These are my first three articles for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Online!, a fab club which has unfortunately had to close down. At the bottom of this page is a link to the remaining articles. =)

~^~ The Beatle Files ~^~

by: StrawberrySunshine

Hello, all! I’m the writer of this new section called "The Beatle Files." What in the world is "The Beatle Files"? Well, "The Beatle Files" is a section of the newsletter that reviews Beatle bios, picture books, and just Beatle literature in general. I’ll review the book and break it down as best I can and give the information you may need in case you decide you’d like to buy it or read it. If you would like me to review a certain book, e-mail me with the title and author and I’ll try to get it reviewed for you. *Now on with the show!*

The Beatles
by Theresa Celsi
Ariel Books/Andrew and McMeel: Kansas City, MO,
1993. Approx. 79 pages,
$3.99-$4.95

This is a book I’d recommend only for a long-time fan who knows his/her facts. There are a few interesting things in the book that I’d never heard before; (being a long-time fan) for example, John made white cardboard collars for the students in religion class and when the teacher came into the room, "he was greeted by the sight of dozens of miniature priests," but, I’m sorry to say, this book is not recommendable for a new fan trying to read up on Beatles *facts.* The author does not have a bibliography, so her sources cannot be checked and she has a few of her facts wrong, as in crediting John with Paul’s "And I Love Her" and a few other discrepancies.

It’s a cute little book full of great pics, but again, I would not take much this book has to say as "Beatles gospel." The way the book is written almost seems like a caricature of the Great Beatles Story that we all know and love. The author knows how to write something interesting, I’ll give her that, but she really needs to be just a teeny bit more informed. But none of us are perfect, are we?

Anyway, there are lots of Beatles and related people’s quotes which are very interesting and the pics are great to be torn out and pasted onto a white school binder.... So there are two sides, good and bad, to this book. The good has been mentioned in the line above, but even though it merits a few good things, the text, as I have already mentioned above, has two tones to it. If you read the book straight through and don’t really think about what you’re reading, you get a good feeling from the book. But when you return a second time, you finish the book just hearing a subtle negativism in the words. Wasn’t expecting my first write to be so negative, but be prepared for more! ;)

Want to see a certain book reviewed? Requests, comments & questions? E-mail me! StrwbrySunshine@hotmail.com

This is my second article. (NOTE: All of my articles are (pretty much) displayed in the form they were written/published in.)

==The Beatle Files==
by *Strawberry Sunshine*

Just in case you wondered~ "The Beatle Files" is a section of the newsletter that reviews Beatle bios, picture books, and just Beatle literature in general. I'll review the book/article/etc. and break it down as best I can and give the information you may need in case you decide you'd like to buy it or read it like the author, publisher, year of publication, etc., plus the price of the book. If you would like me to review a certain book, etc., e-mail me with the title and author and I'll try to get it reviewed for you. This week the spotlight falls on:

McCartney: Yesterday & Today by Ray Coleman
(with the cooperation of Paul McCartney)
Boxtree Limited (UK): Broadwall, London, 1995;
Dove Books (US): Los Angeles, CA, 1996.
201 pages, $22.95-$29.99
(and yes, Paul is my favourite:)

As some of you may already know, Ray Coleman traveled with the Beatles in their early days and was a writer for "Melody Maker" and ended up as the editor-in-chief, occasionally publishing the Beatles' letters to him in the paper. This book is broken up into eight chapters, plus the acknowledgements, author's note, postscript, a miscellany, and three appendixes.

This book is basically about Paul's song "Yesterday," with the Beatles' story, bits of Paul's life, and other bits of information and opinion. What I think is pretty neat about this book is that it has the sheet music on the inside front and back flaps of the actual book, with Paul's handwritten lyrics on the other side. It has exactly 42 pictures (not counting the back and front of the book), colour and black and white, including Astrid's picture of Paul and pics from his childhood (and all of the pics are great).

The first chapter discusses the "birth" of "Yesterday," all of the Beatles' reactions and thoughts on it (George's being the classic: "Blimey! He's always talking about that song. You'd think he was Beethoven or somebody") and how it came about. The second chapter opens with George Martin's thoughts on what Paul was saying in "Yesterday" and delves into his life. The third chapter covers the music scene and the thought of putting a string quartet on "Yesterday;" the fourth chapter is about the Beatles' widening of the audience, and the fifth is about John (and Paul). The sixth chapter is about the Beatles' publishing; the seventh brings Michael Jackson into the picture and finishes with "Paul McCartney Today."

