''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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Annotation:

The author has compiled brief accounts of attacks on 75 famous persons, providing a 'police blotter' report of the facts (date, time, place, weapon, assailant, injuries) followed by a narrative of the event, as well as the outcome and disposition of the case (and assassin). The four pages on John Lennon present an accurate, fact-based description of the Beatle's murder, a stark departure from other sources that too often tend to the maudlin or sensational. The three pages on the attempt on George Harrison's life in 1999 include a discography (although there is not one for Lennon) and mentions Harrison's fear of a 'copy cat' attack following Lennon's murder, although the chapter is silent as to the disposition of the case against his mentally ill assailant. Disturbing reading to be sure, but Spignesi gets the facts right and the book is a good source of basic information.

From a popular culture standpoint, it is of interest that of the 75 victims featured in the book, which include presidents and other political figures, religious leaders, a radio talk-show host, an artist (Warhol) , a designer (Versace), and even an assassin (Lee Harvey Oswald), only President John F. Kennedy and John Lennon are represented in photographs on the cover (literally in the 'crosshairs' of the lens of a high-powered rifle - get it?). This, along with Lennon's name also being in the subtitle (with Julius Caesar) is surely intended to make a statement, although this writer is not entirely sure what that statement might be.

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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Pure magic!

(Another one off my: "To read" list - Really read a lot this last year, which surprises even myself!)

In essence, this is to The Lord Of The Rings as Wind In The Willows is to The Hobbit...

...In that, as a tale told from the point of view of anthropomorphised animals (we do seem to like this literary tradition in England!), The Wind In The Willows and the Hobbit, are comparatively light reading smaller books, aimed at the younger reader...

...Whereas he Lord Of The Rings, and indeed this, are both chunkier volumes with more advanced, epic themes and scope, more suited to a slightly older reader (and adults! :) who have perhaps graduated from reading those earlier works.

It is a grand story of a journey, taken by a handful of rabbits, to escape the destruction of their warren by man and his machines, to find a new home in some far and distant, and as yet unknown land, and who's outcome is uncertain (very Moses like!)

The journey is perilous, as the rabbit is the natural prey of a multitude of enemies, both wild and tame, as well as man-made, and there is danger and adventure at every turn.

At the centre of which is a very close and intimate portrayal of the rabbit characters, and their relationships, giving it a certain warmth, as well as being interspersed with rabbit mythology in the tales of the Black Rabbit, and the Rabbit "Gods" and heroes in the form of the stories they tell each other in their more subdued moments (Rabbit Culture), which really lend the work an air of mysticism and legend (in the same way that LOTR does).

It deals, rather matter-of-factly with certain realities of the lives of wild animals, in kind of the same way that a nature documentary does, but deftly avoids being too graphic or lurid about them.

It may, for this reason, as well as both the more advanced language, and the sheer size of the book (487 pages!) be a little too much for 11 year olds (as per comments below) but young adult, say only year older or so, at 12-13 years may be a better able to grasp, understand, and appreciate it fully, as well as being slightly less disturbed by some of the concepts and scenes here.

(Any Brits reading this will remember, and appreciate how personally devastating watching the animated movie adaptation at such a young age was! - burned into our brains from that moment on!)

But this is a richer experience than the movie version, and carries you along effortlessly from first page to last with it's incredible magical charm.

(Another book I read some time back along these lines (I forget the author) of a story told as from a Fox's point of view, is Hunter's Moon - well worth seeking out if you like this.)

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Bit of a monster this book!

I have the 1992 restored text version, that runs at over 600 and some pages...

...But this is a monster in more ways than one, as, in taking it's central premise of a "Man from mars" (frequently referred to this throughout the book), who is in fact, the illegitimate human child of a couple of expeditionary astronauts sent to Mars to engage "diplomatically" with native Martians (No other, underlying exploitative agenda, of course - ahem - (Avatar vibes?!), who is brought back to Earth, having been raised as a Martian, according to their ways, and as such, is a Human, who is also an alien on this planet, and viewing earthmen, and their ways through the un-prejudiced lens of a visitor to this planet...

...And how very strange we are, in our ways!

