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The Mammoth Book of the Beatles

The Mammoth Book of the Beatles
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Useful, but by no means a five-star read
Review date: 2009-11-06 Rating: 6 out of 10

Although the Beatles are my favourite band by a very, very long way, I am not prepared to vote five stars to any book that happens to be about them. (I don't even think that all their albums are five stars: Beatles for Sale is for me a chore to listen to.) I have to disagree with the more enthusiastic reviewers of this book. Sean Egan has done a valuable job in collecting under one cover some important archive material about the Beatles, including William Mann's much-mocked but actually intelligent and insightful 1963 Times article in which he praised Lennon & McCartney as songwriters, and Maureen Cleave's legendary "bigger than Jesus" interview with Lennon. But not a lot of the rest of the material is very useful. This being a Mammoth book there was bulk that had to be padded out, and Egan's own mini-essays on the Beatles' output, presumably written to serve that very purpose, are not very good. The style is undistinguished, and in general they repeat things that have been said already, and in most cases said better.

However, it was brave and smart of Egan to include some of the more memorable anti-Beatle ranting in a section called 'Dissenters'. This consists of a hundred pages of people hating the Beatles, and it's refreshing to read, even if you're a fan, if only because you soon see how people who profess to hate the Beatles are usually not talking about the Beatles' music. The section is led by a 1964 article by Paul Johnson, in those days (as Egan puts it) a 'harrumphing left-wing journalist' instead of the 'harrumphing right-wing journalist' that he now is, which combines breathtaking racism with a tin ear and a complete lack of historical prescience. Johnson essentially uses the Beatles as a stick to beat jazz, which he entirely wrongly believed to be the roots of 60s pop music. "You can overhear grown men", Johnson says with appalled disbelief, "who have been expensively educated, engage in heated argument on the respective techniques of Charlie Parker and Duke Ellington." This is itself a somewhat bizarre comment, since anybody who knows anything about jazz knows that Parker played alto sax and Ellington played piano, so it makes no sense to argue about their 'respective techniques' - but to Johnson, such distinctions are meaningless. Johnson clearly considered jazz criticism to be a bizarre and pretentious intellectual fungus growing over the "monotonous braying of savage instruments". Clearly, as far as Johnson was concerned, music made by black people was just a mindless din; never mind that Charlie Parker and Duke Ellington were, in their very different ways, highly sophisticated musicians whose work is not only almost endlessly fascinating, but which is at the very foundation of whatever jazz has become lately. Parker's playing is still a benchmark of excellence in improvising, while Ellington is simply one of the greatest composers of the 20th century - but not to Johnson, who appears to dismiss all music made by people who aren't white, simply on the grounds that it's by people who aren't white. I'm quite surprised that such a self-appointed guardian of all that's good and sacred in civilisation never seems to have been challenged about such eye-popping racism.

Johnson goes on to reassure his readers that the "menace of Beatlism" (the title of his article) is a mere fad, and that "the core of the teenage group - the boys and girls who will be the real leaders and creators of society tomorrow - never go near a pop concert". Hmmm...doesn't Tony Blair own a Strat? In any case, this remark goes to demonstrate Johnson's own fraudulence and need to suck up to his readership. He wanted to console his readers, not tell them the truth.

The rest of the anti-Beatle articles include Lester Bangs' The-Beatles-are-boring rant from the mid-70s - and I love Lester Bangs' work, but really, he should have laid off the Gallo port from time to time; and a couple of 90s articles by people called Dave Simpson and Gary Hall in which the writers' arguments amount to the not very interesting claim that a certain type of obnoxious Beatle nut is no fun to be around. Big swing, as we say in Dublin. It's quite possible to love the Beatles and also love hardcore punk, Frank Zappa, John Dowland, Deep Purple, Eric B & Rakim, Anton Webern, J.S. Bach, Rabih Abou-Khalil, John Zorn, Blur, Bongwater, Henry Cow, Jay-Z, [fill in the blank]. At the moment, no particular style seems to be in the ascendancy, which is bad for journalists because they have nothing to get all excited about but good for music fans because it means that anybody can listen to anything and not worry about the stupid old prohibition: "Is this cool? Should I be listening to this?" As soon as the main criterion for musical enjoyment becomes "Is this fashionable enough?", then music is under threat.

To sum up: it's a useful book, but I think it's worth paraphrasing the old line commonly misattributed to Samuel Johnson (although he never seems to have said it anywhere): this book is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not (very) good.





To much Egan, not enough archive
Review date: 2009-10-04 Rating: 4 out of 10

Disappointing book as there is too much of Mr Egan and not enough archive material. Surely original reviews of the albums would be of more interest than rather sterile reviews by Egan 40+ years after their release.

If you buy only one Beatles book make it "Revolution in the Head" by Ian MacDonald! Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties

Let It Be- On Your Shopping List
Review date: 2009-08-28 Rating: 10 out of 10

As a long time Beatles fan i'm always interested in books on the Band. This one is certainly worth buying. Each single and album is assessed by the author. I don't always agree with his assessments (he is far too critical of I Want To Hold Your Hand for instance) but i respect his views.
The best part of the book for me were the articles actually written at the time the Fab Four were active. Even the critical articles from those who didn't like the Band are interesting and sometimes amusing.Well done for including these.
I was particularly pleased to see a section on The Beatles Cartoon Series(shown in the US 65-67). Now virtually forgotten, it reminds us the series was a massive success in the States,attracting startling audience figures.
Its a well written and well balanced book. Giving us a good insight into the effect John,Paul,George and Ringo had on the 1960's. Their social impact as well as musical.
A good purchase for anyone interested in The Beatles.

the mammooth book of the Beatles
Review date: 2009-05-23 Rating: 10 out of 10

Book looks fairly good. The book runs about a 40-60 split between archival material and newer items written by Sean Egan. Egan's material is thorough and opinionated. It's the archival essays, though, that are the real attraction. We wish there were more. Still, though, this is a good book to have. And with nearly 600 pages, there's a lot to read.

Product Details/Specifications


Authors:
Sean Egan

Recording label: Robinson
Manufacturer: Robinson
EAN: 9781845299439
Binding: Paperback
ISBN: 1845299434
Number of pages: 608
Publication date: 2009-04-23
Language: English (Published)

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