This book was a pleasure to read; it was mostly easy reading, but there were a couple complicated spots. It's the kind of book that gets its message across right away and it's so clear that you really don't have to read it again. Ray Coleman did a very good job in presenting the stages of "Yesterday" while skillfully incorporating the Beatles' opinions and remarks and others of the Beatles' circle. It is very well written and informative and each chapter opens with a quote (mostly from Paul). The latter half of the book tells of the Beatles' publishing problems, the mysterious signing of a binding document in a dark alley which led to some of the problems, the "beautiful naïveté" of John and Paul, and the confrontations between the Beatles and Dick James. Dick James was the Beatles' original publisher and this book tells of the things he did with the publishing, which made the famous song catalogue end up in Michael Jackson's hands. This is also where the book gets a bit complicated, at least, for me. The numbers and contracts enter in and get very confusing, but when I read "Many Years From Now," Ray Coleman's words made sense. I definitely recommend this book for long-time fans, as it has many "new" facts in it and plenty of Beatles' humour, sarcasm and even anger. It just barely assumes that the reader knows a little about the Beatles, so maybe a new fan would like to check it out. Very excellent pictures-and an excellent read.

That's all for now--e-mail me with your requests! StrwbrySunshine@hotmail.com
Find me at my site: Strawberry's Field: https://www.angelfire.com/biz2/strwbrywriter1/
~Strawberry~

*~The Beatle Files~*
{brought to you by *Strawberry Sunshine*}

Hello, all! Just in case you wondered what in the world is "The Beatle Files"? ~ "The Beatle Files" is a section of the newsletter that reviews Beatle bios, picture books, and just Beatle literature in general. I'll review the book/article/etc. and break it down as best I can and give the information you may need in case you decide you'd like to buy it or read it like the author, publisher, year of publication, etc., plus the price of the book. If you would like me to review a certain book, etc., e-mail me with the title and author and I'll try to get it reviewed for you.
*The special on this week's menu is:*

"The Love You Make-An Insider's Story of the Beatles" by Peter Brown & Steven Gaines
McGraw-Hill Book Company: New York, NY, 1983.
Approx. 421 pages, $4.50 and up
(requested by Jenna, SeasideMAC@aol.com)

This book has twenty-one chapters, plus an introduction and index. It has 64 black-and-white pictures, which aren't all that fantabulous, but they're okay. I wonder if you're already starting to pick up on what I feel for this book. Well, brace yerselves loveys, cos this isn't going to be a very positive review!

~The Good~

~The Bad~

There are three things that can give you more of my feelings on this book, which not only stated rumours as fact, but also even got more 'basic' Beatles facts wrong. One is something I wrote myself that you can find here. Here are the other two, a post to Rmb (rec.music.beatles.)

Subject:Re: Peter Brown Trust Issue..HELP!
Date:1998/03/17Author:RasMaster
>mhhedgeco@aol.com (MHHedgeco) writes:

>Having read his book on the Beatles, "The Love You Make", at least 3 times, >I don't see why this book would not be trustworthy. IMO, "The Love You Make" has gotten a raw deal. Yes, there are errors. But there are errors in *any* non-fiction book--even Lewisohn's books. >Just one example: Peter Brown said that the Beatles jammed with Elvis the >one time they met. George denied it, so it's been counted among Brown's errors. >Yet John, Neil Aspinall and others, including one of Elvis' bodyguards, all say >that there most certainly *was* a jam. The denials seem to have come only from the Beatles' camp, and only after Brown's book came out.

But it is SO filled with factual errors (years in which records came out, names of people, chart positions, whether a record was a "hit" commercially or not, etc.), things which are easily proven to be different than what the authors say (we once made a list two pages long to present him with at Beatlefest, but chickened out), that it makes his so-called "exclusives" VERY questionable.
I, for one, am not going to trust information that no-one can confirm, coming from an author who can't get easily confirmed facts straight.
I have an acquaintance, also a Beatle author, who did some of the editing and correction of copy on this book (I don't know the exact term). He told me that he shared many of these errors with the authors, and that in most cases (particularly in the area of describing George Harrison's chart/popular success in the solo years), the authors were unwilling to replace their text with the more accurate information.
My aquintaince believed that the authors wanted to make it appear, for one thing, that the 70's were, generally, a time of failure for George, and the facts didn't bear this out. So they changed the facts.
It would appear that this went beyond mere inaccuraccy, into deliberate misleading, which casts even more doubt on their "exclusives". Bob Purse

