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benedettal's review
2.5
I guess this is a fine biography, if you can call it that when the focus really isn’t on the individuals at all. I don’t think I know the band any more intimately, but I think the goal of this book was to more so give a sense of their meteoric rise to fame. It does give a lot of things for granted, which maybe is okay because it means that it’s less descriptive. I guess I just don’t necessarily care so much about the thoughts of random fans or even some more famous one who were mentioned by one name only to be explained further in a footnote, idk I just thought it was a little clunky.
I think the problems likely have to do with market saturation. Did anyone really need another beatles biography? Probably not, so this one is trying to do something different. Or maybe I’m just not used to the focus having to be split between so many people.
What I did appreciate was the lack of sugarcoating of the whoring and drug use of the early days, that was funny. But I don’t think the author kept that edge throughout, idk. Anyways, still good enough.
I think the problems likely have to do with market saturation. Did anyone really need another beatles biography? Probably not, so this one is trying to do something different. Or maybe I’m just not used to the focus having to be split between so many people.
What I did appreciate was the lack of sugarcoating of the whoring and drug use of the early days, that was funny. But I don’t think the author kept that edge throughout, idk. Anyways, still good enough.
joko88's review against another edition
funny
informative
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
4.25
Lots of small moments about the Beatles and their world at large, as well as their impact on fans and some of their legacy
radikaliseradgroda's review against another edition
3.0
This is a fun biography, if a bit over-padded with lists and trivia (who reads a Beatles biography to find out what new words were coined in 1964?). Also there was a lot of repetition, and a surprising amount of vitriol spewed about Yoko Ono - and the whole fluxus movement for that matter. How can you praise "I am the Walrus" for its whimsical nonsense, and then tear apart Grapefruit for playing the same game, only in a different medium?
gregmorton's review against another edition
4.0
It's a well written book with great stories and couldn't put it down, so 4 stars, but I equally abandoned it fairly early on because it focuses on the seedy and negative elements of the Beatles story and life's too short for that
greybeard49's review against another edition
4.0
I grew up with them and this book took me right back to those times and the emotions and atmosphere that we all experienced then. The book is superbly written and the information, short anecdotes and historical detail are wonderfully rolled out. I was born in '49 so was at the age were the 'phenomenon' which was the Beatles really made an impact.
I vividly remember the early records up to the concert on the roof and the the day I heard that they were breaking up. I, too, bought the 'White Album' after scraping together the cash to do it. Singing 'Hey Jude' in dance clubs or walking down the street with my mates going 'Na-na-na-na'. Well done Criag Brown.
I vividly remember the early records up to the concert on the roof and the the day I heard that they were breaking up. I, too, bought the 'White Album' after scraping together the cash to do it. Singing 'Hey Jude' in dance clubs or walking down the street with my mates going 'Na-na-na-na'. Well done Criag Brown.
toniclark's review against another edition
5.0
Oh, just wonderful And the audio version is FANTASTIC!! “Though fifty years have passed since the breakup of the Beatles, the fab four continue to occupy an utterly unique place in popular culture. Their influence extends far beyond music and into realms as diverse as fashion and fine art, sexual politics and religion. When they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, fresh off the plane from England, they provoked an epidemic of hoarse-throated fandom that continues to this day.” [from the Amazon summary]
The Beatles’ music is the soundtrack of my life and it’s really hard to believe that 50 years have passed since they broke up. It’s easy to think we know all there is to know about them, but I learned a lot. In the end, my opinion of John changed quite a bit (for the worse) and I have a new appreciation for Ringo, who I found to be the most endearing. It’s impossible not to love Paul, right? And George? I’m still ambivalent.
The book was published in the UK with the title “One, Two, Three, Four: The Beatles in Time” (better title!). Do listen to the audio if you can. It’s a magnificent production.
The Beatles’ music is the soundtrack of my life and it’s really hard to believe that 50 years have passed since they broke up. It’s easy to think we know all there is to know about them, but I learned a lot. In the end, my opinion of John changed quite a bit (for the worse) and I have a new appreciation for Ringo, who I found to be the most endearing. It’s impossible not to love Paul, right? And George? I’m still ambivalent.
