Customer Reviews

Ticket to Ride: The Extraordinary Diary of the Beatles Last Tour

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4 star:		(1)
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This little book is an extraordinary chronicle of the Beatles' second tour in 1966 as told by the leader, Barry Tashian, of the opening band, The Remains. Tashian's father, anticipating the potential historical importance of the tour, sugggested he keep a journal. Tashian did that and also took photos. In the book, he builds a story line around the chronology of the concerts, presenting for each concert a photo of the city, tickets, journal entries, photographs of the musicians, fan mail and incidental information from a variety of published sources. I got the clear view of a traveling troup presented by an insider, and I could imagine what it must have been like making this trip as one of the entourage.
Barry and the Remains were unknowns to the music world, their selection for the tour being something of an accident. Tashian's journal entries tell of the group feeling themselves catapaulted into a realm beyond their abilities. During the course of the tour, he developed the closest relationship with George Harrison and began to get a glimpse of him as a real person. It would be interesting for Tashian follow up this book with the story of this experience.
The Remains had a tremendous opportunity to make it big following this tour. But instead Barry disbanded the group, believing that they were not ready for touring. Tour life is very stressful, being confronted with amazing temptations. One can only speculate what the Remains might have become if they had stayed together.
Interestingly enough, the Remains recordings are still available. And it turns out that the original band has been playing over the past two years. There is a new CD in the works.
The interested reader will have the opportunity to hear for themselves their music.
I enjoyed this book very much. It adds to the corpus of Beatles material some important details and perspective.

Ticket To Ride: The Extraordinary Diary Of The Beatles' Last Tour is musician and song writer Barry Tashian's personal journal of a landmark musical event profusely illustrated with great, never-before-published photographs of The Beatles, both onstage and behind the scenes. Also included in this fascinating eye-witness narrative are first-hand accounts from fans who attended the shows as well as from musicians and other members of The Beatles' touring party. Ticket To Ride is a vivid, candid, city-by-city, travelogue of the "Fab Four" sojourn across North American and provides true "insider" glimpses of life on tour with The Beatles. Ticket To Ride is a "must" for all dedicated Beatles fans.

An excellent book. To tell you the truth, before reading this book (and, believe me, I've read a lot of books about the Beatles), I didn't even know that the Beatles had opening bands on their American tours; I just assumed that the Beatles played for 30 minutes and that was the whole show. Barry Tashian's book gives a very good fellow musician's perspective on the Beatles' 1966 summer tour.

The most refreshing part of the book was learning that the Beatles (George, particularly) were quite friendly to their fellow musicians and not stand-offish. Particularly interesting is an account Tashian gives of playing a new Tim Hardin album for John and being fascinated by Lennon's musical analysis of it.

I found Phillup's book a very fasinating and informative look at the Beatles, and that time in history. Many forget how different the music business was in the early 60's and this book brings one back to a time when stadium concerts were rare, headliners traveled with their warm-up acts, and a band's set up crew was around three or four people. As a Beatles fan I learned a lot about their audiences, their shows, the reality of touring and what Beatlemania was really like

I may be biased because my husband, Barry Tashian, wrote this book. But never-the-less it's a fascinating book and well worth picking up. Barry's rock band, The Remains, opened 19 shows for The Beatles in 1966. Barry kept a journal, which is included in this book. With never-before-published pictures, newspaper articles, fan recollections and lots more, the book covers the 19 days on the road with the Beatles recreating the tour day by day, city by city, taking the reader on a journey back in time. My favorite book this year

This book is a must if you are a Beatles fan. It's also a great book about the era itself. This tour made histiry and Barry Tashian (aka Barry from Barry and the Remains) does a concise and wonderful job in telling the saga. Plus, if you haven't already, you must go buy any of the Remains albums. BRAVO!

For someone who "ate, drank, smoked, and talked with the Beatles daily, and shared some very close personal moments with them," the author doesn't have much to say about his experiences, and what little he does have to say is superficial and unrevealing. Original material is scant: the bulk of the book consists of reprints of 1966 articles from teen magazines, redundant contemporary newspaper accounts, and (often inaccurate) fan reminiscences. I can't say there was anything substantial here I hadn't already read dozens of times before.

If you are buying this book for an "insiders" view on the Beatles tour, you will be very disappointed. Mostly this is rehash of newspaper articles and fan rememberances. It is not a bad book, just rather innocuous. The most inside information shared is the brand of cigarettes George Harrison smoked. If you are a Beatle novice you will enjoy this book, but there is nothing new for long time fans.

This is a worthy addition to the Beatles library. But be sure also to check out the author's 60's garage band, The Remains (aka Barry & the Remains). They opened for the Beatles in the U.S. (hence the book), and played great 60's garage/punk/power pop. One song was on the original Nuggets collection, and there are two recent U.S. reissues out, one on Legacy (Sony) and one on Sundazed.