Subject:List of Errors in 'The Love You Make'
Date:1998/12/11Author:Jim Richard
wrote:
>I found Recording Sessions at the SF main library. I wasn't allowed to check >it out so went back three times to get through it. Peter Brown's book, though >listed, was missing. I read Brown's book when it came out and wanted a >refresher as I've heard since that it had a lot of inaccuracies. Paul, for >one, made a ceremony of burning it page by page. Don't suppose anyone feel >like summing up the inaccuracies (or at least some of them)?--Laura

Here's a list of errors I found in Peter Brown's "The Love You Make".
In fairness, I should say that many of these are nitpicks, others I'm not sure if they really are errors (I note this in the explanations), and still others (such as the first item) are errors that were only made known after the book was published. If anybody knows of more serious errors in the book, I'd like to hear about them. I don't see why this list of errors would cause anybody to say the book should be avoided.

If you don't want to read the whole list, item 13 is the most egregious, and item 30 is the most interesting.

1. (page 27) "they wrote over 100 songs that first year".
Since debunked.

2. (page 34) "Paul introduced George to the band in the winter of 1959."
I believe February 1958 is the estimated time.

3. (page 41) "It seemed one of their ever changing band members hadn't shown up one night, and Mrs. Best had docked his fifteen shilling salary from their pay. The Beatles stormed out of the [Casbah] club..."
Actually, Mrs. Best paid Ken Brown even though he was sick and couldn't play. The other Quarrymen felt they should have received his pay.

4. (page 42) "In the end it turned out they stayed [in Hamburg] for over five months."
The trip was from mid-August to early December, or 3.5 months.

5. (page 49) "It was a few nights before Christmas. . .The audience in the Casbah was thunderstruck; a remarkable transformation had occurred in Hamburg."
The concert at Litherland Hall, a few days after Christmas is where the transformed Beatles first wowed northern England.

6. (page 58) "Although she [Queenie Epstein] would love her second child, Clive, born 21 months later, he never held for her the same fascination as Brian."
But on page 63 of Brown's book, "I was actually a friend of his older brother Clive."

7. (page 75) "The [Star] club alternated music with sex shows and lady mud wrestlers."
I thought they worked in former sex clubs.

8. (page 76) "One night he [John Lennon] walked on stage naked with a toilet seat around his neck..."
He had a bathing suit on according to Coleman.

9. (page 87) "None of the Beatles could read or write music, although Paul was later to teach himself."
Paul learned how to read music when he wrote the Liverpool Oratorio, several years after this book was published. At least that what newspaper accounts said when the Oratorio was released, though I've since heard that he still doesn't know how to read music.

10. (page 89) "and in one 53 hour recording session laid down . . . 'Please Please Me'"
According to Dowdling, "various accounts report the session as lasting from 9.75 to 16 hours - but it probably took about 13."

11. (page 91) "'Do You Want to Know a Secret?' It was a line John remembered that Jimmy Cricket asks Pinocchio."
The line was probably from 'Wishing Well' in 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'.

12. (page 108) "The only glimpse of them had been on a few seconds' worth of footage on Jack Paar's NBC series, 'Prime Time'."
I believe they had appeared on CBS news in November, a month earlier.

13. (page 113) "Years later, when Cynthia wrote about her marriage in her heavily self-censored autobiography, 'A Twist of Lennon', she changed the date of her marriage to 1962. This inaccuracy has been noted many times in Beatle biographies. Recently, Cynthia confessed it was an inadvertent mistake; she has mental block against admitting Julian was conceived out of wedlock and often still confuses the date."
But on page 81, Brown himself reports that the marriage took place in August 1962, which is when the wedding did, in fact, take place. Cynthia's autobiography, which is heavily self-censored, is very upfront that she was pregnant when she was married and that she thinks John wouldn't have married her otherwise.

15. (page 134) "Seven months later, when the Beatles assembled to make the movie [A Hard Day's Night], they were international stars and could have demanded to renegotiate their contracts. But Brian, ever the gentleman, had given his word, and financial matters proceeded as planned."
Brown is saying the Beatles received the original 7.5% share that Brian negotiated, but, according to "Shout, the rate was renegotiated upwards.

16. (page 165) "He [John Lennon] was married to a woman he probably never loved."
It's clear from Cynthia's account and from the lover letters he wrote to her, that this is not true.
(NOTE by Strawberry~Ray Coleman's "Lennon" even has copies of John's letters to Cyn. They're not too hard to read, either.)

