Customer Reviews

Unreleased Beatles Music and Film (Softcover)

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I purchashed this particular book not so much because it was about the Beatles but because I've read several of Mr. Unterberger's prior books and I have always found him to be informative and knowledgeable. This also applies to this book, which I enjoyed reading. I enjoyed reading Mr. Unterberger's story on how he obtained his first Beatles bootleg at the age of 8, since we're both the same age (one of my first memories was the Christmas of 1965 when my sister received Rubber Soul as a gift) and we belong to the youngest generation of people who can remember the Beatles when they were still together. He did a good job overall in describing the many unreleased sessions (studio, live and in concert)the Beatles did throught their career together. Overall, they show that what the Beatles achieved was through long hours of work (it's amazing how many BBC Radio sessions they did between 1962-1965; there's enough to material to fill 10 CDs)with the assistance of George Martin and documented the group's unique dynamics from their unsteady post-skiffle beginnings through their final weary post-psychedelic disintgration.The sections dealing with the unreleased videos and the songs that the Beatles "gave away" actually read a bit better to me than the main section. Mr. Unterberger does make a good case for many of the audio & video performances by the Beatles that are worthy of release (& rerelease; The Hollywood Bowl LP & the movies Help! & Let It Be have not been available for some time now). He also Overall, it's a nice addition to the Lewisohn books, with many pictures that I have never seen before.

Richie Unterberger painstakingly compiled and documented the Beatles unreleased songs that have been in existence from 1957 to 1970. THE UNRELEASED BEATLES, MUSIC AND FILM may appeal to serious Beatle fans who enjoy reading about the most precise detail of the band's recordings in the studio, radio, concert stage as well as their television and film appearances and innovative promotional clips. The book reads and similarly weighs like an encyclopedia or dictionary of the band's unreleased material, but within these pages, die hard Beatles enthusiasts will sink their eyes into insightful information about the band, numerous lists of songs they performed, and see how the band developed musically.

As one reads every synopsis of each recording and performance, the band worked on a tight schedule. Apart from performing night after night in clubs and concert halls, the band performed on BBC radio and TV shows month after month as well as record their studio albums and make movies within the years 1962-1966; no wonder the band left the stage in 1966 and took refuge in the studio as well as try to live normal lives.

Unterberger went through thousands of hours listening and sifting through the Beatles' archives differentiating one track after the other of outtakes, alternate takes, and private and rehearsal tapes. But the most interesting aspect of the book is the tidbits about particular songs that Unterberger discusses that were as good to be released, but appeared incomplete, "That Means a Lot" and "Step Inside Love." The concluding chapter cover the band and artists who recorded and released "The Songs the Beatles Gave Away" and a list of songs that were considered throw aways,"For No One: Beatles Compositions That Were Never Recorded."

The UNRELEASED BEATLES is a humongous and tedious read but well worth the effort. The benefit of owning Unterberger's book is that most of the information about the unreleased recordings by The Beatles are in one place. And this book is an excellent accompaniment to The Beatles Anthology as well as Mark Lewisohn's THE COMPLETE BEATLES RECORDING SESSIONS: THE OFFICIAL STORY OF THE ABBEY ROAD YEARS 1962-1970.

This book is a bonus deluxe treat; it is a cornucopia of Beatles' music information. The Beatles' unrealed songs are covered in this book; from studio outtakes; rehearsals; live shows; Christmas fun and banter among the boys themselves are included in this treasure. The Beatle Literati are delighted with this book. It rates a hearty "yeah, yeah, yeah!"

Luckily, this author does an excellent job of providing a time line for the Beatles' otherwise "unknown" to the main population works. Each work is listed chronologically; each work is described in full.

Readers get to travel down the Long & Winding Road that the Beatles paved by listening to obscure BBC recordings from 1962-1965 and unreleased work from the Anthology collection. Rare pictures from films that had yet to see the light of day are included in this book.

Inveterate Beatle fans will want this book. It appeals to the Beatle scholar as well as those who are interested in the World's Greatest Band and want to acquire more information about the Beatles. Regardless of where on the Beatle spectrum you are, this book is for you.

Strictly from a collector's point of view, C Brown's review is fair -- this book covers the same recordings as Sulpy and Winn. But its purpose isn't to compete on release information -- it's not primarily a catalog of bootlegs, but instead an in-depth study of the Beatles' performances on the recordings.

And from that point of view it's well-written, informed by a knowledge of music in general and the Beatles' music in particular.

It's not just a valuable resource, it's a terrific read. And an essential (and great value) purchase for any Beatles fan who doesn't just want to own the bootlegs, but wants some insight into what's on them.

The Unreleased Beatles is worth the money and then some.

I've been collecting Beatles Bootlegs for a long time. I've recently acquired a large amount of boots and have embarked upon a project to organize all the good stuff into chronological order, but most often there is little to no information or suspect information on the boots.

