#beatle books

[crepesuzette2023]

Beatles Books as vaguely defined friends and relatives at a party you attend with a new crush, whose name you keep mispronouncing.

The longer you stay, the more trouble you have remembering what the occasion was.

The lights keep changing. Shortly after you arrived, your crush shrunk to the size of a mouse, and scurried away. You’re on your own.

The Beatles (Bob Spitz) greets you, an attractive silver fox who seems to be shunned by most of the others. You wonder why. It’s as easy to imagine him as a crying wreck as it is to imagine him on a golf course. Here, There, and Everywhere (Geoff Emerick) disrupts your musings by pulling tapes from his mouth. Seeing your discomfort, he stops and hands you a photograph of John Lennon and Paul McCartney singing into the same microphone. As he does, his pupils take on the shape of hearts. Someone called George announces his intent to poison him.

Anthology (The Beatles) saunters in, puts eight arms around you, and promises to tell you the whole story. They proceed to speak in tongues, and throw popcorn at you. Stu Sutcliffe jumps from a pendant around their neck, lands on the floor, and scurries after your crush.

“It’s always like this,” says Body Count (Francie Schwartz). “I assume you don’t want to listen to my story about a gifted woman who got locked up for depression? That’s fine, I can also talk about frottage, and a certain man’s curves.”

“Oh, stop it,” says John (Cynthia Lennon). She turns to you. “My advice is: Turn around and run as fast as you can.” She demonstrates what she means by disappearing, leaving behind a purse filled with cheerful letters and drawings of herself getting married and giving birth. Everything smells of olive oil. Francie spots Loving John (May Pang), and rushes to her, greedy for gossip. Loving John (May Pang) is everyone’s favorite, because she doesn’t really know anyone very well, but she knows how to make everyone feel comfortable by saying things that make sense in the moment.

Living the Beatles Legend: The Mal Evans Story (Ken Womack) ends up taking her home; they both live at The Fringes. Her home is a little further than his, which is just this side of Weird whereas she’s all the way in Montauk, but he’ll make sure she gets there safely.

To make up for the disappearance of your crush, Remember (Mike McCartney) cuts your hair. Each snip of the scissors slots a black-and-white picture into your field of vision. Windows in time blow noise and heat in your face, and visions of a screaming band that looks a bit like the young Beatles. Then there’s the quiet heat of summer, towels rippling on the line, and a drain pipe screwed to the wall of a house. He talks about childhood, and you’re almost there, but you never will be, because he won’t let you in. His more verbose twin, The Macs (Mike McCartney), recites letters his brother and John wrote from Hamburg, but you can barely understand what he says, because he stuffed a tissue into his mouth.

“It’s only a story,” says The Lyrics (Paul McCartney). “Pleased to meet you. I’m a storyteller myself.” He sings a love song. “I must have thought about these things when I wrote it,” he muses. “Interesting. What a mind, as Linda used to say.”

He tears a few pages from a diary he kept in Paris in 1961 and hands them to you without comment.

At this point, the party is dissolving. Crocheted furniture floats away and stretches.

“Am I too late?” Skywriting by Word of Mouth (John Lennon) squeezes himself out of the lowest drawer of an antique desk, where, judging from by his crinkly pajamas, he slept. “I’m in pieces. Mend me with glue.”

“I will, I will!” Tune In—All These Years, Vol I (Mark Lewisohn) yells ecstatically. “I’m so glad you could make it Sit down with me and celebrate the heritage of Liverpool.”

Skywriting drapes himself around Tune In, who starts purring and rutting against him.

“Excuse me?” It’s The Fifth Beatle: The Brian Epstein Story (Vivek Tiwary), torero boots clicking on the invisible floor as he strides towards the couch. A spotlight follows him. “I’m managing this show, and I insist on expanding the scene.” Around them, a hotel room forms.

Skywriting lights a cigarette. “Join us in bed, Bri.”

“Yes,” moans Tune In. “I’m so lonely. I’m the oldest of a triplet, or so they say, but the other two haven’t been born yet.”

The Fifth Beatle sits down and observes the unhinged biography losing himself in the friction of rubbing against the shapeshifting Skywriting. Finally, things reach a conclusion.

“And so,” says The Fifth Beatle, “what partially was, finished.”

“Stop repeating lines from a bad movie, Brian," says Skywriting, "you’re better than that.”

