Customer Reviews

The Gospel According to the Beatles

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First off, I agree with one reviewer's very clever send up of the 'Publisher's Weekly' review of this book. Has anyone else noticed how stupid those 'Publisher's Weekly' reviews are? They always seem to miss the point, and it always seems that the reviewer didn't actually read the book in question, but either skimmed it,or asked someone else to read it and tell them what it was about..."Plodding"?..."doesn't really say what the gospel according to the Beatles really is?"....What??? If you can read all 200 or so, of this book's pages and still ask what the gospel according to the Beatles is, then you must be cross eyed.

This extremely interesting work starts off with an overview of who the Beatles really were. Through their songs they conveyed their inner most beliefs and thoughts, whether they intended to or not. Each chapter is named after a famous Beatle song, and the book tells in chronological order, how the boys from Liverpool evolved in their thinking, with each new experience, and phase of musical and personal developement, as the 60's unfolded. This book is about religion...The Beatles' religious beliefs that is, and how these beliefs changed as the boys grew and changed. It starts out with the chapter called, 'You Can't Do That' which is a very thorough account of John's controversial Jesus remark and the furor that it caused. But this is not just another retelling. Turner researched this very carefully and the facts he has unturned will really surprise you. You will for the first time, find out what really happened behind the scenes to turn an innocent remark made to a friend, into a major, fiasco that not only changed the course of the Beatles' career but the careers of many others. You will hear about Tommy Charles the Alabama DJ, Art Unger the editor of Datebook Magazine, and other people who played a pivotal roll in the media circus that followed. This was my favorite chapter. Trust me, you will never again, see this incident in the same light. After this chapter the story "goes back, back back" to Liverpool, and you will read about the different religious backgrounds of the four musicians. Again, a lot of very new info. is disclosed. As Turner remarks in the prologue, so much has been written about John Lennon.... "the games he played in the street" or "the drawings he made for Aunt Mimi", his rebellousness,losing his mother twice, beating up Bob Wooler at a certain so and so's 21st birthday party,Yoko, Yoko, Yoko, blah blah blah,...but nothing has ever been written about his extensive religious background. Yes that's right...extensive. From the time he was very young the kid practically lived in church. He was in the choir, bible studies, church youth group,etc. He studied his catecism and made his confirmation. So by the time he was 25, he was in a very good position to give his oppinions on Christianity, good or bad. In other words, he wasn't just an arrogant pop star shooting off his mouth. The guy new his Bible. He knew about Jesus'life. He knew about the apostles. Turner makes a very good point in this chapter. He says, only someone who had been immersed in the teachings of Christianity could turn around and be so blasphemous in his drawings and writing. Someone like Paul McCartney, who was not raised in the church would never be this irreverent, because he didn't care enough to be. He had nothing to rebel against because it was never forced on him. In reading about their various religious backgrounds, I most identified with Paul and George. Both were baptised Catholics with devoutly Catholic mothers but because of their blue collar, agnostic fathers, the church became of diminished importance as they grew older. This really resonated with me. All readers will find themselves identifying with at least one of these guys, as you read this. Ringo, who's mom was Protestant, had even less religion than Paul or George.

Each chapter thereafter, traces the changes they experienced, from "post-Christian,existentialist, agnostics", to Hinduism, Buddism, Zen Buddism, Christianity (John and George), to fully realised...post- Christian,existentialist, agnostics. Except for George of course. Everyone knows the extent of his love for his God, and how he arrived there. This is facinatingly detailed in the book. I have a new respect for George Harrison after reading about his remarkable journey. But that leads me to another point. All four Beatles were on a constant journey. Always learning and growing. Some of the things they found out weren't right, so they moved on until they found what they were looking for. For Paul, it was fundamentalist vegetarianism, based on a respect for the lives of all living beings, home, family,and a return to the values that he learned from his down to earth dad. After going through the pain of alcoholism, Ringo has the sense that there is something bigger and greater, and for the first time in his life he knows what people mean when they refer to "God". And John?...He was still searching when his life was cut short by... a "Christian".