But here's he crux: This book is basically an protracted excuse for Robert Heinlein to critique human society (as he fond it then, and as it, in many ways, remains) by looking at as an outsider would... so the Man from Mars acts as a device through which he can do this, having a perfectly naïve figure who can ask the kind of uncomfortable questions usually forthcoming from human children to their uneasy parents (chuckle) and at the same time, adopt the persona of the Man from Mars' mentor, adviser, and guide, in the shape of Jubal Harshaw, a world weary old professor type, and cipher for Heinlein to set the world to rights and hold forth on every aspect of human strangeness with lecturers, monologues, acerbic asides and biting cynicism, having had the Man From Mars provide the excuse to do so, through the posing of these questions.

As such, it's more of a "talky" science fiction book, or like the philosophy of Plato and such, who used this basic device of fictional meetings of functional characters, leading to dialogues in which the philosophy is found.

(If Plato were alive today... he'd be writing Science Fiction! - for these are our modern philosophers)

For this reason, I can see why a lot of it was originally cut out, in order to cut the book down a bit, as there is, perhaps a lot of "banging on" here, but none of what may have been cut (I haven't read the cut version, so don't know what they did remove) is necessarily flabby, excessive, or superfluous... there's just a lot of it!

But of course, the other (Perhaps, main) reason to cut a load out of this, is that it is extremely radical in it's thinking, beyond what any would dare today, much less, at time of publication, in questioning every moral construct, idea, institution, faith and religion, social convention, basis of human relationships and moral boundary you can think of...

...There is free love, polygamy of sorts, atheism, pantheism, cannibalism as a notion of an accepted normal social and "religious" practice (on Mars), the formation of a cult, or commune, and it savagely represents a deeply cynical view of politics, organised religions, media, and individuals in their habits and conventions, as they all scrabble to get a piece of the visitor for their own ends, or to make him go away...

(So as not to call into question their own positions - don't want the ordinary folk thinking too deeply about stuff, do we now?)

...And so, if you are not the kind of person who would find this funny, enjoyable, and eliciting a kind of cheerleading response to what it has to say, you would most likely fall into the category of "everyone else", who will find this almost universally offensive on every point, even (especially?) today.

You could not publish this today, I feel, as a new book, as the angry villagers, and worse, would be on your doorstep the very next day!

(As, funnily enough, happens in the book itself :)

And for all these reasons, it's well worth reading.

((Just maintain perspective, and don't get too carried away with it, or else you may take it as a cue to start your own cult, or "religion", and thank goodness that hasn't happened yet! (...er.....))

But then, what do I know, for in the words of the man from Mars himself:

"I Am Only An Egg."

(You Grok?)

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I saw the write-up about this book in a monthly railway magazine and was intrigued.
A few weeks later whilst shopping, I noticed it in a hobbyist transport shop in Birmingham UK, and looked at the first couple of chapters but couldn't make up my mind whether to buy it (or not)..so I left it..

A couple of months later I was in the same shop, had another look at it, and then decided to buy.
Wish I'd bought it earlier as it's the very best railway fiction book that I've ever read. I couldn't put it down over the last few days, and when I had finished reading it I actually dipped into one of the (separate) chapters and read it again. It was THAT good!

1 person found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

Annotation:

Several disparate reviewers have congratulated this work. Beatles-Unlimited magazine (May/June 2004) wrote: "written in an easy and pleasant style [ ... ] a useful addition to the collection of the avid Beatles fan." The New Statesman found it "full of fascinating quotations from those fusty Americans" (12lh April 2004), as did Publisher's Weekly (January 19,2004): "the book does offer many fascinating details." Others found it entertaining, intelligent and revealing: "a breezily intelligent biography [ ... ] perhaps the first serious Beatles history to have a truly happy ending" (Entertainment Weekly, February 6,2004); Bookpage in February 2004 wrote: "magic blows through the book, past delightfully obscure anecdotes and insightful reflection." However, this writer remains unmoved. Perhaps it has something to do with the author's writing style or perhaps it is because the work does not appear to have a point. Goldsmith's rather recycled tome seems to be lacking in depth, especially given the monumental task provided by the book's rather unfortunate subtitle.

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:

At over 300 pages, this informed, opinionated, yet expansive ranking of the 100 'best' songs by the Beatles came out in time for the 40th anniversary of the Beatles' first visit to America. One read will have those of us who hate such lists spitting feathers.

