Beatles : The Biography

by Spitz, Bob

• ISBN13: 9780316803526
• ISBN10: 0316803529
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-11-01
• Publisher: Little Brown & Co

Summary

"The product of almost a decade of research, hundreds of unprecedented interviews, and the discovery of scores of never-before-revealed documents, Bob Spitz's The Beatles is the biography fans have been waiting for - a vast, complete account as brilliant and joyous and revelatory as a Beatles record itself. Spitz begins in Liverpool, a hard city knocked on its heels. In the housing projects and school playgrounds, four boys would discover themselves - and via late-night radio broadcasts, a new form of music called rock 'n roll." "Never before has a biography of musicians been so immersive and textured. Spitz takes us down Penny Lane and to Strawberry Field (John later added the s), to Hamburg, Germany, where - amid the squalor and the violence and the pep pills - the Beatles truly became the Beatles. We are there in the McCartney living room when Paul and John learn to write songs together; in the heat of Liverpool's Cavern Club, where jazz has been the norm before the Beatles show up; backstage the night Ringo takes over on drums; in seedy German strip clubs where George lies about his age so the band can perform; on the lonely tours through frigid Scottish towns before the breakthrough; at the Abbey Road studios, where a young producer named George Martin takes them under his wing; at the Ed Sullivan Show as America discovers the joy and the madness; and onward and upward: up the charts, from Shea to San Francisco, through the London night, on to India, through marmalade skies, across the universe - all the way to a rooftop concert and one last moment of laughter and music."--BOOK JACKET.

Table of Contents

Prologue	3	(12)
MERCY
A Proper Upbringing	15	(19)
The Messiah Arrives	34	(13)
Muscle and Sinew	47	(21)
The Showman	68	(25)
A Simple Twist of Fete	93	(22)
The Missing Links	115	(14)
A Good Little Sideshow	129	(12)
The College Band	141	(10)
Chalk and Cheese	151	(9)
Moondogs and Englishmen	160	(15)
Hit the Road: Jac	175	(26)
Baptism by Fire	201	(31)
A Revelation to Behold	232	(20)
Mr. X	252	(18)
A Gigantic Leap of Faith	270	(12)
The Road to London	282	(22)
Do the Right Thing	304	(19)
Starr Time	323	(24)
A Touch of the Barnum & Bailey	347	(19)
Dead Chuffed	366	(17)
MANIA
The Jungle Drums	383	(23)
Kings of the Jungle	406	(20)
So This Is Beatlemania	426	(31)
Once Upon a Time in America	457	(29)
Tomorrow Never Knows	486	(19)
In the Eye of a Hurricane	505	(32)
Lennon and McCartney to the Rescue	537	(27)
Into the Cosmic Consciousness	564	(31)
MASTERY
Just Sort of a Freak Show	595	(32)
A Storm in a Teacup	627	(31)
A Very Freaky Experience	658	(24)
The Summer of Love	682	(27)
From Bad to Worse	709	(27)
An Additional Act	736	(30)
Good-bye to the Boys in the Band!	766	(32)
Disturbing the Peace	798	(26)
And in the End	824	(33)
Acknowledgments	857	(4)
Notes	861	(87)
Bibliography	948	(11)
Discography	959	(3)
Index	962