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A review by erboe501
The Beatles: The Biography by Bob Spitz
4.0
Ever since I could first listen to music and dance along, I have loved the Beatles (thanks dad). I have nearly 200 of their songs on my iPod and have watched two of their movies. Nevertheless, I didn't know too much about their lives other than the run of the mill facts. I picked up this book because I wanted to learn more about how the band formed, made history, and broke up. I found what I was looking for, and a whole lot more...
This was a mammoth book to get through. The chapters are super long, but, thankfully, they're broken up into sizable sections and subsections. In my opinion, this book could have been pared down a bit. I didn't need so much background on so many of the satellite characters, but I did enjoy the descriptions of how the band's songs were composed and recorded. I appreciate the narrative tone of the chapters, but sometimes I wondered if Spitz was making up some of the narration. I know most of the sources he drew from weren't the most reliable, but I still wonder if such a dramatized, and often sentimentalized, approach was appropriate. All of that being said, Spitz's writing style was not dry, and it was not difficult to read quickly. Spitz definitely sympathized the most with Ringo and then George, with John and Paul both getting it when they deserved it. Spitz is definitely not a Yoko Ono fan, as I think most Beatles fans aren't. The biography ends with the band's breakup, with a short endnote summarizing the paths each Beatle took afterwards.
I would recommend this book to anyone who is still in the throes of Beatlemania and prepared to read nearly a thousand pages on his/her idols. If you can deal with Spitz's partiality (which is easy if you're a Beatles fan) then all you need is this book!
This was a mammoth book to get through. The chapters are super long, but, thankfully, they're broken up into sizable sections and subsections. In my opinion, this book could have been pared down a bit. I didn't need so much background on so many of the satellite characters, but I did enjoy the descriptions of how the band's songs were composed and recorded. I appreciate the narrative tone of the chapters, but sometimes I wondered if Spitz was making up some of the narration. I know most of the sources he drew from weren't the most reliable, but I still wonder if such a dramatized, and often sentimentalized, approach was appropriate. All of that being said, Spitz's writing style was not dry, and it was not difficult to read quickly. Spitz definitely sympathized the most with Ringo and then George, with John and Paul both getting it when they deserved it. Spitz is definitely not a Yoko Ono fan, as I think most Beatles fans aren't. The biography ends with the band's breakup, with a short endnote summarizing the paths each Beatle took afterwards.
I would recommend this book to anyone who is still in the throes of Beatlemania and prepared to read nearly a thousand pages on his/her idols. If you can deal with Spitz's partiality (which is easy if you're a Beatles fan) then all you need is this book!