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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it might be worth a ''9'', but yr hmbl srppnt.'s only read it the once, and definitely does *not* desi^W wish to read it again. it's very well thought out & through, very well written - and *horrible*.

in an all too-near future, a cult is arising, centered upon the work of a charismatic, self-publicising ?research? ?psychiatrist?, prizing and preserving the wounds received in car crashes as a reflection of the damage received by the drivers' cars, and similarly prizing and preserving the damage received in those crashes as a reflection of the wounds received by their human occupants, and glorifying - and finding erotic arousal, and perhaps ecstasy, from both.
- as the cult spreads and it, and its values, become increasingly accepted into our social mainstream, it also becomes increasingly difficult to discern or define any aim for life separate from the aims and inevitable objective of achieving increasingly horrific car/self-inflicted crash injury and - ultimately - the glory(?) of a gory mechanical death.

- as we make our creations and our constructions more intelligent and - arguably - more human-like, do we not make ourselves more construct-like and more inhuman:

- and is this inevitable ?


- gave a whole new meaning to ''auto-erotica'' -

- and arguably invented ''auto-necrotica'' as humanity's highest aim.

2 people found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

Annotation:

This is a surprisingly dull and lacklustre piece of writing ill-befitting Tony Barrow. The brief text (less than 150 pages) carries a 'McCartney Then and Now' premise whereby Barrow looks back on McCartney as he was 'then', recycling much of his own previous materials to offer an account of life inside the Beatles camp of the mid-1960s. The 'now' part of this book is drawn from Robin Bextor's exclusive interviews with Paul McCartney during which he talked 'candidly' about his private life and his life as a singer, musician, composer and 'businessman'. This information is not without interest, but its level of subjectivity is oddly bland. Sadly therefore the text is rather uninspiring and not really 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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Category: Small book with a disproportionately large reputation.

I've been meaning to read this since the early nineties...

(When of course, Apocalypse Now hoved into my consciousness - this being the prime source material, and inspiration)

...And I've got to say, it's one of those books that has a massive reputation that ultimately disappoints.

As with Catcher In The Rye, the first thing that you notice is how tiny a book it is, with a little over a hundred pages there...

(I felt inclined to pick the book up by the spine, and give it a good shake, to see if more words fell out of it that I might have accidentally missed - "Is that it?!!")

...And like Catcher In The Rye, it's had such a huge influence on later renditions, either of the story itself, or versions of it, and better, and more refined, that the true original can't really live up to those iterations of the central idea.

In this case, it's the whole "going up river" "Into (of course) the heart of darkness", spiralling into insanity deal.

Here though, it's fairly tame, and a bit, dare I say, uneventful compared, at least, to Apocalypse Now - Granted, this is largely an effect of the times in which this was published, compared to the times that movie was made, in terms of what could be presented to an audience (shifts in morality, taste, public de-sensitisation to graphic material, images / ideas etc.

But even if this is so, The nutbag at the end of the pain-bow (Kurtz) is often spoken of, as in the movie adaptation, in order mythologise him, and make him grow in our minds with dread and anticipation, but even when we finally meet him here, nothing much really happens, and he is rather underwhelming... so much so, that you wonder what all the fuss was about in telling the tale leading up to it.

As this is the tale told by a seaman to a new crew on a boat for seafaring expedition, about a previous experience, it has the feel of a ghost story being told, and the writing, in this regard, is really great, and with the essential bones of the story, and the concept of the character of Kurtz being a very powerful one until the let down of meeting the reality, you can see the powerful inspiration of an idea for Francis Ford Coppola to make the movie he did.

What is worth while in reading this is the uneasy comparisons, and unspoken statement of the original with Apocalypse Now, in that he equates, and finds parallels between 60s America, and a late nineteenth century colonial power, exploiting, and attempting to subjugate an "inferior" people (commercially / politically motivated racism at it's best folks!), by sending one group of people into a more... "primal" setting that the layers of "Civilization" cannot cope with, or understand, once peeled away, layer by layer... and causing the disintegration of the artificial modern social and moral constructs to precipitate insanity in those that venture there.

So a good companion piece to the movie, or curio, but in this case, the movie wins, hands down, so you wouldn't be missing much by not reading the source text.

Apocalypse now makes all these points, more graphically, effectively, and thoroughly.