As you try to plot ways to escape through the skylight, The McCartney Legacy, Vol 1 (Sinclair & Kozinn) slides out from under the bed, a broad-shouldered lady in a bright red dress. A half-hatched alien with long legs and sunglasses squirms between her breasts, and makes mouth percussion sounds.

“Gentlemen.” The McCartney Legacy retrieves a very, very long rosary from her pocket. “Is anyone interested in an exquisitely crafted, finely wrought chronology?”

At the sound of the word “chronology,” The Beatles (Hunter Davies) crashes through the ceiling.

“Don’t fall for it!” The Beatles snatches the vocalizing baby alien from The McCartney Legacy’s chest, and kills it by wringing its neck. “Time stopped in 1968. The only valid extension are my own salacious additions. Strictly off the record.”

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” says The Fifth Beatle.

You exchange a glance with Skywriting, who is plucking pieces of Tune In from his body like children snatch pieces of dough, and sticking them in his mouth.

A camera clicks.

“Excellent.”

The Eyes of the Storm (Paul McCartney) lowers the camera, and changes into a suntanned, gleaming likeness of George Harrison. Then he changes into a fish.

“Everyone looking at the pictures will think they know,” the fish says. “They’ll have no idea!”

The floor dissolves under you. You fall into a pool, just in time to save your crush from being sucked into the drain, and after a barely audible edit you find yourself back home, with no memories at all, the taste of chewing gum in your mouth, and wearing matching tops saying, I visited Fellini’s Satyricon, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt. (ETA: I can't believe I forgot about Dreaming the Beatles (Rob Sheffield). I guess I'll have to include him in the inevitable sequel to this...thing, as the +1 of John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs (Ian Leslie).)

[bambi-kinos]

Sorry, could you elaborate on Peter Doggett's book a little more? It's the first time I've heard about it. What is the theory why John stayed in the Dakota? Thanks!

So, "Prisoner of Love" was supposed to be the next Big Beatles Book to come out. It has been written and for a while there were advanced reader companies being sold on Amazon India. Unfortunately I wasn't quick enough to buy it and it disappeared. But essentially "Prisoner of Love" was supposed to be Peter Doggett's investigation into John Lennon's years at the Dakota building when John had returned to Yoko/been blackmailed into returning. Doggett is an actual journalist with a genuine bibliography behind him and he does actual investigatory work that doesn't rely on manufacturing Frankenstein quotes to get his point across. He also wrote the legendary "You Never Give Me Your Money" which breaks down the financial woes of the Beatles into a digestible form so that we can understand the financial side of the break up.

Suffice to say the topic of John's stay in the Dakota, Yoko forcing him to stay addicted to drugs, and abusing him and Sean emotionally and psychologically, is a very serious and contentious subject. So much so that the Lennon Estate has most likely spiked the book and stopped it from being published, probably because it makes Yoko look like the monster she is.

I'll quote Hey Dullblog here:

In 2012, St. Martin’s Press contacted me via my semi-highfalutin’ agent in New York. “I loved your Barry Trotter books”—the ones that sold a million plus worldwide—“and have always wanted to work with you. There’s a project idea we have, are you interested?” Sure I was. They wanted me to do a parody of Downton Abbey, Julian Fellowes’ costume drama popular at the time and, as Kate and I were fans of the show, I readily agreed to write the parody. But before I did, I asked the $64,000 question: “Are all the higher-ups behind this book? Have you gotten a sense of what Julian Fellowes might think? Parodies often get sued—are you prepared for that?” Yes to all this, the editor said, and he and my agent began negotiating the deal, while I got down to the writing and designing of the parody. At great speed, of course, because it was July or something, and they wanted it for their fall list.

Six weeks later, I finished the project on deadline, and presented it to them for publication. I’d been showing my editor chapters as I’d written and designed them, and gotten much laughter and encouragement. All lights were green.

Until, one morning, they weren’t. Instead of paying me the agreed-upon $30,000 for a book which they’d asked me to write, and had approved of in-process—they suddenly offered me $5,000 “to put the manuscript in a drawer permanently.” All communication with me stopped; even my agent couldn’t get a straight answer as to what had happened. It was, of course, completely illegal to do what they had done, get me to write a book to order on spec with a false promise, but neither my well-respected New York agent, nor my $400/hour New York publishing lawyer would back me in a lawsuit. “Mike, I’d never be able to sell another book to them again,” said my agent; with so few publishing houses, backing me and the stink I planned to make would hinder his other clients, and spell career doom for him. And my lawyer, too, made all her money working with these companies. They both required good relations with the publishing houses, not with me, the guy who they nominally worked for.

