks back to the 1960s and attempts to analyse the global phenomenon surrounding the success of the Beatles and popular culture. Astley's text is interesting in its own right, actually stemming from the late-1970s and an early example of neo-Marxist academic thought concerning, not only the Beatles, but also popular music in general. John Astley is therefore deploying his skills as a 1970s Marxist sociologist of culture to develop a very specific ideological 'take' on the kaleidoscopic landscape that gave birth to the Beatles phenomenon. If the text is appreciated as such, a rewarding read is in store.

On the one hand, all popular music was questioned by Marxists, such as Astley, as an unrewarding facet of mass production that created a state of false consciousness in its listeners; on the other, many such British Marxist sociologists such as Stuart Hall, Paddy Whannel, Dick Hebdige, et al were also coming to appreciate that popular music was an authentic representation of working class discourse and that reception was relatively autonomous. Such struggles with ideology kept many such British popular music critics and scholars such as Simon Frith up at night in the 1970s, as they sought to legitimise popular music as an authentic dialogue, while also acknowledging that the Marxist premise of historical materialism regarding the music industry still encapsulated rhetoric power. This work therefore pursues such struggles with ideology.

So, this is well-written text, and valid, but appears these days circular and unreconstructed. It is plausible to state that although history is forged in conflict (as Marx alludes), clearly such conflicts require history to represent the debates concerning such struggles for ownership, rather than simply reflect historical materialism (and indeed the realities of the masses), as a given. Perhaps, it is of appeal only to hardcore Marxist-Leninist Beatles fans (should there be any these days, of course).

Michael Brocken

Source: The Beatles Bibliography: A New Guide To The Literature - Michael Brocken and Melissa Davis (The Beatle Works Ltd., 2012), with acknowledgement, and used here with permission from the authors for educational and historical purposes only.

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yeuccchhhh!

1 person found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

''the whileaway novel'': intended to be an sf adventure novel sequel to the author's somewhat controversial (within sf fandom at the time) ''when it changed'' (''again, dangerous visions'' ed. harlan ellison (1972), q.v.), examining the same and similar social questions of sexual social (in)equality and potential/future developments, and their effects, through a work of fiction in considerably greater depth -

- which it is -

- it turned slowly in her hands as she wrote it into a scream of frustration and even rage at the inability of merkin science fiction fans - allegedly and even actually intelligent men (mostly men) - to even consider that these things might be different; in effect, that they, themselves might be even a bit sexist -

- and frederik pohl, who was the bantam books sf editor at the time, bought and published it.

- screams of outrage from much - most? - of merkin fandom could be heard the other side of the atlantic, even in ''little ol' lancaster''. . .°

° - and prob'ly reached the auntie podes, too (- no?)

- yes, technically, this novel is a failure: as the author of the intended sf adventure novel, joanna russ lost her focus and it turns by its end into a personal criticism of the overwhelmingly sexist nature of the (merkin) world of written sf, of sf fandom, and of publishing - and, ultimately, of merkin society as a whole then, now - and in the sciencefictional futures thus far imagined in the works of then almost entirely male, overwhelmingly mostly white writers of sf.

- it is a classic.

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This book is a complete guide to who appeared in all 619 shows from 1964-1975. It also includes details of the 1969 show "Pop go the Sixties" and 1970 & 1971 one off specials.
Fascinating Stuff.

Show 1 had:- Dusty Springfield - The Rolling Stones - Gene Pitney - The Dave Clark Five - Cliff Richard & the Shadows - The Hollies - The Beatles (2 songs) - The Swinging Blue Jeans - Freddie & the Dreamers.

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graves' retelling of the legend of jason and the argonauts from the point of view of one of them, based upon the presumption that the legend was based upon a historical event - which it may well have been; and quite possibly more than one, probably bronze age, expedition(s) primarily in search of the fabled wealth of colchis on the shores of the black sea - and to loot whatever of it, or aught else, they could.

the technique of filtering alluvial particles of gold from the waters of becks and rivers using sheeps' fleeces is both practical, and known to've been used in that area (and elsewhere); and was still in use in places in the second half of the 20th century c.e.°

(° - yr hmbl srppnt. s'spects, but does not know, that this continues into the first half of the 21st century c.e.)

unfortunately, while the adventure story is exciting, and its and the background details are definitely intetesting, the characters of the main players don't come alive off the page: how to portray the members of a crew of ''heroes'' who are essentially ~eighteen-to-thirty year old armed thugs a-viking as significantly different from one another, and at least one or two of them as sympathetic characters - to anyone who isn't of a similar thuggish mind-set - hopefully, most of his readers - was a skill robert graves hadn't yet learned.

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despite the semi-title, and (sometimes hyphenated, sometimes not) sub-title, this is mainly an account of investigations into claimed examples of mediums and paranormal by harry price, and his exposures of them as fraudulent; though it does include a - fairly brief - account of his life as a whole.

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''nevada's equivalent of our own (by comparison) rather disarmingly decent and dandy-ish teddy-boys are motor-bicycle-borne adolescent hoodlums who, in this book, are led by a tiger of a golden-haired girl into armed robbery and a killing or so. extremely exciting, with something of a documentary quality about its presentation of life in the western-desert jet-set.''

- the spectator 26/12/1958

- this appears to be a crime & violence (with a little bit of sex) ''gangsploitation'' novel

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Very comprehensive, though attracted later criticism for including pre-release or proposed entries that were subsequently shelved. A lot of the information was apparently sourced from John Peel's record collection, so maybe some of the rumoured-to-exist records actually do exist in some form.
The entries are for worldwide releases, though the majority are from English speaking countries. Honorary mentions are given to most of the important proto-punk bands. Each page has unique doodles/art to fill in blank spaces and maybe helps to take the strain off your eyes. Every so often you get a page crammed with pics of record sleeves.

If I can remember correctly volume 1 of this book was fairly slimline and had a red cover (all entries duplicated in this volume 2).

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