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Annotation:

This is a moderately interesting piece of work from the owner of club-land properties in Liverpool's Mathew Street, site of the Cavern Club where the Beatles and many other groups played. Adams was involved in establishing the New Cavern (following the demise of the original Cavern club in the early 1970s), plus the clubs, Revolution and Eric's, at the same premises on that famous Liverpool side street. Following the demise of Eric's, Adams opened the short-lived Adam's Club in Wood Street (in the newly-developed Ropewalks area of the city). The text is illuminating for its insight into Liverpool's nightlife and 'gangster' fraternities, but is in all likelihood of only passing interest to Beatles collectors. It is of far greater use to the researcher of Liverpool's varied popular music scenes, which informs the reader of the intricate web of property holdings and alliances in Liverpool's city centre (irrespective of the actual club operating on the premises) that have always had a great bearing on the music purveyed and performed in the area over decades. However, overall the work is (sadly) rather poorly written, and required serious rewriting and sub-editing. This lack of proofing causes it, at times to be a little unrewarding and repetitive: this is a pity, for much is to be learnt here.

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:

Aronowitz, who died in 2005, was a maverick journalist of some repute and introduced Bob Dylan to the Beatles on 28th August 1964. According to his own journal entries, at this meeting he brought along marijuana (reportedly the first 'pot' smoked by the Beatles); the book is a compilation/re-write of these journal entries. However, by placing himself at the centre of this narrative, Aronowitz ensures that this work is curiously monotone. This is a great pity for it seems that the so-called authenticity of rock journalism, here, gets in the way of historicity. Authorhouse, formerly known as 1st Books, is a self-publishing company based in the United States providing 'vanity' press services: Aronowitz would have probably paid for this re-publication occurring just before his death in 2005 when he was unable to secure a publishing contract; as such there is something of the desperate about this.

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 companion text from Wane features photos taken outside EMI Studios between January and April 1967 while the Beatles were recording the famous album. The photographs are actually very interesting from a fashion perspective as they show the group arriving dressed in their psychedelic finery (and leaving in the early hours of the morning). Many of the shots have been accurately dated and are accompanied both by comments from the fans who waited outside of the studios and by details of the relevant recording session. Also included are articles written by observers at the 'Pepper' recording sessions. This is a good example of how photography can be described as a vernacular art - unwittingly capturing seemingly ordinary occurrences for posterity, but also revealing a great deal of contextual information. The text contains approximately 40 previously unpublished colour and black and white photographs.

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 volume contains a compilation of photographs taken outside 7, Cavendish Avenue, London throughout 1967 by the fans who devotedly waited outside of Paul's house for a glimpse of the Beatle. The photos show McCartney arriving and leaving his home, chatting with fans and posing for photos. This is an interesting collection of photographs depicting Paul from the 'Sgt. Pepper' era through to the 'Magical Mystery Tour' period. It is accompanied by several recollections from the fans who gathered there as a sort of unofficial palace guard, aka 'Apple Scruffs' (so christened by George Harrison in a song dedicated to them on his 1970 release, All Things Must Pass). The book is hard cover spiral bound with 60 pages and approximately 50 previously unpublished colour and black and white photographs.

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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Finally read this...

(And discovered the idea behind all that mysterious nonsense they had us rehearse in cub-scouts)

...Having found a copy in the charity shop (not this edition), and straight off the bat it has to be said:

This isn't for kids!

...Well, not very young ones anyway, as Disney it ain't!

It is, through the prism of Rudyard Kipling's own upbringing in colonial India, and extended metaphor of various social structures (of the time), and ones place in it through the parallels of Jungle life, ultimately encapsulated in the background / sometimes referenced Law of the Jungle,

...An extended fable, or parable to create a myth loosely placing itself alongside Aesop and such, the effect of which is greatly enhanced through the use of semi-biblical / old testament style language: Lot's of Thou and Thus, and Thine-ing, but deftly, and poetically handled by a man who understands how to use it to great effect.

Of course, it has the essential tale of Mowgli...

(Pronounced like: Cow- gli ("Ow", not "Oh") "we are actually informed by the author himself... so you've proabably been saying it wrong all these years, as I have! :)

...At it's centre that we all are familiar with, at least from the Disney film, but it's more primal and quite grim, even brutal at times, as Mowgli goes to war with the tiger Shere Khan, who's out to eat him, and with the help of Baloo, Baghera, and of course, Akela learns the tricks of survival and the ways of the jungle in order to bring the tiger to a rather sticky end.

