“The Beatles: The Biography”, by Bob Spitz

 

992 pages, Back Bay Books, ISBN-13: 978-0316013314

I have been listening to The Beatles my whole life, and some of my earliest recollections are of plugging in my parent’s Eight-Track compilations of their songs and jamming away to the music in our rented house on Haverhill in Detroit. This love of All Things Beatles has never left me, and when I started collecting their albums as a young adult I sought to learn more about them as musicians and people. And so I bought and read 100 Best Beatles Songs: A Passionate Fan’s Guide by Michael Lewis & Stephen J. Spignesi (reviewed on October 9^th, 2014) and Shout! The True Story of the Beatles by Philip Norman (reviewed on November 15^th, 2017) and then The Mammoth Book of the Beatles edited by Sean Egan (reviewed on July 19^th, 2019), and found, to my shock and horror, that John Paul George and Ringo were human after all, with flaws and foibles aplenty to go along with their talent and drive. While there is still a place deep in my psyche that views the Four Lads from Liverpool as later-day Four Musketeers, the truth is the truth, and one must look upon Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starkey (Starr) as they were, which is exactly what Bob Spitz does in the brilliant The Beatles: The Biography.

The Beatles all grew up in the United Kingdom after the end of World War II, a country that was still recovering from war and an industrial port town, Liverpool, that had seen better days and in which these “Scousers” all nurtured a long-standing inferiority complex as regards to England’s upper classes in general and towards London in particular. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the government owned radio station, effectively embargoed American rock music as being substandard to their refined tastes, forcing teenagers across the sceptred isle to tune into Radio Luxembourg (of all places) to hear the latest from the likes of Elvis Presley and the Everly Brothers while reveling in England’s youth pop music of the time, Skiffle (which you can read about in Roots, Radicals and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World by Billy Bragg, reviewed on July 5^th, 2018). Amongst the many millions of such teenagers were Richard Starkey (born July 7^th, 1940), John Winston Lennon (born October 9^th, 1940), James Paul McCartney (born June 18^th, 1942) and George Harrison (born February 25^th, 1943). Contemporaries all with similar tastes in (American) music, yet very different all the same.

While sharing much in terms in interests and backgrounds, each was also a person of their own. From the very beginning you really get the sense that Ringo was glad just to be part of it and was easily the most affable of the group, though certainly it is Ringo who makes the Beatles who they are; one might question if, without Ringo, there could have been “The Beatles”, Pete Best be damned. Though Ringo is hardly an innocent babe in the woods – particularly when drugs enter the picture – he seems the most authentic, the most down-to-earth and the most you’d like to have a pint with.

John is easily the most difficult man of the group, full of hidden rages and scuppered dreams. He is the original Beatle (hell, he is also the original Quarryman) but torn between fear, self-loathing, brilliant wit and multiple insecurities (oh, the insecurities). He is a deep thinker but often expresses his intellect by hurting the most vulnerable people who love and befriend him, as well as his entourage and friends. And his obsession with Yoko “Bane of the Universe” Ono is nothing less than pathetic, a mere infatuation that morphed into an emotional dependence that saw him eventually sideline every other relationship in his life for her.

Paul is just as talented and just as productive as John – the best songs either man ever wrote they wrote together, “nose-to-nose” in their words – but also a sexual rogue, the last of The Beatles to get married as he was loath to let the roving rock star persona go. He was also the lead egotist of the group who needed always to be out front but, to be fair, The Beatles needed a firm, guiding hand to keep them on track, even if only for a few weeks in the studio. And while John Lennon has always been thought of as a Working Class Hero, he was decidedly Middle Class; it was Paul who was Blue Collar, although his family life was so much more grounded.

George, as the youngest, is rather immature but vastly superior to his mates as an instrumentalist, if not as a songwriter. But as his writing talents mature and improve (but not to the level of his two overbearing mates, as George Martin would attest to) his torment in being the Third Beatle smolders throughout much of Beatlemania until it finally bursts like a boil. While trying to find contentment, he is the first to turn to drugs and then, when seeing the dark path that way leads, turns instead to Eastern mysticism while taking the others along for the ride, even if just for a short time, and at last finding some equilibrium in his life.

Then there is Brian Epstein, the manager. He is, as the story unfolds, the best and the worst thing to happen to the Beatles, as his moxie, coupled with The Beatles’ stage charisma (and not a little luck), landed the group’s contract with Britain's recording giant EMI and its American subsidiary, Capital. Again, for complex reasons, Epstein was able to control the group’s inner dynamics after it became internationally famous. But he was a dreadful business manager and was too often distracted by a dark and violent homosexual lifestyle, and he cost the group close to a billion dollars in lost revenue.

Of course there is George Martin, the only true Fifth Beatle, no matter whoever else may lay claim to that moniker. The record producer, arranger, composer, conductor, audio engineer and musician took the Fab Four to musical heights they would never have achieved on their own, what with his eye for talent and his ear for hits. Before working with The Beatles and other pop musicians, he produced comedy and novelty records in the early 1950s, working with the likes of Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Bernard Cribbins, among others. It is impossible to imagine The Beatles being as successful as they were without Martin’s guiding hand.

The story of The Beatles is enduring because it is compelling, with brilliant talents and strong personalities first cooperating and then fighting to create something memorable and lasting. The Beatles spins the tale of the Fab Four like no other book on them ever has and, possibly, ever will. While George and Ringo (and Brian and George) cannot be left out of the equation that equals The Beatles, the relationship between John and Paul is at the centerpiece of the story, and Spitz is masterful in describing the twelve year relationship of the two. They became like brothers (though in the mold of Esau and Jacob, perhaps?), and though much has been written of their composing mastery, Spitz documents just how prolific and spontaneous they actually were and why George Martin focused so much time and attention on them, to the possible detriment of everyone else (sorry George). What is equally surprising is how they composed during periods of terrible strains in their relationships, personal and professional and with the ultimate goal always in sight but, once Lennon and McCartney could no longer be reconciled and at last drifted their separate ways, only then did The Beatles dissolve. Damnit.