I had a love/hate relationship with this book, but in the end, I've decided that the whole is greater -- and more interesting -- than the parts.
Just when I was tempted to quit, Brown would turn up something -- a fact, a connection, an observation -- that made it feel like it was worth going on. This might be the way he put information that you thought you already knew and understand into a new context: for example, just how very, very heartbreakingly young the Beatles were. And how very quickly the Beatles "moment" flew by. To end in tears and, with the murder of John Lennon, with no chance of reconciliation and nostalgia-soaked reunion.
Brown has turned up some truly marvelous connections. Like, for example, that the young woman who probably inspired Paul McCartney to write "She's Leaving Home" was (years before she left home) the winner of a radio essay contest -- first prize, meeting Paul McCartney ... For example, that the man who led the brass section on the iconic recording of "All You Need Is Love" (and played the flugelhorn on "Penny Lane") had also performed with composer Ralph Vaughan Williams -- a great-nephew of Charles Darwin,
There are moments that let it down: Brown's dislike of Yoko Ono cause him to indulge in a fairly pointless comparison of her gnomic poetry with songs "immortalised" by Shirley Temple. Yes, Shirley Temple -- entirely because, as a five-year-old travelling by ocean liner from Japan to San Francisco with her family, Ono entered a fancy-dress competition as Temple. (A factoid so bizarre, and so hard to un-see, I would have just stopped right there, for maximum impact ...) Brown REALLY hates Yoko Ono -- and yes, maybe her conceptual art was a big con, and maybe she isn't the most loveable person in the Beatle saga, but couldn't we just move on?
But apart from that .... Brown's research takes us back to that moment when immortality hit reality, and nothing would ever be the same again.
Just when I was tempted to quit, Brown would turn up something -- a fact, a connection, an observation -- that made it feel like it was worth going on. This might be the way he put information that you thought you already knew and understand into a new context: for example, just how very, very heartbreakingly young the Beatles were. And how very quickly the Beatles "moment" flew by. To end in tears and, with the murder of John Lennon, with no chance of reconciliation and nostalgia-soaked reunion.
Brown has turned up some truly marvelous connections. Like, for example, that the young woman who probably inspired Paul McCartney to write "She's Leaving Home" was (years before she left home) the winner of a radio essay contest -- first prize, meeting Paul McCartney ... For example, that the man who led the brass section on the iconic recording of "All You Need Is Love" (and played the flugelhorn on "Penny Lane") had also performed with composer Ralph Vaughan Williams -- a great-nephew of Charles Darwin,
There are moments that let it down: Brown's dislike of Yoko Ono cause him to indulge in a fairly pointless comparison of her gnomic poetry with songs "immortalised" by Shirley Temple. Yes, Shirley Temple -- entirely because, as a five-year-old travelling by ocean liner from Japan to San Francisco with her family, Ono entered a fancy-dress competition as Temple. (A factoid so bizarre, and so hard to un-see, I would have just stopped right there, for maximum impact ...) Brown REALLY hates Yoko Ono -- and yes, maybe her conceptual art was a big con, and maybe she isn't the most loveable person in the Beatle saga, but couldn't we just move on?
But apart from that .... Brown's research takes us back to that moment when immortality hit reality, and nothing would ever be the same again.