I've read so many books about the Beatles, I thought I knew everything about them, but I learned once again that you can't know everything about these guys. No matter how much you read about and research them, there will always be something you didn't hit upon. Always a new perspective that was unexplored. You will enjoy this book. I learned so much.

"The Gospel According to the Beatles" is a first-rate piece of work: accurate, comprehensive, well written, evenhanded, and (dare I say) scholarly--a fresh and entertaining perspective on an old story that I never get tired of reading. It even has at least one new revelation: John Lennon corresponded with Oral Roberts--a fact I wish I'd known when I was writing "Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon," which, like this book, discusses Lennon's brief conversion to Christianity.

Steve Turner, it's also worth noting, painstakingly pieces together all the details of the "bigger than Jesus" incident in a way that I've never seen reported.

Though I've noticed "The Gospel According to the Beatles" is shelved in the Christianity section of my local B&N, I found it to be a book with a rock 'n' roll heart that anybody seeking new insight into perhaps the greatest cultural phenomenon of the 20th century will enjoy.

This is yet another excellent book about the Beatles by Steve Turner. While hard core Beatle fans will be familiar with a lot of the material in this book, it is the fresh writing style and Turner's analytical view of John Lennon's infamous comment in 1966 about the Beatles being more popular than Jesus. That oft-quoted comment was taken out of context and John retracted it shortly thereafter. Lennon explained what he meant and the full quote and context have been provided in many other books. Sadly, that one comment hounded John for the rest of his life.

In addition to being the World's Best Band, the Beatles were pioneers - they experimented with music; reflected the then current issues through their music and clothing; they affected fashion, e.g. moptops, suits and later, psychedelic outfits. They were able to appeal to as well as secure the confidence of the independent thinkers; George Harrison's 1965 "Think For Yourself" is a nod to this very philosophy.

As for a personal philosophy, that is a topic open for speculation. Each Beatle was unique and distinct and very much an individual. This book takes a deeper look at each Beatle and by describing his behavior and responses, attempts to carve out what appeared to be the philosophy of each Beatle.

All in all, an excellent work. This is one the Beatle Literati highly recommend.

When I saw a book titled "The Gospel According to the Beatles," I groaned. My snap judgment, based on nothing but the title, was that it was the work of an apostate Christian who found that his own watered-down interpretations of Scripture were reflected in the music of the Fab Four. It turns out that the author, rock journalist Steve Turner (who also wrote "A Hard Day's Write," an excellent song-by-song history of the Liverpudlian quartet's canon), is a Christian. His goal is not to find Christian messages where there are none, but to examine the spiritual beliefs, most of which are in opposition to the Bible, that the Beatles expressed in song. And the Beatles, though kicking off their musical journey with innocuous but irresistible ditties like "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "She Loves You," were unique among "pop" groups in that their music consistently expressed profound, if often misguided (to those who believe the Bible), philosophical and religious ideas.

As Turner quotes Paul McCartney as saying in 2004, "There'd never been anything like the Beatles, who were about music but also about something more far-reaching."

That "something more far-reaching" was awakened by the Beatles' experimentation with drugs. They started by popping the pills that provided the pep necessary for their pre-fame marathon stage performances in Hamburg, then progressed to marijuana, widely cited as influencing the mood of their 1965 album "Rubber Soul." But it was LSD that played the central role in transforming their music and led to the "spiritual" element that began to seep into their songs, beginning, most notably, with "Tomorrow Never Knows," the closing number on 1966's "Revolver" that its author, John Lennon, later referred to as having emerged from his "`Tibetan Book of the Dead' period." Far more than pills or marijuana, LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) was not simply a means of altering a mood, but a way to alter one's consciousness.

"God isn't in a pill," Lennon said, "but LSD explained the mystery of life. It was a religious experience."

Some of the Beatles' greatest works, such as the "Sgt. Pepper" album, which included the disturbing masterpiece "A Day in the Life," may not have been possible without the influence of LSD, but though Lennon was correct in describing the drug as a "religious experience," the spiritual being whose presence is revealed through LSD is not the God of the Bible but His chief foe, Lucifer, the fallen angel whose rebellion was triggered by his desire to "be like God." This same kind of thinking is reflected in George Harrison's statement that "Everybody is potentially divine. It's just a matter of self-realization before it will all happen."

