The Beatles : a biography / Bob Spitz

A proper upbringing -- The messiah arrives -- Muscle and sinew -- The showman -- A simple twist of fete -- The missing links -- A good little sideshow -- The college band -- Chalk and cheese -- Moondogs and Englishmen -- Hit the road : Jac -- Baptism by fire -- A revelation to behold -- Mr. X -- A gigantic leap of faith -- The road to London -- Do the right thing -- Starr time -- A touch of the Barnum & Bailey -- Dead chuffed -- The jungle drums -- Kings of the jungle -- So this is beatlemania -- Once upon a time in America -- Tomorrow never knows -- In the eye of a hurricane -- Lennon and McCartney to the rescue -- Into the cosmic consciousness -- Just sort of a freak show -- A storm in a teacup -- A very freaky experience -- The summer of love -- From bad to worse -- An additional act -- Goodbye to the boys in the band! -- Disturbing the peace -- And in the end.

"The product of almost a decade of research, hundreds of unprecedented interviews, and the discovery of scores of never-before-revealed documents, Bob Spitz's The Beatles is the biography fans have been waiting for - a vast, complete account as brilliant and joyous and revelatory as a Beatles record itself. Spitz begins in Liverpool, a hard city knocked on its heels. In the housing projects and school playgrounds, four boys would discover themselves - and via late-night radio broadcasts, a new form of music called rock 'n roll." "Never before has a biography of musicians been so immersive and textured. Spitz takes us down Penny Lane and to Strawberry Field (John later added the s), to Hamburg, Germany, where - amid the squalor and the violence and the pep pills - the Beatles truly became the Beatles. We are there in the McCartney living room when Paul and John learn to write songs together; in the heat of Liverpool's Cavern Club, where jazz has been the norm before the Beatles show up; backstage the night Ringo takes over on drums; in seedy German strip clubs where George lies about his age so the band can perform; on the lonely tours through frigid Scottish towns before the breakthrough; at the Abbey Road studios, where a young producer named George Martin takes them under his wing; at the Ed Sullivan Show as America discovers the joy and the madness; and onward and upward: up the charts, from Shea to San Francisco, through the London night, on to India, through marmalade skies, across the universe - all the way to a rooftop concert and one last moment of laughter and music."--BOOK JACKET.