The "Beatles"
by Bob Spitz
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 535)
Read in January, 2008
recommends it for:
Beatles fans with an open mind
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Read in January, 2008
This massive biography (over 850 pages of text) of The Beatles is, if anything, comprehensive. Spitz does a wonderful job in setting the stage (no pun intended) to fully cover the meteoric rise of the band as he goes into such details as painting a history of the Liverpool area and delving into the band members families. In the early part of the book the Lennon’s and McCartney’s are, understandably, given the more comprehensive back story, but I would have appreciated the same treatment wi...more
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Read in May, 2008
It took several weeks to get through this book, but I did enjoy it. There is a decidedly anti-Paul slant throughout. In my opinion, biographies should be as objective as possible. But, this one kind of went too far in trying to portray each Beatle as villain or hero. I mean, I totally get that Paul was a control freak and went to great lengths to mold the Beatles to his liking. But, I am skeptical that he was as much of an asshole as he is portrayed here. Also, there's the whole "Yoko kille...more
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Read in August, 2007
Amazing, sad, disturbing, funny, ridiculous, disgusting, unbelievable, humorous, awe-inspiring… basically just about every type of emotion that could be experienced in reading a book. This is a very through account of The Beatles. It starts with a history of Liverpool and then takes you from the beginning of John, Paul, George and Ringo’s life and shows all that the band went thorough in it’s formation and rise in the late 50’s and early 60’s. Then the absurdity of Beatlemania. And...more
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Read in April, 2008
Livro grandão.
O autor é um cara bem criterioso. Tá sempre citando fontes e tentando ser o mais próximo da realidade possível. Tanto que o livro conta com toda uma lista de citações com referências de onde elas sairam. Chega a ter um quê meio ABNT, até. Mas isso é ponto pra ele. O Bob Spitz passa muito cuidado sem seu trabalho de biógrafo.
Uma coisa legal é que ele nem puxa o saco, nem detona os caras. Trata como seres humanos normais, com defeitos e qualidades. (ainda que... a...more
O autor é um cara bem criterioso. Tá sempre citando fontes e tentando ser o mais próximo da realidade possível. Tanto que o livro conta com toda uma lista de citações com referências de onde elas sairam. Chega a ter um quê meio ABNT, até. Mas isso é ponto pra ele. O Bob Spitz passa muito cuidado sem seu trabalho de biógrafo.
Uma coisa legal é que ele nem puxa o saco, nem detona os caras. Trata como seres humanos normais, com defeitos e qualidades. (ainda que... a...more
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recommends it for:
Anyone who loves the Beatles
To call myself a diehard Beatles fan would be to do my fan-dom a disservice. I tend to agree with Timothy Leary that the Beatles are harbingers of God. So it was with extreme pleasure that I read every single word of this book, and then when I got to the last page, I started over again.
The author does more than simply tell you dates and places and songs. He weaves together interviews, stories, interviews, hundreds of accounts of events -- then he puts you into their minds. He dishes so...more
The author does more than simply tell you dates and places and songs. He weaves together interviews, stories, interviews, hundreds of accounts of events -- then he puts you into their minds. He dishes so...more
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Read in August, 2007
2007 marked a full fifty years since the formation of the Quarry Men -- the scruffy teenage Liverpool skiffle group who eventually became the Beatles -- but Bob Spitz' mammoth biography of the Fab Four goes even farther back than that. It starts with a brief history of the region itself followed by histories of the lads' families and hence spends some pages before getting into the story of the Beatles' meteoric rise. Luckily there is still almost a thousand of pages' worth of space thereafter ...more
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Read in May, 2008
After reading this book (and it is hefty at 800+ pages in paperback), the one thing I came away with was from the years 1964-1969, the Beatles were ubiquitous. Starting with their immigrant family stories in Liverpool, and ending with their self-indugent superstardom in London, there is no question the Beatles were very talented and hardworking musicians. However, I think the times they lived was a major factor to their legacy, and they were very savvy in promoting themselves as the instigator...more
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Read in June, 2005
recommended to Scarlet by:
Mojo magazine (classic rock periodical)recommends it for: die hard classic rock/ Beatles fans
Spitz goes into the deep painstaking details that die hard Beatles fans are looking for in a biography. I've read a few of them and this is by far the best. Its unique in that it goes beyond a simple biography to tell the story with feeling and personality. At times the story read like a work of fiction- Spitz treats the Beatles like characters in a novel and tries to get into their motivations and desires. Very easy to get into from both the rock biography point of view and as a story- even if ...more
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Bloated and over-written, Spitz's biography simultaneously manages to have too much information and too little. Its main strength is its coverage of the time the group spent in Hamburg and the early years of Beatlemania. However, it goes into way too much detail about Lennon's family background, McCartney's family background, and Brian Epstein's terrible business sense. In fact, Spitz at one point acknowledges that the preceding paragraphs about some of Epstein's deals didn't really impact th...more
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Read in January, 2007
(I listened to this on abridged audio book.) As someone who grew up with the Beatles, I had never actually read any biographical material on them other than the occasional magazine article. Of course, much of their story has osmosed into popular consciousness, but this book did an excellent job of filling in many of the gaps. The story takes us from their familial roots through the breakup of the band. A brief epilogue sketches their lives (and deaths) after the band. Much like their music, I th...more
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In its scope, structure and sheer length, this meaty, 983-page true-life epic unfolds as a sort of Beatles' "War and Peace." The book begins with the O'Leannains and McCartneys fleeing famine-ravaged Ireland for Liverpool, England, where they and other Irish immigrant clans would eventually beget John, Paul, George and Ringo. The way Spitz describes the confluence of events that led 15-year-old McCartney to move into Lennon's neighborhood in 1957 might have come across as hokey in the ...more
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Read in June, 2007
recommends it for:
EVERYONE
I'm a huge Beatles fan. HUGE. And this book was telling me things I didn't know. This is a brilliant book that made me completely bereft when I was finished with it.
