Customer Reviews

Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Hundreds of books have been written about the Beatles. Jonathan Gould read a lot of them and he wasn't satisfied. They talked about almost every aspect of the Beatles except they seemed to flash right past one of the most important things, the thing we remember most, the music.

Gould, a musician, started this project 20 years ago. He looked at the Beatles from back at the very beginning-their roots. How did they become songwriters? How did Lennon and McCartney become such a wonderful songwriting team? Who were there major influences?

He doesn't rely on the memories of those who were there 50 years ago. Instead, he looks to the original sources, the music writers and fans of that time, in the words they wrote then.

He follows the Beatles course during their short but prolific time together. He looks at many of the songs and the stories behind them-the ideas that were formed in the studio and elsewhere, influences like India, drugs, women, philosophy, etc. Little tricks and accidents changed so many songs from what they might have been to something even better.

Throughout he plugs readers into what was happening in the world as the Beatles were making their indelible mark upon it.

'T is a thing of beauty. These things needed to be said.

Gould, a jazz player, spent two decades on this investigation. He combines the biographical range of an author like Bob Spitz with a deeper cultural insight that parallels if not intersects with Steven Stark, and he offers, as did Ian Mac Donald, a sophisticated analysis of many of their songs from a technically adept and closely observed musicologist's understanding.

Gould not only recites the familiar details, but explains their significance. For instance, Woolton is a suburb of Liverpool where Lennon was raised, but Gould places the locale in its suburban context vs. the supposedly working-class upbringing the maturing John was afforded. Instead of saying he dressed like a Teddy Boy, he goes on the place that movement within its psuedo-Edwardian origins in a war-straitened tailoring innovation that failed to catch on among the dandies so much as the sartorial rebels after the Second War. Such detail for many may be more than the reader may have bargained for, and as with the excursus upon Max Weber's theories, has surprised critics expecting another dutiful slog through accounts of Lennon wearing a toilet seat around his neck in Hamburg. Gould, to his credit, avoids the tiresome repetition.

When he discusses the Maharishi and his Transcendental Meditation, he opines how the guru proved a clever salesman who did not exactly tell the Beatles that the noun was much easier to attain than the adjective, so to speak! He handles the Eastman-Klein-NEMS negotiations in the same numbing detail that Spitz had, but adds to the discussion of these necessary facts an understanding of the reasons Lennon and McCartney may have desired such legal and managerial changes, why they picked who they did, and what blunders were made by all sides. He strives for fairness, but you also realize, as with the treatment of Pete Best earlier and Alistair Taylor later, how selfish the four musicians could be as they continued, despite their own bickering as the band began to disintegrate, to remain loyal only to each other.

His cultural range is vast. Isherwood, Huxley, Gertrude Stein, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear all gain attention, and the subtitle of the book while it appears too limited, does place the band's impact solidly within their studio innovation, their send-up of show biz conventions (a particular strength of Gould's project), and their British appeal to an American audience in the post-JFK slump. You learn much about the chords, the contributions of George Martin and his team, and how songs express the tensions and joys that the Beatles were experiencing as they made their music.

Compared to Spitz, as Gould tends to range over much of the same terrain inevitably, there is less about the band in their private life, and about the same attention to their public life. Less on the Apple's store and monetary problems, more on the influence of LSD on the band. Less on the goings on of the Maharishi, more about George Harrison's increasing fluency on the guitar in the band's final years. Less on their calculated witticisms (he notes well that estimations of their press conference wit tended to lean heavily on their first year of fame, as they tired quickly of such effort) and more on their reworkings of Dylan and their influences and competitors (he cites a liner note from Donovan's "A Gift From a Flower to a Garden" to devastating effect to show flower children at their most insipid).

A valuable combination of contextual situating of the band within their times and an argument how the band managed to transcend their origins and represent a liberating spirit that shaped not only the Sixties but every decade since, Gould's book may be more for the scholar than the casual fan. Yet, such ambition is appropriate as enough time has passed that the Beatles now can begin to be placed within their century as a crucial intellectual as well as entertainment force. Gould's study proves this.