(He ends up skinning Shere Khan and dumping his hide on the Wolf-pack centre stone (like the town square for wolves).. so happy nightmares kids! :D

But rather than just leave off here, the main narrative follows Mowgli through many adventurous perils as he faces new adversaries, and other adversities on his way to becoming a man, when he ultimately seeks to return to his human societal origins. These narrative chapters in his life are, however, interspersed with other "Jungle books", or stories, from other kinds of Jungles, form the tale of a Household mongoose named (er...) Riki-Tiki-Tavi, as he fights to protect a human family from a couple of poisonous cobras, the story of a white Seal in arctic wastelands, another tale of a human Elephant herder, and even an Inuit tribe looking for seal meat (Yup, healthy dose of seal clubbing here too folks!).

You can see just how sanitised the Disney animated version is (And altered - Kaa, the giant python, is indeed deadly and disturbing, but also an ally to Mowgli, not a villain), and I can well imagine that many a parent has found this book, and thought: "Oh how sweet, my kid loves this film, I'll take this home and read this to my little cherub!" - only to draw breath at the more mature horrors lie within, and abruptly throw this in the cupboard.

Just know what you're getting into, is the thing, with this.

As a fabulous, proto-mythological tale read by a more adult reader though, I found it all the more brilliant because of it, rather than the sweet kiddies book I had been expecting, and for this audience, I highly recommend it.

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what happened to the children of hamelin afterwards? who was the piper, and what did he do with them - what did he have in mind for them when he led them away, seduced by the magic of his music - if he had anything in mind at all ?

and can any of them succeed in escaping him - whilst any of them yet survive ?

1 person found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

publishers have categorised this novel as fantasy; jane lindskold sees it as near future sf - but she's only the author, and what do authors know?

set in the present day, more-or-less, the central character is at least technically mad - she talks and listens to what her small rubber dragon has to say, after all (and to walls, and other inanimate objects) - and, not entirely deliberately, when her home is closed as a result of budget cuts, she embarks on an adventure - a rather scary adventure that might be called ''real life'' in ''the real world'' by some, involving not always friendly gang members; and it begins to look like someone may want to kill her - but why ? . .

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Annotation:

This is a 48-page hard-backed monograph, part of a series of books concerned with the families of well-known personalities. It is of little-no interest to Beatles researchers, but might be of some value to the completist collector.

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:

Geoffrey Ellis was a boyhood friend of Brian Epstein from Liverpool who became the latter's personal assistant in October 1964. He then became Chief Executive of NEMS Enterprises in 1965 and co-director of Dick James Music Ltd. following Epstein's death in 1967. Such close proximity suggests an interesting window into the day-to-day decision-making at NEMS. We are, however, disappointed - Ellis evidently cared little about what went on around him - or else has forgotten - not necessarily a great starting point for writing a memoir.

Undoubtedly the 'swinging sixties' has been grossly mythologised, however Ellis certainly appears to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time for most of the time. For example, regarding the 'Sgt. Pepper' release party he states "I went to bed and to sleep quite early [...] There were twin beds in the bedroom, and I woke to find the late comedian, Kenny Everett, in the other bed. We had no conversation as, by the time I left the house, he had not yet surfaced" - wow, how interesting.

Such writing led the music journalist of The Times Caitlin Moran to describe the book as "so bad it's good". Indeed, despite there already existing many utterly terrible Beatles books available by the time of this publication (2004), one should regard I Should Have Known Better as the Plan Nine From Outer Space of Beatles' texts. There are occasional moments of interest for the Beatles' researcher, but the author's personal wrath obscures any context. For example, Ellis evidently hated John Lennon. He mentions, but does not deliberate, Lennon's "scorn of the fans, his sharp tongue and his conscious nurturing of his 'working-class hero' image"; according to Ellis, Lennon was, apparently "too clever for his own good" and "unkind" to Cynthia. "I cannot overcome my distaste for his memory", he states - but why? We never find out. Utterly awful; could Geoffrey Ellis actually be the 'Ed Wood' of Beatles writers? I should have known better and left my money in my wallet.