17. (page 167) "After that [a single 20 minute meeting with John] Freddie [John's long lost father] drifted back into obscurity."
John and Freddie had an intermittent relationship between 1964 and 1970. On John's birthday in 1970 John lashed out at his father when he came to visit. At the time, John was reliving childhood traumas in primal therapy sessions with Arthur Janov. John never met his father again, but John spoke with his father on his deathbed, and apologized for his verbal attack.

18. (page 182) "Paul, George, and Ringo were thrilled at this great honor, but not John Lennon. He hated the idea of receiving an MBE."
Not according to Pete Shotton.

19. (page 183) "The Beatles giggled their way through the elaborate rehearsal and [MBE] ceremony. . . high on grass."
The surviving Beatles denied this in the Anthology interviews.

20. (page 189) "Later, the Beatles and Elvis jammed."
Also denied by the three surviving Beatles in Anthology.

21. (page 194) "In literal terms, Brian signed over to Dick James 50% of Lennon-McCartney's publishing for *nothing*."
According to 'Shout', song-writers always give a percentage to their publisher, and James' deal was very generous.

22. (page 229) "When she [Yoko] was 23, much to her parents' distress, she eloped with a penniless Japanese composer and pianist named Toschi Ichiyananagi, and her mother promptly cut her off without a penny. It was years before they spoke again."
From what I remember of Hopkin's biography of Yoko, I think this is exaggerated.

23. (page 283) "The Beatles were joined at the ashram by . . . Mia Farrow, her sister Tia. . ."
It was her sister, Prudence, not Dear Tia.

24. (page 302) "They [John and Yoko] lay in the basement of Montague Square almost all July that simmering summer, submerged in a self-inflicted [heroin] stupor."
July doesn't sound right, since there were recording sessions for the White album that month.

25. (page 303) "In fact, when Paul first played 'Hey Jude' for John in the studio without telling him he had written the song for Julian, John mistakenly thought that Paul was writing about the end of his romance with Jane."
In the Playboy interviews, John said he thought the song was about his budding relationship with Yoko. Both accounts may be correct.

26. (page 315) "It was Paul's idea to have each [White] album individually numbered, like fine lithographs."
Paul's intention was to hold a lottery, but he was talked out of the idea.

27. (page 326) [When George quit the group in January 1969] "But when they [the Beatles] had a business meeting a few days later, George showed up with the rest of them as if nothing had happened."
George insisted on cancelling the planned concert in front of a live audience.

28. (page 354) "He [Paul] played the drum part [on 'The Ballad of John and Yoko'], the only instrument John could not play himself."
According to Dowdling, Paul also played bass, piano and maracas.

29. (page 357) [After John drove his car into a ditch with Yoko, Julian and Kyoko as passengers] "John was the most serverely gashed and received seventeen stitches."
Other accounts say John lept for joy that he had escaped alive. Both accounts may be true.

30. (page 376) "Inside the [McCartney] album package was an interview Paul had done with himself, making up the questions as well as the answers. It was self-serving, vain, and painted him in the poorest light."
According to 'Many Years From Now', it was Peter Brown who wrote the interview questions!!! I wonder who's telling the truth on this one.

31. (page 392) "In his [George's autobiographical] reminiscence of his days with the Beatles, he omits all reference to John Lennon, as if he never existed."
All though John did accuse George of doing this, reportedly the accusation was unfair and the autobiography does mention John several times.

32. (page 400) "They [Paul, Linda and Denny Laine] would record far into the night [for the 'Band on the Run' sessions], just the three of them, with the occasional help of an African drummer Paul hired for a few sessions."
I've always heard that Paul did all the drumming on 'Band on the Run'.

33. (page 401) 'Band on the Run' sold six million copies, the highest amount of any ex-Beatle and an amount equaling the group's biggest success, 'Let It Be'."
I thought 'Abbey Road' or 'The White Album' was the top seller. I doubt 'Let It Be' was.

34. (page 431) "Playboy asked them [John and Yoko] to be the interview of their big [1980] Christmas issue."
John and Yoko approached Playboy and needed a special exception to get the interview published in just three months instead of the usual six months.

35. (page 437) "A few months after John's death she [Yoko] began an unlikely friendship with a young man named Sam Habitoy, a sometimes antique dealer and interior decorator."
His name is Sam Havadtoy.

Jim
*

Copyright 1999: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Online!

Copyright 1999: Lissa Michelle Supler/Strawberry Sunshine

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