The first hundred pages gave me the impression that it was going to be yet another John-worshiping biography, but if anything, Spitz pulls no punches when it comes to Lennon, while also managing to portray Paul as much more than the cheery one (or the Machiavellian one, which is the other typical McCartney you see in band biogr...more
The first hundred pages gave me the impression that it was going to be yet another John-worshiping biography, but if anything, Spitz pulls no punches when it comes to Lennon, while also managing to portray Paul as much more than the cheery one (or the Machiavellian one, which is the other typical McCartney you see in band biogr...more
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Read in August, 2007
Still finishing this up, but it's certainly the most comprehensive Beatles bio out there, and very well-written and readable. The best chapters are probably the school years and the Hamburg period which the author fleshes out with much more detail than I've ever encountered. He also has a talent for making it feel immediate when you are reading, with great descriptive passages that give you a sense of what the dives in Hamburg were like and just how grueling the Beatles early touring schedule ...more
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I like The Beatles. I always have, but never deemed myself an 'uber' fan. I'm more the type who listens to their songs, feels moved, and thinks Paul was the cute Beatle.
Until I read the book! I learned so much about the Beatles that I never knew. Bob Spitz seems to have really done his homework and at times, it became tedious. He provides much backstory and history on each Beatle's upbringing, which I realize is crucial to the understanding of the persona of each member. But, it also w...more
Until I read the book! I learned so much about the Beatles that I never knew. Bob Spitz seems to have really done his homework and at times, it became tedious. He provides much backstory and history on each Beatle's upbringing, which I realize is crucial to the understanding of the persona of each member. But, it also w...more
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this is the last book i actually bought - all the others are borrowed from the library or someone i know. it's a pretty solid book - almost 1000 pages, but the print is pretty large so you'd be surprised how quick it is to read. it's divided almost exactly in half - the first half covers the early years (duh) up to their first top 10 uk single. that half was a lot more interesting to me since the later years have been really really really well documented elsewhere. the second half honestly ...more
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recommends it for:
hardcore Beatles fans
Um. Comprehensive is the right word for it.
I went through a slightly maniacal Beatles phase in high school, and this was one of the books I devoured. The thing was that I had shitty friends who didn't know anything about me other than that I liked The Beatles, so I got a bunch of Beatles stuff around birthdays and Christmas. Eh.
It's long, it's detailed, and it paints a pretty solid picture of their personalities. It's mostly text, not a lot of pictures, but it also goes into the women in...more
I went through a slightly maniacal Beatles phase in high school, and this was one of the books I devoured. The thing was that I had shitty friends who didn't know anything about me other than that I liked The Beatles, so I got a bunch of Beatles stuff around birthdays and Christmas. Eh.
It's long, it's detailed, and it paints a pretty solid picture of their personalities. It's mostly text, not a lot of pictures, but it also goes into the women in...more
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Read in January, 2006
recommends it for:
beatle fans with a lot of time on their hands.
having spent the better part of the last 15 years ingesting any written documentation of the beatles lives and careers that i could get my grubby paws on, i was fully prepared to be undewhelmed by yet another lengthy beatle book; so it was thrilling for me to find a text that not only provided me with new fab four facts, but also offered new insight into the same stories i have been reading for so long. while this book is decidedly "john-centric" and spends far more time documenting...more
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Holy crap is this book long. And informative. Also fun to read, so yay. Here's some fun stuff I learned:
1. They all had gonorrhea when they recorded "Love Me Do."
2. John was a huge asshole.
3. Brian Epstein would invite really rough dudes back to his house to beat the crap out of him.
4. Yoko was even worse than John.
5. Paul was kind of a dick, too.
6. But Ringo was a nice guy.
7. During early Beatles concerts, theater owners or whoever would wheel retards into the front ro...more
1. They all had gonorrhea when they recorded "Love Me Do."
2. John was a huge asshole.
3. Brian Epstein would invite really rough dudes back to his house to beat the crap out of him.
4. Yoko was even worse than John.
5. Paul was kind of a dick, too.
6. But Ringo was a nice guy.
7. During early Beatles concerts, theater owners or whoever would wheel retards into the front ro...more
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Read in December, 2005
In stark contrast to the "official" story of the Beatles presented in their anthology (AKA mythology), Spitz pulls together data from interviews and just about every book every written about the subject to assemble something that rises above the trivia and timelines of so many uneccesary Rock and Roll books and becomes a historical novel. And while Beatles fanatics are already complaining about incorrect dates and ages, it's hard for any rational person to find fault with the depth of ...more
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