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:

Authorhouse is an American self-financing publisher. While noting that the lyrics of Beatles' songs are primarily about human relationships, James seeks to place the words in the context of a spiritual journey in her Christian faith. The author employs the now over-used contrivance of using song titles for chapter headings, but in her case they tie directly to the meaning within, whether it be finding faith in oneself ('I'm A Loser') or faith in the power of forgiveness ('Hey Jude'). Simple, straightforward and devout, the book is nothing more than what it claims to be. Not a research tool, per se, but of interest in the way the Beatles' work is found to have meaning by the individual receiver of it in ways the group probably could neither have intended nor have imagined, so not without value to the researcher.

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:

Richie Unterberger is an excellent popular music researcher and all his works require serious attention from the popular music scholar. He does not write in an 'academic' way, as such, but his research is undoubtedly of academic quality. For example, here, an enormous amount of material has been examined by Unterberger: from unreleased studio outtakes, BBC radio recordings from 1962-1965, live concert performances, home demo recordings, fan club Christmas recordings, and other informal demos partially-completed away from EMI studios. The work also includes chronological entries for all Beatles' unreleased recordings of note from 1957-1970, as well as all thus far unreleased video footage from 1961-1970 together with information concerning outtakes from 1990s interviews filmed for the Anthology. Furthermore Unterberger provides a general overview of Beatles bootlegs, Beatles songs recorded by other artists in the 1960s, and never-recorded material. This is therefore an excellent example of a piece of quality Unterberger research.

As far as bootlegs, go, perhaps Doug Sulpy provides the 'final word' on such issues; nevertheless we have here a highly detailed look at the songs in a mature fashion. Unlike many Beatles-related discographies, this is not just a dry list of what is (or might be) available. Each track or session is reviewed on its merits. There are details of the way in which certain recordings differ from their EMI counterparts, which versions of BBC recordings have good, bad, or indifferent guitar solos, and which concerts are listenable or dire. Reference tables including songs performed at BBC and Get Back sessions, a list of alternate mixes, and a short and essential list of live recordings which are of great use. Information on sound quality of recordings will be of especial use to collectors. Also, at the end of the book, is a list of the songs the Beatles gave away. This information is a welcome addition to our knowledge of the subject. In addition, the author dispels some myths along the way by discounting rumours of the existence of certain songs. As with all Unterberger volumes (Beatles or otherwise), this is highly 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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"A gold mine for avid fans"
"A fulsome biography set during a crucial period of the iconic musician's life"

Kirkus Reviews, November 2022.

Book review magazine Kirkus Reviews provide an overwhelmingly positive analysis of The McCartney Legacy Volume 1: 1969-73

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Annotation:

Tony Bacon was previously editor of Beatles Gear, while Gareth Morgan is a professional bass player and teacher who contributes a regular 'Bass Workshop' column to Guitar magazine. This superb text is not only well written, but also beautifully produced with a coherent layout. The authors have completed a first-rate job of presenting McCartney's muse and music. Indeed they are able to show to bass players and Beatles fans, alike, just how the dynamics of his bass playing have contributed to the development of his songwriting. Not only is it a first-rate bass tutor, but is an informative and reliable historical text, to boot; as such this is a highly recommended 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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oh, *please* would you add a genre/publishing category of ''rubbish'', oc?

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''even jove nods.''

not every item on wikipedia is always and invariably factually correct:

if you bother to compare the contents of the two books, you may find this is one of those occasions.

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The Beatles and the songs they gave away to other artists

A new book highlights this little-known aspect of The Beatles' career

Alan Wilson, Liverpool Echo, 9 October 2022

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more drink than food - and more sfnal tall tales, puns, etc. than drink. . .

lovely entertaining stories in the ''competing raconteurs in a bar tradition'', with an added inclination towards puns...

- puns, and peanuts. . .

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Review, dated 3 October 2017, from Fine Books & Collections

Barry Miles' Memoir of British Counterculture Issued as a Limited Edition

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From Goodreads:

The goal of the authors, Mike Brocken and Melissa Davis, was not only to gather and list a comprehensive list of the writings about (and in some cases 'by') The Beatles, but to provide thoughtful and thought-provoking annotations. The readers and users - researchers, writers, students, scholars and fans - were kept in mind, so separate songbook and webography sections, the cross-reference and logical style conventions make it a 'user-friendly' resource.

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