The book was published in the UK with the title “One, Two, Three, Four: The Beatles in Time” (better title!). Do listen to the audio if you can. It’s a magnificent production.
saroz162's review against another edition
3.0
It took me a long time to read this book - so long, in fact, I went back to the beginning and started it again, reading most of the first half twice. It has an interesting framework - 150 vignettes, many of which are very thinly connected, told in a roughly but not entirely chronological order - that contributes to it being both a little addictive and a little easy to forget once you put it down. It's a sort of attention-deficit writing; you can practically hear the "WHOOSH" from the TV series Lost as it veers backward, forward, and sideways in time.
It also takes some time to fully recognize what Brown's doing, or perhaps one might say the nature of his implicit thesis. This is a book about celebrity - about how it elevates normal, everyday people, changes how other people react to them, makes them into people they never would have been. Most of all, it's about the flame of celebrity and the peripheral figures who get their wings burnt by it. That's interesting - I'm not sure it's 650 pages of interesting, though.
Many of the vignettes revolve around specific people, and several of them will be familiar to stalwart fans, especially in the second half of the book: the Maharishi, "Magic" Alex, the policeman who broke up the rooftop concert, and of course, Yoko. The more surprising stories show up toward the beginning of the book, including anecdotes I've never read from Hamburg, encounters with Noel Coward and Malcolm Muggeridge, and some of the Beatles' earliest public appearances as chart-toppers. It's all very readable and often related in a cheerful, quirky tone that fits the cover design. The longer you go on, though, the more of a picture of destruction and chaos builds, including some openly seedy chapters that veer toward tabloid journalism (I'm thinking specifically of the second Ronnie Spector section). It's a strange book in that you often feel drawn to read it but feel just that little bit unclean afterward.
As others have also pointed out, Brown also gives the National Trust and their "preservation" of the Beatle homes a right kicking - not entirely unjustified, but the sarcasm in those chapters, and a couple others involving his tourist adventures, is laid on very thick.
At the end of the day I'm not totally sure what to make of One Two Three Four. It makes a worthwhile point, and I think it's good reading if you're a fan of the Beatles and you know a few (but not all) of these stories - you'll learn more about what happened to Jimmie Nicol, for instance. Some of the vignettes are really funny, like the letters received by Ringo from fangirls, and some of them are joyous, like the multiple perspectives that combine to tell the story of the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. The book ultimately trends toward melancholy, though - it's hard to get around the point he makes about Brian Epstein in the framing story, for instance - and while I'm in no way suggesting a book needs to stay cheerful and upbeat all the time, it feels like an awful lot of pages to reinforce a position that's pretty obvious by half the way through.
It also takes some time to fully recognize what Brown's doing, or perhaps one might say the nature of his implicit thesis. This is a book about celebrity - about how it elevates normal, everyday people, changes how other people react to them, makes them into people they never would have been. Most of all, it's about the flame of celebrity and the peripheral figures who get their wings burnt by it. That's interesting - I'm not sure it's 650 pages of interesting, though.
Many of the vignettes revolve around specific people, and several of them will be familiar to stalwart fans, especially in the second half of the book: the Maharishi, "Magic" Alex, the policeman who broke up the rooftop concert, and of course, Yoko. The more surprising stories show up toward the beginning of the book, including anecdotes I've never read from Hamburg, encounters with Noel Coward and Malcolm Muggeridge, and some of the Beatles' earliest public appearances as chart-toppers. It's all very readable and often related in a cheerful, quirky tone that fits the cover design. The longer you go on, though, the more of a picture of destruction and chaos builds, including some openly seedy chapters that veer toward tabloid journalism (I'm thinking specifically of the second Ronnie Spector section). It's a strange book in that you often feel drawn to read it but feel just that little bit unclean afterward.
As others have also pointed out, Brown also gives the National Trust and their "preservation" of the Beatle homes a right kicking - not entirely unjustified, but the sarcasm in those chapters, and a couple others involving his tourist adventures, is laid on very thick.
At the end of the day I'm not totally sure what to make of One Two Three Four. It makes a worthwhile point, and I think it's good reading if you're a fan of the Beatles and you know a few (but not all) of these stories - you'll learn more about what happened to Jimmie Nicol, for instance. Some of the vignettes are really funny, like the letters received by Ringo from fangirls, and some of them are joyous, like the multiple perspectives that combine to tell the story of the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. The book ultimately trends toward melancholy, though - it's hard to get around the point he makes about Brian Epstein in the framing story, for instance - and while I'm in no way suggesting a book needs to stay cheerful and upbeat all the time, it feels like an awful lot of pages to reinforce a position that's pretty obvious by half the way through.