Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation

Far and away the best Beatles Biog from a writer who fully researches his subject.

Perfect

Philip Norman is an intelligent journalist with a crisp, workmanlike prose style. He first published this biography of the Beatles in the early 1980s, and has been revising it and reissuing it ever since. It has acquired a status in some quarters as the 'definitive' biography of the band, which I for one don't think it has earned.Let me make myself clear: I do not think that every book about the Beatles has to be a hymn of praise. The best critical books about the Beatles are the ones that are willing to take the band to task about something or other; Ian Macdonald's classic 'Revolution in the Head' is impatient with the band's drug-induced willingness to fool about; Devin McKinney's brilliant 'Magic Circles' has little time for 'Sgt Pepper' and argues that the White Album is the best Beatles album, precisely because it's such a mess; Jonathan Gould's 'Can't Buy Me Love' has a robust independence of judgement that seems to fit no particular pattern. But these are part of what make those books great. Macdonald, McKinney and Gould are all writing about what they regard as the best and most important band ever, which makes it all the more important that they register when the Beatles have screwed up.However, Philip Norman's 'Shout!' has two major flaws. One, which is a fairly common one and which has been pointed out before, is Norman's lazy acceptance of the myth of McCartney-as-conservative/commercial-charmer as against Lennon-as-radical/avant-garde-innovator. This narrative about the Beatles, which was brewing when they were still an active band and which was subsequently fostered by Lennon in interviews he gave during the immediate post-breakup period and given support by the evidence of McCartney's rather glib and garrulous solo work, is given its most detailed and complete form in this book. It's pretty obvious that Norman basically despises McCartney and regards Lennon as the point of the band. This is not a very helpful or fruitful way to approach the Beatles, because it blinds the reader to the real conditions of the way the band operated and it hinders an understanding of the much more complex tensions within the band. It ignores the fact that McCartney was experimenting with tape loops, improvisation and randomness long before Lennon ever was and it also denies the extent to which they still collaborated as musicians long after they had stopped writing songs as full-time co-writers.The second, and much more serious flaw of 'Shout!', is the fact that Norman doesn't seem to think that the Beatles were anything other than a rather successful pop group. This is a critical mistake when writing about the Beatles, and it's common to much of the earlier commentary about them. The truth, like it or not, is that after a certain point in their career, the Beatles were much more than just a big pop group. Beatlemania was not like previous kinds of fan enthusiasm, as many people (the Beatles included) realised fairly early on; Lennon himself commented to US journalist Michael Braun (in Braun's exceptionally canny book 'Love Me Do!') that what surrounded the Beatles as early as 1964 was 'beyond showbiz'. If you don't think that this is true, if you think that the Beatles were - again, in Lennon's own (albeit much later and rather disingenuous) words - 'just a band that made it very, very big', consider how many other bands of that era have inspired such a level of mania, and such a quantity of dreams, fantasies, literature, academic commentary and nostalgia. The Beatles are, among many other things, the only major rock band in which one of the band has been assassinated and another one has been the victim of a murderous assault which arguably hastened his own death; Mick Jagger may be a big star but nobody has ever tried to off him, and while Pantera's Dimebag Darrell was also murdered by a deranged fan, Pantera were just unlucky; they have never inspired the same kind of mass craziness as the Beatles. That alone is evidence of the Beatles' strangeness.Norman's pedestrian unwillingness to be impressed by the lunacy that the Beatles attracted to a greater degree than any other band in history is a major flaw in his book. It makes the whole story curiously depressing, because since Norman has no very deep appreciation of the Beatles' highs, he can't make you feel the tragedy of their all-too-visible lows. His book is an attempt to deal with the Beatles phenomenon as just another thing worth writing a book about, but the truth is that the times have changed and Norman's book has been lost in a flood of more interesting Beatles books. I don't think that most serious commentators on the Beatles expect Mark Lewisohn's forthcoming three-volume biography to be the Fabs' equivalent of Richard Ellmann's 'James Joyce', but it will at least contain more reliable information than Norman's book.Hunter Davies' book is more fun to read, and Jonathan Gould's 'Can't Buy Me Love' is more sensitive, better-written and much more intelligent.

I fully appreciate the talent of the Lennon McCartney writing partnership but am not a fan of the "Beatles Machine". If you are just looking for a well written intelligent take on the Beatles and their relationships with each other and are not looking for the Holy Grail of a Beatles Biography then this is very readable.I am sure there are inaccuracies but I've not read a biography that doesn't have them. They are generally coloured by the contributors own agendas. There is a deceptively large amount of text but I did want to finish it.

I didn't expect SHOUT! to be the best book I've ever read about the THE BEATLES - but in many ways it is (and I've read quite a few over the years). The breathtaking detail, capturing the era in which Beatlemania dominated the world, places the reader right there in the centre of it all - a close observer of the best, and also the worst, of those tumultuous times. But it isn't perfect. For me, JOHN LENNON and PAUL McCARTNEY were absolute straight-down-the-line equals in their respective abilities as songwriters. And, crucially, each of the four lived the equivalent of several lifetimes between 1962-70, so who can blame any of them for having said or done stupid things in the midst of it all and beyond? I think if author PHILIP NORMAN revists SHOUT! for a second revised update, he'll tone down - without removing, I'm not suggesting that - some of the more 'emotional' criticisms levelled at Paul McCartney in particular. Preferences aside, the negative-aspect 'Macca' of the last twenty-five years is like he is for a million different, yet largely understandable, reasons, the most obvious ones being the simplest to diagnose: insecurity and mortality, the clock can never be turned back. But the music said it all then, anyway.Throughout that time, the Beatles' journey was indeed a long and winding road, their itinerary becoming wilder and more unpredictable as it unfolded...STAR CLUB, CAVERN, BRIAN EPSTEIN, GEORGE MARTIN, M.B.E., ED SULLIVAN, BIGGER THAN JESUS, IMELDA MARCOS, SERGEANT PEPPER, SUMMER OF LOVE, MAHARISHI, APPLE, YOKO ONO, LET IT BE...and yet, with hindsight, it's still possible to trace unmistakable fracture-lines in the order and chaos of events held together, paradoxically, by the inextricable hand of fate. The highs and the lows, in every conceivable sense. And those unforgettable others, yet to come.If you can get over the odd jarring, marginally detrimental, bias then this is a major achievement.VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Like most "unofficial" Biographies, you have to take what you read as "facts" with a pitch of salt, but on the other hand if they are official they can be a little bit too diplomatic, constantly papering over the cracks.Norman is a no doubt gifted a author, making a story that has been recounted so many times, still seem interesting & a real page turner.The main criticism of "Shout" is that Norman is anti-McCartney, with accusations of questioning Brian Epstein's management skills when the Beatles stopped touring, or that John Lennon's musical Legacy out shone his own (which he does discuss in the intro of this revised edition of the book). But Norman is equally critical of Lennon, such as pointing out that "Double Fantasy" contained soppy love songs that were not dissimilar to what McCartney had been churning out for the precious decade.So a really well written, captivating read, heavily researched (Norman goes into painstaking detail about the circumstances of the demise of Apple, for example), & as just long as you don't take what Norman says as gospel, a good account of Beatles.

Absolutely fabulous.

Do your research. If you don't know it don't just make it up! Plenty of annoying examples. The Please Please Me Album photo was a block of council flats? The Beatles 'coincidentally' grew moustaches during the Sgt. Pepper sessions? Waste of time.