After having read maybe a thousand books on the Beatles, what a treat to find a new one that is not only well-written and intelligent, but actually includes material I had not read or heard before. Everyone will have their favorite era and favorite part, but I especially enjoyed learning more about the very early days (1960-1961) when the band were acquiring their instrumental chops and soaking up lessons in songwriting and showmanship. A great book.

I teach a college course about The Beatles,and recently have re-read many of the best books about them, so when I first saw this book, I thought it would recycle the same old stories, but when I looked through it, I quickly saw the author provides much original, meaningful insight. If you're interested in the history of their music (rather than gossip), I highly recommend this.

Phenomenal biography both of the Beatles and of their place in rock and roll history. I haven't read any of their other bios except for Geoff's, so I can't say how/if this is better than the others, but it does a lot well:
- Gives personal history without going into minutiae
- Discusses the Beatles' influences on a 'real-time' basis to their recordings (rather than just list them at the beginning, ignoring subsequent ones that emerge)
- Treats the Beatles as a singular entity for a large majority of their history; the closer you get to the end, the more individual each member becomes, so the biography starts to fray as the band did
- Goes into detail as to what made certain songs work (or not work)
- Keeps the music industry itself in the foreground, so you see the circular impacts as they occur
- With one small qualifier, easy to read (see flaws listed below)

There are two flaws in this book, though, that prevent me from giving it 5 stars:
The first flaw is that a lot of the songs are described in a manner that requires one to know music theory to appreciate (e.g. Yesterday is seven bars instead of the traditional eight, or the discussion of chord changes within a song). Fortunately, it's not overly cumbersome, and honestly does not constitute a large portion of the book, so you could probably get away with just nodding your head and pretending you understand what he's talking about, even if you don't.

The second flaw is one of interpretation; in the book he gives his interpretations as if they are what was intended by the Beatles. At the end of Day in the Life, there is a second orchestral bit followed by The Chord. The author equates it with For The Benefit of Mr. Kite (which ends the first side of the LP), stating that the orchestra represents the crowd listening to a performance from said Benefit, rising from glee to anxiety to terror to silence as the performer wows the crowd, but then falls. It sounds great, and when I read it I immediately listened to the track and thought, wow, he's right!

Except he's not. A Day in the Life was completed before For The Benefit of Mr Kite was even considered for Sgt. Pepper. Now, Mr. Gould does not specifically say that this interpretation is what was intended, however, it feels implied. And as a result it brings into question any of his other critical interpretations. Ultimately, this is a minor quibble ... but it diminishes the work a bit in my opinion.

That said, if you're looking for a Beatles bio that's ingrained with its cultural context, this is probably the one for you.

Jonathan Gould gives us a brilliant panoramic picture of the Beatles within the context of the British and American cultures of the middle of the last century. This book is about the influences and trends that shaped their charisma and music that, in turn, shaped the world.

Gould gives us a virtuoso performance in English writing and, in addition, he has most remarkable things to say. It is an extraordinary panoramic landscape of the four young boys from Liverpool taken in the context of post World War II British and American societies with particular emphasis on what the Beatles really were: the best musicians of the XX century.

Gould is superlative when he scrutinizes Beatles recordings from very meager beginnings with Tony Sheridan in Hamburg in 1961 to the last hurrah of Abbey Road. He examines the early influences, calling them an "oldies band" when they performed for hours in Reeperbahn seedy clubs with the same repertoire of end of the 50's rock'n'roll. He moves to Tamla Motown's thin roots and, finally, to the locomotive of Lennon/McCartney compositions.

The most illuminating is Gould's short chapter of an extremely intriguing LP, Beatles for Sale, published at the end of 1964. No, it is not their best album, nor is it bad. Beatles for Sale is such a fascinating recording as it clearly depicts the break between the Beatles being influenced by others to the Beatles becoming the musical model for all.