So I Kickstarted the book, and said sayonara to book publishing for good. The contracts are terrible, there is no Union, and the structure of the business itself compromises an author’s representation. And the houses themselves—with all due respect to the many smart and ethical people who toil for them—are purest courtier culture, as bad in this regard as fashion or Hollywood. As large companies, book publishers are exquisitely sensitive to pressure; as individuals, most of them come from the best (read: most expensive) schools, and must come from significant money to be able to pursue such a poorly paid career in such an expensive city. And finally, since 1980 the book publishing business has not only really embraced the blockbuster model, they have increasingly looked to Hollywood for their ethics. And in Hollywood, fame and money rules. Star-power.

I think what happened was that some editor had a bright idea, contacted me, and got me writing. His higher-ups, such as they were paying attention at all, had no very clear idea what “a parody” would be, thinking that it was something sorta like an original, only funny. Then, when it came time to publish the manuscript—traditional literary parody, as I’d done with Barry Trotter—either someone inside the house thought Fellowes wouldn’t like it and pre-censored themselves, or Fellowes himself said he wouldn’t like it. “You publish this, and I won’t even let you bid on the Downton Abbey Calendar!”

I think something similar might’ve happened to Doggett’s book. I think someone asked him for ideas, post-You Never Give Me Your Money. He pitched the book to an editor, the editor bought it, Doggett wrote it, the project was ready for publication, and then the Estate read an advance copy and threatened a lawsuit. The publishing house, looking at sales of Doggett’s You Never Give Me Your Money, a fine and worthy book, calculated that any lawsuit—no matter how frivolous—would cost more than they were likely to make on the book. Or perhaps there is another Lennon- or Yoko-related book that they figure they’d make more money on. Or perhaps it was simply that someone high up enough in the company is friends with Yoko; bigtime publishing execs and people like the Lennons are likely to know each other, have houses near each other—New York wealth and culture is a small world. (Added later: apparently the publisher, Jawbone Press, is a London-based independent. I have little direct knowledge of UK publishing culture, save for my conversations with my UK editor. But in such cultural realms, in my experience the US and UK form one ecosystem.)

Whatever the details—and it’s unlikely that we’ll know any, because Doggett writes books for a living, and anybody in that racket has to keep certain aspects of this game to themselves (as I would, had I any interest in writing a book for a Big Six publisher ever again)—there is really only one reason a book gets pulled so close to its publication date, and that is a surprise communication from a powerful party that publication will result in legal action.

Of course the book was strongly vetted; of course all conventions (like paraphrasing) were employed; of course the copies of the Diaries were obtained legally; I’m sure there were no obvious holes. In fact, I would be highly surprised if the house did not contact the Lennon Estate the moment they considered accepting Doggett’s proposal—wouldn’t you? In no way was the project undertaken as something adversarial to a famous, generally well-thought of widow and feminist icon…who also happens to be a billionaire. That is not how book publishing—or America—works in 2022.

Did Yoko signal “go ahead” and then, after the book was completed and ready for sale, change her mind? I cannot say, but she did something similar with the Norman biography of her husband, which deeply wounded the sales profile of that book. (The authorized Lennon biography will sell better than another unauthorized one.) And there is another advantage: by waiting until the book was ready to go, the Estate inflicted maximum pain on both the house and the author, costing them maximum emotional discomfort and maximum money. This will chill the already-chilly waters for any future projects on John Lennon, save for ones done by Yoko or Sean. This is a wonderful advantage.

As depressing as this reading of events is for Beatles and Lennon fans, we must always realize that what is many people’s passion is some people’s business and a few people’s family legacy. While we might hunger for “the truth,” what we will get is what the Estate feels is its financial or emotional benefit.

The person I feel worst for is, of course, Peter Doggett, who added something of real value to Beatles literature with You Never Give Me Your Money, and would have been able to clarify so much about the last truly murky aspect of John Lennon’s story. Unlike Norman or the Sheffs, I generally trust Doggett to give us an even-handed account of what he examines, and with people like Goldman, Rosen, Seaman, and “John Green” as our main sources on the Dakota Years, Doggett’s book would’ve provided a real service. I suspect Doggett was paid to “put it in a drawer” and, for his sake, I hope it was enough money for him to feel whole—though given that the book seems to have had a distinctly personal cast to it, I suspect it took something major out of him to have the project pulled.

