Review: ‘The Beatles: The Authorized Biography’
The Beatles are the most outstanding phenomena of the McLuhan age: they are the first citizens of the global village, known in every remote part of the world. If you were wandering around in Tibet with long hair, and some hermit crawled out of his cave for the first time in twenty years, he’d look up at your hair and say one word: “Beatle?”
With that in mind, considering the “authorized biography” of the Beatles, in fact, considering the whole question of the Beatles, is a little difficult. One of the main concerns, one to which the book addresses itself but fails to deal with satisfactorily, is where the public life of the Beatles leaves off and where their private lives begin. Indeed, there is a prior question: does the Beatle ‘phenomenon’ entitles them to private lives at all?
This biography implies a dual answer: on the one hand, the answer is no, because here is a biography, promising revealing fact after fact and insight after penetrating insight and on the other, this book does not deliver fact after fact, but rather deliberately glosses over some of the most fascinating aspects of the Beatles. Having gone this far, both the author and the Beatles are obligated to play the game through to the end. (As John says about accepting the MBE’s, “Then it all just seemed part of the game we’d agreed to play.”)
Yet with it, the book carries that incredible power of the Beatles. The attraction is hard to explain, yet can be illustrated by recalling that all Paul McCartney has to do is wink or wave, and he’ll set the world smiling. It’s a great power to have. Thus, no matter what the shortcomings of this book are as a piece of writing, as biographical study, as a book about the Beatles —– it is nonetheless a book to be read. Like everything about the Beatles, even the dumbest picture or even some one square inch of a sheet that came from the same hotel that George stayed in a week before, to be devoured, dug, grokked and enjoyed. It is the Beatles, and whether they like it or not, they are a mirror of ourselves.
Rarely, for instance, do people sit down for a moment and think of the incredible weirdness of it: they are four cats from what would otherwise be a forgotten English port town, who live thousands of miles away from anybody, and and yet for millions of people, they are intimate friends, every little broken hangnail a proper topic of conversation and concern. Where do they get off? Where do we get off?
This biography is one place.
In general, the first half of the book is inordinately dull. Here are John, Paul, George and Ringo growing up. Mostly they are tales we already knew. Finally though, they are presented as “facts” and not “fax.” What other stories and details are added (John for instance, was an aggressive, unhappy kid, a child haunted first by the desertion of his father, and then the death of his mother, and he shoplifted, beat up kids at school), are passably interesting for those interested in hangnails, but essentially make only one point: like everybody else, they were kids, did all the things kids did, were cruel like all other kids, were happy like all other kids.
Paul was “sexually precocious” and jealous of anyone who got close to John. Ringo spent most of his early years in the hospital; George looked like and for all intents and purposes was, a juvenile delinquent. They all were.
What strikes one as interesting and relevant is not mentioned here: one easily forgets it today, but rock and roll was a phenomenon of the lower classes. It was dirty, raunchy, unrefined, too physical and tasteless. It was totally declasse. And the Beatles were totally declasse. Things have changed, But not that much.
Rock and roll is still very much a dirty, raunchy, too physical and unrefined music. Those who approach it as something more delicate, artful or fashionable do so at great risk and danger, because they probably miss it altogether. Rock and Roll is not polite. It is rude, and its about time pop critics got hip to that.
Review: ‘The Beatles: The Authorized Biography’, Page 1 of 5