Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America | Jonathan Gould

Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America | Jonathan Gould | Highly recommended!

books:

Can't Buy Me Love:...

	Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America Jonathan Gould Harmony, 2007 - 672 pages average customer review:based on 32 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

Not just another Beatles book

After having read maybe a thousand books on the Beatles, what a treat to find a new one that is not only well-written and intelligent, but actually includes material I had not read or heard before. Everyone will have their favorite era and favorite part, but I especially enjoyed learning more about the very early days (1960-1961) when the band were acquiring their instrumental chops and soaking up lessons in songwriting and showmanship. A great book.

Highly recommended!

I teach a college course about The Beatles,and recently have re-read many of the best books about them, so when I first saw this book, I thought it would recycle the same old stories, but when I looked through it, I quickly saw the author provides much original, meaningful insight. If you're interested in the history of their music (rather than gossip), I highly recommend this.

for more information click here

Fab-ulous!

As a Beatles fan my entire life, I whole-heartedly recommend this book. I can't add much more commentary that hasn't been mentioned in the previous readers reviews, except to say, that while there are some ups and downs, as a whole, I never got through 606 pages so easily and so eagerly, as I did with "Can't Buy Me Love." The author deserves major kudos for his research and insightful comments on their music. I recommend this book for any Beatles fan.

Starts out strong, then devolves into more or less just another Beatles biography

I was impressed with this book at first. At the start, Jonathan Gould does an excellent job of setting the historical and sociological stage for the creation and emergence of the Beatles, helping the reader better understand the conditions at the time that, as he puts it, not only made them possible but perhaps necessary. He also does a good job of explaining, possibly, as much as anyone can, what made their effect as explosive as it was. After he gets done describing the impact of the release of SGT. PEPPER, though, he seems to forget what kind of book he's writing, and get bogged down in recounting the details of their unraveling and eventual disbandment. The context in which they existed begins to fade a bit into the background, although it still pops up once in a while (as when he remembers to mention which part of ABBEY ROAD they were recording while, elsewhere, Woodstock was taking place, or describes the sociological upheavals of 1968). At that point, his assessments of their recorded output become more interesting than anything else (and certainly more interesting than all the details about the financial tangle they ended up in toward the end). Worst of all, there's no chapter in which he wraps up all these ideas and everything he's been trying to say--it just all comes to an abrupt halt upon John Lennon's death and Paul McCartney's reaction to it (why end there?). Nothing is said about the lives of the remaining Beatles beyond that point, George Harrison's death or the continuing impact of the Beatles on British and American society. It's almost as if he had a deadline to meet and had to just come to a screeching end. I don't think any book that places this band into context is complete without further examining their long-term impact--as much as any book published today can, that is.

for more information click here

Great combination of Beatles History and their Music

Given the many bottles of ink spilled trying to recount all of the Beatles work and the various impacts they had on music and the world around us, one would think that the all angles had been exhausted. In this work Mr. Gould accomplishes two things, first he tells the story of the Beatles and tries to distinguish fact from fiction and to a large degree he is successful. Secondly, using his background as a musicologist, he goes into the Beatles catalog and discuss what the meanings are of their songs and lyrics.

Not being a huge musicologist myself, I will admit that this part lost me and was less interesting. Still, I think to someone who wants to learn about the Beatles as performers, this book will provide the right combination of background and history to put the songs into perspective. If you're a Beatles fan, this is certainly a good read.

for more information click here

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, page 6, 7

products you might be interested in