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

As the author points out, the volume of press given to the cultural phenomena of the Beatles has included few biographies of the band itself. Think of this as a real biography of a band -- the story of a remarkable quartet set against the cultural influences that shaped them, tracing their growth, exploring the many factors that made them more popular, and more revered, than any other musical group before or since, and tracing their demise and peculiar afterlife as never-dimming cultural icons. (Ringo Starr remains a regular guest on talk shows, after all, where he would never appear except that he had *been a Beatle.*) Apart from the writing mechanics -- lucid, clear, easy to read -- I find that Gould has brought out aspects of the people, their city, their times, and their work that no one else has done. He deserves to be commended for this.You are most likely to enjoy this book if you appreciate the band when you hear the music (and tap your feet to it), but also want to build a little bit of understanding of their phenomenon -- to develop some new insights into what made them such a remarkable cultural force. The author puts their breakthrough moments into the context of the Profumo affair and uses sociological theory, especially Max Weber, to interpret why their fans went through such frenzies, after all. You will meet Aldous Huxley and Carl Jung as well. An author can very easily fall into pseudo-intellectual BS by drawing in so many cultural influences, but in this writer's case the story of the band is the meal, while such background events and theories are the seasoning. He talks of these both to draw the reader into that time and place, and (in some cases) to illuminate why each of the band's members took the courses they did. I think he does really well at this. In particular, when he talks about the obvious sexual appeal of the band to its teenage fans, he barely mentions Freud. He stays away from the more pretentious and dubious speculations that initially greeted the band, instead pointing out that two were different kinds of handsome, one was a charismatic rebel, and one reminded people of an adorable puppy, giving the female fans a virtual smorgasbord of options for their infatuations, as well as re-forming social cliques around those totemic figures.If you are simply interested in learning as much as you can about the members and the details of their lives, you will find plenty of that material here. You may want to skip over the analytical bits, which is easier done in a print than the Kindle edition, as he does not separate the analysis neatly into chapters. You may also want to start with Hunter Davies' 1968 authorized biography  The Beatles (Updated Edition) , and Michael Braun's early and more gritty  Love Me Do!: "Beatles" Progress . But for my money, Gould has done the best job of making the Beatles and their times come alive, as if the reader had been, not in the inner circle, but within visual range of it.

I'd LOVE to give this book 2 stars but there is just too much valuable, researched info I didn't have before to ignore. When you write a book about an iconic entity that changed the industry it worked in, it's better not to express one's ill-conceived complaints at all. Just note the various contributions and discuss how they impacted culture. Mr. Gould's excruciating song reviews are cringe worthy even when complimentary. They give the impression of this young guy writing a book he knows that me and millions like me will buy so sits with the 2009 box set and a copy of the Complete Beatles Song Book painstakingly describing which chord tone Paul's voice ends on a specific song. The pretentiousness goes over the top though when he describes what he considers "errors" or "gaffes" he thinks the Beatles made in their recording output. Mr. Gould loves the word "debacle." He uses it to describe both the Decca auditions and the Woodstock Festival. The Decca "debacle," Mr. Gould, was that the largest recording company in England at that time did not recognize the potential in the greatest recording artists of all time when they heard them. It was not in what the Beatles recorded for them which was exactly what George Martin heard later and in which he saw the potential. Paul McCartney's performance of Til There Was You, far from being a "gaffe" is an iconic interpretation of a song which not only led the way to McCartney's own famous ballads but had the Beatles not recorded it, Til There Was You would share the fate of What Kind of Fool Am I, or Hey Look Me Over, forgotten songs from hit musicals. I suppose if you don't have a spinal column for Lennon's voice to slide up and down you might draw the conclusion that his spectacular vocal attack on Mr. Moonlight was "ill-fated." Perhaps if you weren't there at the time, you might think the fourth side of The White Album was "mediocre" instead of the greatest ending for any album to this day. I'd LOVE to see the poll you took that indicates "most people" who listen to the album skip Revolution Number 9. There are times when I and the people I know listen JUST to that track. Of course we're listening to it through the stethoscope the Beatles used in developing it and based on my reading of your book, you've never experienced that at all.There really is much in Can't Buy Me Love, The Beatles, Britain and America, that is of great value to those interested in this history. The author's arrogance at implying his ideas might have improved this most iconic of musical catalogs leaves me slightly enraged.

I thought I'd read all the best books about the Beatles... I hadn't. This should definitely be included in any top ten list of intelligent balanced and original studies of the Fabs and their incredible music. Perceptive and wondrous. If you love the band you'll love this book. Much better than the Bob spitz effort. Up there with Mark lewisohns TUNE IN.

What a marvellous book. It is full of great insight and excellent writing, especially about the songs. Thoroughly recommended to anybody.

This is a really excellent book. It tries to create a broad picture of the Beatles period rather than give a list of events . This can lead to some events being shortchanged eg The Ed Sullivan concerts and perhaps George Martins influence. However on the other hand the writer will very often pursue an event and give a new insight (and after 15 Beatle books I greatly appreciate a new insight!). However if you want to know about the Beatles and that time and read a very well written book-this is it.

I'm about 1/4 way through this book and have to keep putting it down while the author flies off on another tangent. He makes even the Beatles boring! I hope it gets better or it'll take me forever to get through it.

Just finished this book. Too overwhelmed to write any more.Amazon needs ten more words to publish. Now three One .