The Beatles Recording Sessions. The Official Abbey Road Studio Session Notes 1962-1970 by Mark Lewisohn has been a great help, but it has it's limitations. The Unreleased Beatles fills in all those gaps and more, especially when dealing with The Get Back Sessions.

This book is for the rabid Beatles fan who is very interested in how the Beatles recorded. It is of special interest to those who can actually listen to the song to which Unterberger refers.

This substantial book is dense and filled with an incredible amount of information in chronological order, yet it is very easy to read and formatted in an accessible way.

Thank You Mr. Unterberger. For me, this book is a dream come true.

I was aware before buying this book that others had already largely done all the research that Unterberger seemed to be basing much of his book on. And I'd read just about anything I could find that delved into unreleased Beatles material. That said, I think this is the single best book on the subject that you can purchase currently. The book is massive, but don't let that intimidate you. You can read it all the way through in a few sittings or simply browse whenever you feel like it. While Unterberger is no great stylist, neither are any of the others who've written on this topic. Nonetheless, I enjoyed reading Mr. Unterberger's book a great deal more than any of the others of a similar nature that I've plowed through over the years. THE UNRELEASED BEATLES is thorough but easy to read and the author's love for The Beatles is apparent throughout. So many books on the Beatles that I've read seem to have negative agendas against the band or one or more of the members of the band (for instance, Ian MacDonald's otherwise excellent REVOLUTION IN THE HEAD which pretty much savages George Harrison); Unterberger is no starry eyed fan, nor an apologist for The Beatles. He has approached his topic with an utter sense of wonder and fondness but he manages, at the same time, to remain clear-eyed and objective. THE UNRELEASED BEATLES is a book that I know I'll return to many times in the future.

This book is unbelievably long. It is so heavy it made my arms ache,which is why it reminds me of an encyclopedia. Don't let this fool you into thinking that the book is boring though because it is very interesting and filled with info. that I had never heard and was very pleased to add to my growing knowledge of the band. Divided into sections, this tome covers everything they ever did on record and film,but for some reason was not made available. Everything from great live shows from their touring years to weird home recordings and even a recording of them asking for directions on some road trip. They must have just left a tape recorder on in the car. Tapes like this are actually available on bootleg and people buy it! There's even one, of them reading from a bible! Ok enough of the stupid stuff. I will now concentrate on the wonderful things that I found in this book. Numerous cds exist of their many concerts and Richie describes each in detail. This is the nice thing about this book. Richie makes it an interesting read by describing what is going on in each recording,tv appearance etc. Forgetting lines,malfunctioning mics.,dirty looks,giggling,and a lot of unusual things. He constantly digresses about what he thinks might have been happening while these things were going on. It made me want to go out and buy as much as I could find of these rare gems. Because of this book I have a handful of dvds which feature some of the things he talks about. Namely the Ed Sullivan Presents dvds which I consider a treasure. I almost didn't buy this book because I thought, why would I want to read a book that talks about all the things I can't have because they are too hard to find? I'd rather not know about any of it if I can't have it. But you can find some of this stuff. I decided to buy when I read an online interview with Unterberger and his talk about the band was so interesting that I broke down. It's a pleasure to read a book by a fellow Beatles enthusiast. Actually I would call him a hardcore fan. In the preface he talks about when he first became a Beatles fan at the age of eight,in 1970. I was struck by the similarities between his story and mine, and we are both about the same age. I loved the section on the early years and touring years both in film and cd because they contained the material that I would want to have in my collection. I did not enjoy the section on the studio years. This part of the book was almost painful to read and I kept putting the book down. How many RM4s and RM7s and monitor mixes can you read about? I wouldn't want to have any of this stuff. It sounds boring and it was boring to read about. Even Ritchie makes it clear that only the most hardcore fan would want to own this stuff because it is redundant. He claims that he did not enjoy having to sift through this mess. Especially the Get Back sessions. Very repeatative. This is also the part of the book that he seems to have the least stories about, i.e who seemed mad, who seemed enthusiastic ( mostly Paul of course) who was bored, and what was Yoko doing? The Get Back, and White Album sessions are interesting for these little digressions, especially some eye opening, caught on tape, myth breaking, info. about what Yoko really thought of Paul and how he really felt about her. Proves how fuzzy memories can be until you hear a tape or see a film. Also some observations of Richie's concerning John and Paul also prove that people's accounts can differ about the things they see. During one of the Sullivan shows Paul makes that dumb "Sophie Tucker" joke again as he's announcing a song, and according to Richie, the audience doesn't laugh, "leaving Lennon to pick up the slack with forced machine gun like outbusts of 'ha,ha,ha'". Then he goes on to ponder whether this was a sarcastic jibe at the lameness of Paul's joke. After watching the same footage, I think it's obvious that it was staged. It also looks as if Lennon is laughing with Paul not at him, and Paul seems to be in on the lameness of his joke as well. And the audience doesn't have time to laugh because they go into the song so fast. And...they don't seem to expect or care whether the audience laughs either. One last thing... John's ha ha ha-ing is hardly machine gun like. It's barely audible, almost an inside joke meant for Paul's ears only. The one thing these videos and audio do seem to show is how well the boys got along for most of their career. Without exception it is documented for posterity how much they obviously loved each other, and how close they were. You see it in the body language,secret looks,giggling at inside jokes, and the amount of touching that they did. Anyway you will enjoy this book if you are interested in getting to know the Beatles better and you want to look beyond the Anthology for the many rare treasures that are out there.