There's no questioning the Beatles' genius as composers and artists, but their influence beyond music was often pernicious. Their experimentation with LSD and later exploration of Transcendental Meditation helped lead the world away from the truth of the Bible and the need for salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, to philosophies based in the occult.

Turner's book is unique among the many hundreds (thousands?) of volumes written about the Beatles in that he offers insight into the religious ideas that shaped their youths. Although George Harrison was the Beatle famous for his religious beliefs, it's not surprising that the most intriguing passages concern John Lennon, the founder of the group and one of the 20th century's most fascinating public figures. Few biographers of John Lennon note that he was raised, more or less, as a Christian. This upbringing explains his lifelong obsession with Jesus Christ. When Lennon wasn't mocking Jesus, as he did in the cartoons he drew in his youth (such as one depicting Jesus on the cross with a pair of bedroom slippers at the base), he identified with Him (as in the chorus of "The Ballad of John and Yoko"). Then there was his famous 1966 remark that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus ("Christianity will go..It will vanish and shrink").

It is therefore surprising to learn that, in 1972, Lennon wrote a desperate letter to evangelist Oral Roberts to inquire about Christianity ("Is it phoney? Can He love me?") in an attempt to escape the hell of drug abuse. According to several previous biographers who had access to Lennon's personal diaries, or were employed in the Dakota during his five year withdrawal from the public eye, Lennon professed to be "born again" in 1977 but faced intense opposition to his new found beliefs from Yoko Ono who saw her husband's embrace of Jesus as a threat to her control of his life. Before long, Lennon was once again living a life dictated by astrologers, mystics, and other practitioners of the occult. But Jesus, and the Bible, were never far from his thoughts, as many of the interviews he gave shortly before his 1980 murder indicate. As he told Barbara Graustark of Newsweek, "Some of [Christ's parables] are only making sense to me now, after a whole life of sitting in church or school." It's anybody's guess what Lennon actually believed before Mark David Chapman ended his life on December 8, 1980.

At this point, it's hard to believe that anyone could possibly offer fresh insights into the Beatles phenomenon or their brilliant body of work, but Turner succeeds in making "The Gospel According to the Beatles" a necessary addition to the bookshelf of anyone who admires or is simply fascinated by the Fab Four.

Brian W. Fairbanks

This book is look at The Beatles spirituality from a Christian perspective. Taylor has done his homework with research from primary sources. He draws from ample Beatle interviews and quotes from others around them that shed light on their own spiritual journeys. SPECIAL HIGHLIGTS include:All four of the Beatles formative years in Liverpool and their encounter with religion, an exploration and good background study on the furor surrounding the "more popular than Jesus" incident and John's brief experience with Jesus in 1977. Taylor quotes from 2 letters that show a correspondence that took place between Oral Roberts and John. If you love The Beatles and you want to understand them from a spiritual angle-Read the book.

Doug T

Well-reached and informative, and yet beautifully written, Steve Turner explores the Fab Four's spiritual foundations. Particularly enlightening is the account of John Lennon who moves from the Anglican Church in his teens to a hostile rebellion in his 20s against Christianity to fascination with it in his 30s. A great read.

Ignore the 3-star-Jim Nabors-review. Turner's work is a well-informed, insightful, and painstaking analysis of the spiritual pilgrimage of the Beatles. Anyone who grew up in the tumultuous sixties, particularly if intrigued by the Beatles phenomenon, can gain a new perspective on that decade and its impact down to this day.

At the close of the book, Turner brings his own worldview to bear on the whole question of art and culture in a way that challenges the tendency of many Christians to dismiss the Beatles out of hand.

Finally, the excerpts from Turner's 1971 interview with John and Yoko are alone worth the price of the book.

I'm already looking for other books by this excellent writer.

but Beatles fans will be delighted with this biography of the Beatles with particular reference to their relationship to things religious.