The LP was made after the famous Ed Sullivan TV appearances in February 1964 and after their first movie "A Hard Day's Night" became a cultural phenomenon around the world. This was the height of Beatlemania in Britain and the U.S. where all teenage girls fell in love with one or another Beatle. And, in this crucial point in Beatles career, they made an album with eight Lennon/McCartney superlative songs and six covers of late 50's American repertoire. Was it nostalgia on their part? Yes, they had little time to write new material in the frenzy days of constant touring. Yet, this album, called by John Lennon a "Beatles country-and western LP" shows them in the great divide between absorbing American stimulus second hand while living in Liverpool to actually being immersed in the cultural values of that country. It took them one a half years from early 1964 to late 1965, mostly through Bob Dylan and also the Byrds to reach a maturity to influence the Americans in turn.

Jonathan Gould's chapters devoted to the music on the albums Rubber Soul (1965), Revolver (1966) and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band are the best. Gould analyses each cut on the albums in depth with this quote from the book giving a taste of his depth of language: "Woven with motifs of circularity, reversal, and inversion, "Revolver" was the first record on which the Beatles consciously made the interplay of their individual personalities a theme of the music itself". He also describes the changing role of producer George Martin from a tutor to a "hired hand" whose job was now to fulfill their wishes, expressed sometimes in most obscure terms. John Lennon's want was to sound like "Dalai Lama" on the final cut from Revolver: "Tomorrow Never Knows". Martin did it brilliantly, with the help of a young engineer Geoff Emerick.

It is sad to read the final chapters where Gould gives us a gloomy portrait of four not so young any more and not friends for sure. The reasons for the break up are many in any adult life which has to cope with the change from a Liverpudlian bloke to almost a messiah (read the Jesus Christ controversy of John Lennon from 1966). Yet, their last recording is still as shining as ever with George Harrison giving us maybe the best songs from the Abbey Road album.

As a Beatles fan my entire life, I whole-heartedly recommend this book. I can't add much more commentary that hasn't been mentioned in the previous readers reviews, except to say, that while there are some ups and downs, as a whole, I never got through 606 pages so easily and so eagerly, as I did with "Can't Buy Me Love." The author deserves major kudos for his research and insightful comments on their music. I recommend this book for any Beatles fan.

Unlike some of the reviewers here I felt that this book's major strong points are when the author goes into a sociological and/or cultural analysis of The Beatles phenomena. For chapters like this, the book deserves five stars!
It's when he becomes a music reviewer that he delves into troubled waters. A few of his insights are interesting, but so many others are way, way over the top analysis-wise, and when he turns negative, whoa!
Music is something so personal for a lot of people. It's expected that one appreciate other's opinions. Still, no matter how open-minded one tries to be, it can be a bit psychologically unnerving to read such an obviously intelligent and learned individual put down one's favorite songs as either "a muddled-leaden mess" or "awkward-sounding rewrite... with... dreadful lyrics" or "an outright gaffe". It's as if someone is putting down the clothes you're wearing or the type of friends you keep.

Wow.

Of the literally thousands of Beatles books published, this must rank as one of the best yet.

Unlike most books on the Fab Four, this isn't a hagiography extolling the greatness of the group. Instead it's a mix of journalism, cultural history, musical criticism, and a dash of sociology (ala Max Weber) that places the Beatles into the context of their times and shows how they were both musical and cultural innovators and also how they were influenced by the upheavals of the 1960's.

More than just a re-hash of the now very familar Beatles saga, Gould offers very interesting analysis of the music itself and explains why the Beatles were as influential as they were.

Very readable. I couldn't put it down. Recommended for any Beatles fan.

This is the best book every written about the Beatles but I agree with Chris Federico's comments about the author's dismissal of some of the Beatles' music. For example, the author disses "What Goes On?" as not worthy of mention, while I think it contains the funkiest interplay, ancient-art-of-weaving between John and George on record. George's open-string solo is fantastic. But, I give the book five stars because, as I said, it's the best of the lot.