Richie Unterberger is an expert on pop culture and music. He is a prolific writer of album reviews for the All Music Guide as well as magazines like Rolling Stone, Mojo, and Record Collector. His style is descriptive, creative, and at times, humorous.

If you have ever wondered what kind of goodies were left in the Beatle vaults, this book is for you. Unterberger, who must have a vast personal collection of Beatles bootlegs, goes through great pangs to bring the reader a detailed description of what those tapes contain. This is what separates The Unreleased Beatles from so many other books on the subject of unreleased recordings...reading this book is the next best thing to hearing them yourself. It is not just a discography but rather a journey through the world of these important collections.

There are many things to like about this book. First, its girth: When you hold this book you know that you are holding onto something substantial. It is heavy with a wonderful laminated stock, and inside is a treasure trove of glossy pictures. On top of that, Unterberger adds many "asides" in which he discusses various subjects that are of interest to the Beatles collector (Hamburg Tapes, Touring, the Decca Audition, and others.) These alone make this book worth owning.

But more than just for the information it holds, the appeal of this book comes from the author's voice. Here is an obvious Beatles nut, but one who does not distort things through rose-colored glasses. He is just as willing to point out the sow's ears as he is the purses. When something is great, he fawns, and when something is closer to an audio train-wreck, he lets you know.

There are sections on television recordings, studio recordings, concerts...you name it.

As a collector of rare recordings myself, I can honestly say that (as of its publication date) Unterberger leaves no stone unturned and covers every recording known to man or woman. His book gives perspective to my own collection and gives me an idea of where to focus my future collecting. For this reason, I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the Beatles' recording history.

All I can say is "wow" - this book has it all. I am overwhelmed by the detail of this catalog of their work. If you're a fan of the Beatles then this is for you. You really get a feeling of what it was like to be in the group.

They haven't played together in over 35 years and two members of the band are now deceased; yet the Beatles still dominate the music and pop culture scene. Every year we hear about new Beatles material, previously unreleased, being found and presented to the world. This is exactly the subject of a fantastic new book from Back Beat books. The book uncovers the wealth of Beatles recordings and film footage that has thus far not been released, and the amount of material is staggering to say the least. From studio outtakes to radio recordings, to homemade demos and live concert and TV appearances, there is still a veritable treasure trove of Beatles material out there that most of us have never heard nor seen.

The book moves in chronological order beginning with the band's early days when they were known as the Quarrymen and cover the era from 1957 - 1961. There are vintage photos showing the boys playing the Casbah in Liverpool in 1959. The earliest recording is from July 6, 1957, which also happened to be the day that John Lennon and Paul McCartney first met. On this day the Quarrymen (without Paul) played at St. Peter's Church in Liverpool. A recording was made of the event and was auctioned at Sotheby's in 1994. Few have heard the recording and the sound quality is described as the worst possible, but its historical value cannot be questioned. There are many other Quarrymen recordings from the period which feature Stu Sutcliffe that came from privately recorded tapings, studio outtakes, and a rare live performance from the Cavern Club in 1961.

The first significant recording of 1962 is a set of studio outtakes in an audition for Decca Records featuring drummer Pete Best. As the book states, this is where the Beatles professional studio work truly begins. In all 15 tracks were recording and the book provides seven pages of detail on these sessions, providing exhaustive, often firsthand accounts of what went on that day.

As you page through the book, the thing that will leap out at you is the tremendous amount of detail that author Richie Unterberger has uncovered about these unreleased recordings. These are not just lists of dates and songs, but an in-depth account of the day in question and how certain song choices were arrived at and an analysis of the sound quality, and how these tapes and films eventually came to light. It's anybody's guess as to if these recordings will ever be released as there are certain questions of ownership which will probably never be resolved. Still, it's comforting to know just how much material is STILL out there, waiting to be heard by the world. There are literally hundreds of these recordings covered in the book including full concert performances from as early as 1962 in Hamburg, Germany. If just a few of these ever get released, Beatles fans will be in Seventh Heaven. Over 100 vintage photos complement the text. This is a must-have for Beatles fans!

Reviewed by Tim Janson