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Roccabella
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Looks like a good read.
To understand The Beatles, context is all you need
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<STRONG><EM>Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America</EM></STRONG><BR>By Jonathan Gould<BR>Harmony Books, 672 pp., $27.50
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Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America
By Jonathan Gould
Harmony Books, 672 pp., $27.50
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By Anthony DeBarros, USA TODAY
At first glance, another book about The Beatles — perhaps the single most-dissected band in the history of rock 'n' roll — seems a superfluous exercise at best. But first-time author Jonathan Gould's textbook-length history excels by providing what's been missing from many biographies: context.
By now, The Beatles' story has graduated from mere history to rock music archetype: School chums meet, form a group, conquer the charts, spiral into drug abuse and infighting, then break up in a tidal wave of bitterness and bad business deals.
EXCERPT: Get a taste of 'Can't Buy Me Love'
But what John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr always had in their corner was transcendence. Not only in their music, which leapt past the achievements of their American rock 'n' roll heroes Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley, but even more in their smart read on social culture, their artistic response and, ultimately, their fans' reaction.
Gould gives not only the "what" in The Beatles' story but also the "why." He doesn't just recount the band's 1964 invasion of America and triumphant appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. He backs up to 1963, to the assassination of President Kennedy and its effect on American youth: "For millions of young people …his sudden violent death generated a maelstrom of ambivalent 'distress and enthusiasm' that no improvised ritual of a 'televised wake' could possibly resolve."
That makes Gould's description of the band's Sullivan appearance in February '64 especially potent: "As Paul stepped up to the microphone and sang the words 'Close your eyes and I'll kiss you,' the spell of fear and unreality was finally broken. … Eleven weeks after it began, the television wake was over, and the party had just begun."
Gould, a onetime professional musician from New York, covers all the familiar ground, from the band's ascension via Liverpool and Hamburg clubs to its slow death during the sessions for the albums Let It Be and Abbey Road. Each of the group's landmark albums gets a song-by-song analysis, and throughout, the author offers a tapestry of context: the cosmopolitan character of Liverpool, America's influence on Britain during World War II, Freudian theories of group dynamics and the fashion statements of Mods and Rockers.
The writing is workmanlike though imbued with enough creative phrasing to make it a pleasing read. (Gould's description of American audiences as "cicada-like teenagers who had been waiting to hatch" is particularly enjoyable.)
But ultimately, Can't Buy Me Love is less about the flash and the glory and more about the cultural stew that made The Beatles an act that will never be duplicated.
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Roccabella
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10/23/2007, 11:57 am
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flux
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Re: Looks like a good read.
Hi Rocky...thanks for the update. I read all the Beatle stuff. Good or bad. I hope to publish one of my own.
<><
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10/23/2007, 1:47 pm
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Roccabella
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Re: Looks like a good read.
Go for it. How 'bout all the Moondoggies write and, publish a book.....should be very funny and, enlightning...... 
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Roccabella
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10/23/2007, 5:53 pm
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Steve A
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Re: Looks like a good read.
quote:
flux wrote:
Hi Rocky...thanks for the update. I read all the Beatle stuff. Good or bad. I hope to publish one of my own.
<><
the 74 George tour.
but hurry up.
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10/23/2007, 7:53 pm
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Roccabella
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Re: Looks like a good read.
George was very special...apart from being a Beatle. Something about him, was very captivating. I miss George.
A study on George.....not a cheap/raunchy book, but if possible....only Olivia could write that book. The tour, a compilation of all who saw the show, and those involved with him. SteveA, you start the book, then others may add...etc. I think that could be a new forum, eh?
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Roccabella
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10/24/2007, 12:14 am
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flux
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Re: Looks like a good read.
I couldn't involve myself in that project. I'm a McCartney Man.
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10/24/2007, 12:23 pm
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Roccabella
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Re: Looks like a good read.
Yes, Ed, you may be, however, you are very intuitive, and funny....get Paul's view, eh? 
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Roccabella
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10/25/2007, 3:55 pm
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flux
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Re: Looks like a good read.
quote:
Roccabella wrote:
Yes, Ed, you may be, however, you are very intuitive, and funny....get Paul's view, eh?
I vote for Roccabella to give the new funny awards. She can call them The Rockies. ha, ha..because they played funny in game one of the series.
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10/25/2007, 9:04 pm
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Roccabella
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Re: Looks like a good read.
Yes, they did....judging from the language that spewed from my hubby's mouth.....I was down for the count, but he had my sublimanal attention.
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10/25/2007, 9:56 pm
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Steve A
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Re: Looks like a good read.
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3/7/2008, 10:39 pm
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