This, then, is the tragedy of the Estate’s behavior. By wishing to control the narrative, it is not just asserting that it owns John Lennon—which it does, in the narrow legal sense—but also what we can think of John Lennon. The most important “John Lennon,” certainly at this late date, is the man who lives on in the minds of his fans, before and after December 8, 1980. And by disallowing Doggett’s expression of that—regardless of what his book said or did not say about Yoko, Sean or anyone else—the Estate is engaging in a kind of erasure. Petty, vain, self-absorbed, and with no regard to who really should be driving the narrative today, 42 years after John’s murder—the fans who loved and love him.

My personal take is that Doggett did a careful analysis of John's diaries, did his interviews with Sean and Yoko (whatever state she was in), probably interviewed May Pang and Mick Jagger as well as everyone else who was in contact with John during his interim at the Dakota. And then Doggett wrote up the unifying theory of why John Lennon went back to Yoko and what kept him there.

I honestly don't have it in me right now to write up my personal theory about why John did it and why he stayed, I'll reblog this post with an addition if I ever do. But I think that Prisoner of Love was deeply embarrassing and actively harmful to the ballad of John and Yoko and someone on Yoko's legal team killed the book out of the pants shitting fear that Yoko and John's PR image would be permanently tarnished by it. Maybe even destroyed. Yoko was much more of a monster than I think we'll ever truly know if there's not a tell-all and John and Sean both suffered profoundly for it. There's no way that the Lennon Estate would allow Doggett to publish such an embarrassing and shocking book while Yoko is still alive.

Of course, once she finally kicks it then all bets are off.

[beatlesbookblog]

Excited to have gotten this in the mail! Maybe it'll be next on my reading list after reading Hunter Davies' biography??

[beatlesblogger]

News Round-Up: Some Films and Books On The Way

There are not one but two John Lennon and Yoko Ono films set for release shortly. The first, and the most interesting, is One to One: John & Yoko which has just premiered at the Venice International Film Festival and is getting very good reviews. It is a documentary set in New York in 1972 exploring not only John and Yoko’s new-found love of that city, but also their musical, personal, artistic,…

[pie-of-flames]

I'm so excited about this book! I've been dying for a book on this topic.

Update: I now have it in my grabby little hands.

[todayesterday]

im halfway through geoff emerick’s book on recording the beatles and it’s fascinating and all but on god, why is that man such an asshole to george harrison. he is so disrespectful to george and apparently so unprovoked too? man’s never seemed to do anything bad to emerick, apart from not being as close to him as paul is. it’s pissing me off at this point, like we get it you don’t like him, can we please move on now? he belittles george constantly and seems to highlight only his mistakes again and again, even sounding surprised the few times he actually likes george’s work. whereas paul hasn’t committed a single mistake in the five years i’ve read him describe so far. the difference in treatment is getting so distracting. i mean, come on. and he just pretends ringo doesn’t exist too like wtf lmao. hot take but it would greatly benefit the book if it was a little more balanced

[loveinstreams]

"unauthorized biography" "unofficial biopic" that's a big budget rpf fanfiction if you ask me

[strwbryfeels]

[dovetailjoints]

obv I’m waiting impatiently for Ian Leslie’s mclennon book to come out, but I should have known that the French would get there first

If you press me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it cannot be expressed otherwise than by saying, “Because it was he; because it was I.”

[innitmarvellous]

I'm fucking crying

[thebeatlemaniagirl]

the fact that the pothole lowkey has better hair than me is sending me.

[georgeharrisonsmiling]

Nowhere man: The final days of John Lennon. Robert Rosen

Prisoner of Love: Inside the Dakota with John Lennon. Peter Doggett | Release cancelled in 2021

Lennon in America. Geoffrey Giuliano

[bambi-kinos]

hey Bambi! I'm the anon who asked about the lost weekend, which sources would you recommend for accounts about what happened to John when Yoko met up with him with his smoking cure? I had no clue about the waterboaring, vomiting, etc and if possible I'd like to read on it! I'm relatively new to this stuff and I appreciate it! thanks!!!

May Pang's book "Loving John." He told her everything after she got in touch with him after.

[hamyilton]

[beatlesblogger]

'Living The Beatles Legend' - Out Now

Very much looking forward to reading and reviewing Kenneth Womack’s latest – a biography on the Beatles’ ever-present minder, Mal Evans. If you live in the USA the book is published by Harper Collins and is called Living The Beatles Legend – The Untold Story of Mal Evans. It comes with this cover: If you’re in the UK it is also published by Harper Collins, but has a slightly different title…

[beatlesmenrock]

it’s time for another beatles dump