Think of how difficult it is to come up with an original slant on the Beatles story. Does this book offer new material on the Beatles? Probably not, but what it does do is focus on the religious side sect. You don't get anything from Ringo here because he's flat out not that interested in religion, Paul some but not that interested in Religion either. John you get alot of information and George alot. They were the two searching one's and ironically the 2 that died 1st, so maybe GOD does have a plan on who he takes 1st. John was very interested in the history of religion and tried desperately to make sense of GOD in his lifetime. The book miracously cites a letter John wrote Oral Roberts in 1977 or 1979 in desperation to help him make sense of his life. John wrote in his letter I tried everything from fame, girls, drugs, gurus, hynosis trying to find GOD. I forget Oral Robert's response at the moment...but it's moments like this that make the book worthwhile to read...and if your interested in finding GOD and searching for him why not find him through the BEATLES, the greatest Rock band of all time in many respects. The book does miracously stay on the path of the subject and is well written...I didn't bother to look up Steve Turner and who is (other than the writer of this book), but he's a very good writer...i've read plenty of books that weren't well written and this isn't one of those...oh the guy who was in the 1965 press party - Larry Kane one of the worst writers I ever came across no wonder his books sell for pennies...but i'm getting off the track...get this book if your searching for GOD through the beatles as they were very much searching for GOD...well John and George were Paul and Ringo weren't necessarily searching for GOD but that doesn't make them bad people does it??

For those looking for a quick review and an inclination as to whether this is a worthy read, I recommend any Beatles fan or avid popular music fan to fit this biography into their "top ten" must reads.

Whether you're a Beatles lover and need to satiate an ongoing desire for all that is Beatles trivia, a serious student of popular culture, or one with earnest interest in the spiritual and theological thought and influence of culture icons, this is a book that may disturb but will not disappoint.

Steve Turner is a Beatles fan. This is notable because the honest approach Mr. Turner takes in this study of the pioneers of modern music made me, even a moderate fan of the Fab Four, feel the sting in the divulging of less than flattering aspects of their fabulous lives. As the title depicts, Turner searches to disclose much more than interesting morsels on the most popular musical group ever. He seeks to reveal what his study of these four men from an English middle-class town thought; what they believed concerning the most important questions regarding life itself.

Considering the times the Beatles came onto the scene and the resulting magnitude of their influence on that generation and those to come, Turner's aspirations are well placed. As he takes us from the childhood trails and teen angst of the band members, along with the spiritual involvements of especially John Lennon, it's hard not to share in their common endeavors and empathize. As John and other band members struggle to find their purpose and identity they often receive erroneous, unfulfilling platitudes from the drifting church they associated with of their day.

Once they strike out and find their initial "salvation" in the recognition and good times of playing in a band, their quest for fulfillment and meaning soon escalates to the higher highs of the dissolution and decadence of "red light" area bars of Hamburg Germany. Upon discovering the intellectual freedom of drug use, LSD takes the savior role. Turner shows each member's experimentation with varying philosophies and mind altering chemicals and how these gave perspective to the music they created. From the wild life of the German clubs and existentialist beatnik influences, to an assortment of drugs (quintessentially LSD), to the draw of the Maharishi and Eastern Hindu mysticism, the author illustrates the direct connection of these gospels to the message and music the Beatles produced. The musical genius of John, Paul, George, and Ringo is not minimized but the direction and message of the music is laid out so the reader can make accurate conclusions as to what exactly was the Gospel of the Beatles.

Gospel essentially means good news. From what is explicitly laid out in this biography Turner makes clear The Beatles sought to convey some kind of a message of "goodness" to their followers and anyone who'd listen. The author does a fine job of demonstrating, though the Beatles themselves were at times overwhelmed and sometimes unwilling in their role of evangelists to a generation, they were without doubt religious leaders of their time - and beyond.

`The Gospel According to the Beatles' portrays the facts and the sensations of the people and time in a calculated but human manner that makes it worth a continued turn of the page, even to the tragic entrance of Charles Manson and Lennon's Judas - Mark David Chapman.