Beatles Bio Looks Behind the Myths

by Bob Bembridge in Honoring Lives, Musician Reviews, Reviews

To London record executives in 1962, Liverpool may as well have been Timbuktu.

Small wonder that a provincial rock band calling itself “The Beatles” couldn’t beg, borrow, or steal a record contract.  How a desperate Brian Epstein, after a crushing rejection by Decca, finally secured a recording contract is one of the many engaging stories told in Bob Spitz’s The Beatles: A Biography. 

Like his earlier work on Dylan, Spitz’s 2005 bio rips apart the self-serving legends created by Beatles publicists and collaborating journalists.  (McCartney himself admits that the official 1967 Beatles biography by Hunter Davies was only “about 65 percent” true.)  Spitz notes the “stunning lack of reliable source material” in the nearly 500 volumes comprising the Beatles canon.  “For better or worse, misinformation has always been a key element of the Beatles legend,” Spitz writes.

Spitz’s most fascinating chapters concern the early lives and careers of the Fab Four.  He explains how a declining Liverpool, once Britain’s wealthiest city, helped mold the personalities and musical talents of the Beatles.  Liverpool residents, Spitz explains, are fiercely chauvinistic and carry a chip on their shoulders to parry the condescension of Londoners.  They call themselves “Scousers” and developed the irreverent sense of humor shown by the Beatles in their early American press conferences.  Since Liverpool had a busy seagoing trade with the U.S. and Canada, the city was deluged with American country western and rock and roll records brought back by returning sailors.  Liverpool bands developed their own unique “Mersey Beat” that left Londoners in the dust.  Several of the most successful bands of the 1964 British Invasion came from Liverpool — The Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, The Searchers, and Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas.

Spitz presents detailed biographies on all four Beatles.  Life in wartime Liverpool was exceedingly grim.  Liverpool boys amused themselves by playing in the ruins of buildings bombed by the Luftwaffe. Ringo’s slum neighborhood was so dangerous that leaving one’s own street risked a nasty beating. (The young John Lennon was the only future Beatle who enjoyed a middle class lifestyle.)  This working class environment helped create a sound that was different from the jazz-influenced pop music emanating from London.

Spitz supports the contention that John Lennon was “hard on the outside and soft on the inside” while Paul McCartney was “soft on the outside and hard on the inside.”  Lennon’s apparent abandonment by his father and mother caused him to be an aggressive troublemaker.  Mothers warned their kids to stay away from the young Lennon.  McCartney, on the other hand, learned at an early age how to turn on the charm to get what he wanted.  Yet it was McCartney who coldly agreed to rid the band of drummer Pete Best and Lennon who was tormented by the decision. 

Ringo was wracked by childhood illnesses that nearly killed him.  Ringo’s poor health kept him out of school, and he could barely read or write.  George Harrison was such a pathetic student that he failed every one of his final high school exams.  

Spitz shows how the Beatles’ 1960 to 1962 Hamburg gigs turned the band into dynamic performers — with plenty of sex, booze, and amphetamines along the way.  Although we tend to remember the Beatles as studio musicians, it was their exciting live performances, not the Lennon-McCartney songs, which initially brought them fame.

The Spitz biography runs to a thousand pages of text and notes, but this is a must read for Beatles fans.