JPGR&B SUBS 20th Oct 2020
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Reviewed by Charlie in the United Kingdom on 4 April 2018.
Hated this book. I stuck with it, fascinated by it's awfulness, hoping it would improve but it went from bad to worse. Don't let the word Beatles in the title fool you, this is not in any way a book about The Beatles.
A real hatchet job on Bob Wooler who, in spite of all the nonsense spouted by the author, really was the driving force behind the Liverpool group scene in the early Sixties. How do I know? because I was one of the hundreds of young guys playing in groups in Liverpool at the time.
Too much is made of Wooler's homosexuality, the inference being that his interest in the group scene was mainly one of a predator of young boys.
Absolute nonsense!!!
My own experience of Bob Wooler, and those of my contemporaries, was of a man who was full of enthusiasm for the whole scene and gave even the least talented wannabes loads of encouragement. He almost single handedly promoted The Beatles in Liverpool in the early sixties, along with loads of publicity by Bill Harry and his Mersey Beat Magazine. If not for these two people, Brian Epstein would never have heard of the Beatles and the rest would have been a very different history.
The bulk of this tedious tome consists of accounts of the ramblings of Beryl Adams, one time secretary to Brian Epstein with a history of alcohol abuse and suicide attempts, who not long after the interviews with the author, succumbed to a terrifying brain disease that surely at this point must have been affecting her thoughts and memories and Bob Wooler, by this time a very sick and sad old man whose once razor sharp brain was now addled by the effects of alcohol abuse and ill health.
The impression given by the author of the Mersey Beat scene is of a sordid world, inhabited by sexual predators, ruthless fantasists and alcoholics. Nothing could be further from the truth. A truly exciting time for all involved and for the most part, good innocent fun!
In short, a pointless and depressing book by an author who obviously has no knowledge whatsoever of the Mersey Beat era and the real events surrounding it.
A truly awful book which doesn't deserve the one star but I am not allowed to give it less!!!!
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