“The Mammoth Book of the Beatles”, edited by Sean Egan

512 pages, Running Press, ISBN-13: 978-0762436279

For anyone unfamiliar with the “Mammoth” series of books, they go the way back to 1984 in their current incarnations (I found The Mammoth Book of Thrillers, Ghosts and Mysteries from 1936, then…nothin’), and are a kind of all-in-one hodgepodge of stuff on a particular subject: stories, articles, lists, ruminations on Science Fiction, Haunted House Stories, Women Who Kill…and The Beatles, as in The Mammoth Book of the Beatles, edited by Sean Egan, a freelance journalist, author and editor who writes about arts, entertainment and sport. This Mammoth is no different, containing as it does several contemporary accounts, articles and interviews – yeah, yeah, yeah Maureen Cleave’s “Beatles Bigger than Christ” article is in there; shut up – as well as more current memoirs and reassessments of the most wildly popular band in America and, thus, the world.

I, for one, liked it, but only as a kind of attachment to other, superior Beatles books (like, oh I don’t know, Philip Norman’s Shout! The True Story of the Beatles, reviewed on November 15^th, 2017), for as a stand-alone work it betrays its hit-or-miss nature with the differing quality of the works within. The original articles are interesting, especially those written at the time of Beatlemania, both for and against (did you know that not everyone loved The Beatles? Cretins). And while Egan the writer is good and his musical ear mostly sound, I was perplexed by some of his declarations from on high, like how I Want Hold Your Hand was “simply not very good”, or that Paperback Writer was a “catch-up enterprise”, or that Strawberry Fields Forever was “good but not great” and that Penny Lane was likewise “not that great”, how All You Need Is Love was a “piece of hack work”, and how Yer Blues was “the only blues released by The Beatles during their existence”. I mean, really, all of that is bullshit; I can only think that, in a fit of contrariness, he wanted to document he was a legit independent-minded critic going his own way. Whatever. Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane are the greatest one-two punch in popular music. Ever.

But it’s not all bad as, for instance, when Egan describes John and Paul harmonizing on One After 909 he states that “when (they) swing together into a ‘Weeell...’ halfway through the number as seamlessly and brotherly as an Everlys joint vocal, it’s enough to bring tears to the eyes, a reminder of the golden days of a partnership once so harmonious and which begat so much pleasure for so many millions and is about to disappear into history”. That’s gold, man! Gold! So Egan has a soul, after all (oh, and his critiques of the three Anthology albums were spot on, so there’s that, too.). Like I said, this book works best as an addition to other, better Beatles books, rather than as a stand-alone work; a kind of specialty encyclopedia to be referenced and enjoyed at random. A nice addition to any Beatlephile’s collection, just so long as it’s not the only book you got.