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A review by daja57
One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time by Craig Brown
3.0
A voluminous book about the Beatles. Brown's technique, already displayed in his book 'One on One', is to assemble a collage of snippets, offering peeks into events in the history of the Beatles. These include comments from celebrity and non-celebrity fans, Brown's own experiences as a boy growing up to the background of the Beatles, and Brown's notes taken while on tours of National Trust properties linked to the Beatles. There are even some counterfactual pages. This can be quite endearing, and it is easy to read a few of the mostly short chapters and then put the book down, but I found it annoying in the end.
The author is clearly a wordsmith. He spends a great deal of time tracing the provenance of lyrics, sometimes explaining what they mean. He very rarely says anything about the music, except sometimes quoting often pompous musicologists. And yet these lads were, first and foremost, musicians. It seems an enormous blind spot.
Easy to read but how can you miss out the music?
The author is clearly a wordsmith. He spends a great deal of time tracing the provenance of lyrics, sometimes explaining what they mean. He very rarely says anything about the music, except sometimes quoting often pompous musicologists. And yet these lads were, first and foremost, musicians. It seems an enormous blind spot.
Easy to read but how can you miss out the music?