Craig Brown: One, Two, Three, Four: The Beatles in Time (Book Review)
It's been years since I read my last Beatles related book, but Get Back last November evidently meant that bookstores now place more recent publications where passers by like yours truly can spot them, and thus I ended up with Craig Brown's One, Two, Three, Four: The Beatles in Time, which I think is best described as an entertaining collection of vignettes dealing not just with the Beatles but various people flitting in and out of their lives, with fandom, with hatedom, and with (some) biography. How it would feel to someone new to Beatles lore, I couldn't say. Occasionally, when recognizing from which previous biography or even interview some quotes hail from, I thought, good lord, I know way too much about these people. Otoh, there were some stories I hadn't come across before, or had not connected to the Beatles, like "the Singing Nun", Sister Luc-Gabrielle, aka Jeannine Deckers, who had appeared on the same Ed Sullivan show the Beatles made their American debut on. (Not a story with a happy ending, that one. But remarkable.)
Nitpicks first: Craig Brown can tell a story, and most of the chapters I enjoyed reading, regardless as to whether there was new content or not. Unfortunately, the exceptions to this rule happen relatively early in the book, though not to a degree that they stopped me from reading further. But they did irritate me. As I said, this is also a book about fandom, and two chapters have Brown himself taking the tour in Liverpool that includes the childhood homes of John and Paul. The description of the somewhat self important (in his telling) guides with their insistence that the stuff they rattle off to 130 000 visitors a year is "confidential, private information" that must not be recorded comes across as somewhat snooty, but it's nowhere as irrating as the "Brown takes a tour in Hamburg" chapter where he decides to write the dialogue of every German he meets phonetically, in "accent". I hate it when writers do that - not just when it's supposed to be a German accent, it's just as annoying when it's supposed to be a French one, a Scottish one, for for that matter Scouse - because it makes comprehending what each word is supposed to mean really hard for me, no matter how fluent I am in English. Also, I just don't think it's funny, which evidently it's meant to be.
(I should add here that later chapters, where he's letting various female fans talk, come across very differently - with affection for the women, who do most of the talking and looking back, and when they make a bit fun of their younger selves, it's a case of "laughing with", not "laughing about". But the Mendips, Forthlin Road and Hamburg tour chapters really annoyed me.)
On to the praise: Craig Brown often hits on hilarious, eminently quotable tales, and not just when he's quoting the Beatles themselves in full snarky, goofy glory. As I said, he also devotes some chapters to dedicated haters of the Fab Four, and none was more so than Anthony Burgess (yes, A Clockwork Orange Burgess), who wasn't just seething throughout the 60s but was still ready to fire off Beatles-loathing sallies decades after the band was no more, which tells you a lot about Burgess. (And yes, the over the topness of his hatred does make it funny.) Stories like the one about Ms Deckers which end unhappily are written with a matter of fact compassion, while he comes across as pretty even handed in his depiction (and selection of quotes by and on) such vivid yet controversial characters as John's aunt Mimi. (Opinions on Mimi vary from "Stern yet loving" to "vicious control freak from hell", with the later two voiced memorably by both Julia Baird - John Lennon's younger sister - and Cynthia Lennon (John's first wife).) He's also pretty good in showing how inevitably skewered everyone's memories inevitably are - as with the "Beatles meet Elvis" encounter which everyone involved later described somewhat differently from each other, or the "John beat up Bob Wooler at Paul's birthday party" tale, where the description of the reason for the violence and the extension of the injuries greatly varies not just with the describer, but also with the times (i.e. John Lennon himself gave various different descriptions of this incident to different people over the years) , with the biographers, depending on their own agenda, often adding to it (so unsurprisingly the version where it's a miracle Wooler survived is the one in Albert Goldman's biography).
Interestingly, Brown entirely avoids the question most people writing books about the Beatles get asked - "who's your favourite Beatle?" - but instead answers one for himself which I haven't seen asked before in fandom, to wit, if you could be any Beatle at any point in their lives, which one and when would you want to be? (Craig Brown would like to be Paul during his years of living with the Asher family at Wimpole Street ("living with Jane, cossetted by her family, blessed by luck, happy with life, alive to culture, adored by the world, and with wonderfull songs flowing as if my magic from my brain and out through the piano: I want to hold your hand, I'm looking through you, The Things we said today, And I love her, We can work it out, Here, there and everwhere, Yesterday") (Put like that, I can see his point.) Generally speaking Brown keeps a good balance between the four in the stories he chooses to tell - there are far more George anecdotes, for example, than in anything penned by Philip Norman - except in the last section, ca. 1968-1970, which is very Lennon centric, but very much not in a Philip Norman way. Chapter 140, which tells the tale of John and Yoko's encounter with Gloria Emerson (transmitted by the BBC), utterly skewers the former two simply by using their own words. It does some across as perhaps the most cringe worthy John and Yoko event ever, as they proceed to lecture Emerson, who had been a foreign correspondent in Saigon, was by no means a pro establishment figure and would return to Saigon to cover such subjects as the false American body count, the use of hard drugs by G.I.s and the effect the war has on the Vietnamese civilian population, on Vietnam and the effectiveness of their peace protests, and listen not to a single thing Emerson had to say. And the conclusion of that chapter is absolutely lethal. The most Yoko hating rant by a 1960s fan does not compare with ths effective dagger-by-quote without any bashing at all:
Years later (Gloria Emerson) said that, by the end of her time there, she had lost count of the number of young American soldiers she had comforted in their final moments.
Nineteen years later, in the December 1988 issue of Q magazine, Yoko spoke to the journalist Tom Hibbert about the legacy of the bed-ins, in which she and John had stayed in bed 'for peace'.
HIBBERT: Are those bed-ins something you look back on with pride?
YOKO: Oh yes. Pride and great joy. Those things we did were blessings. At the time we were doing it peopole used to sort of laugh at us - we were hoping that they would laugh with us but it didn't work out that way. But in the end, you see, it did have an effect. Last year when Reagan and Gorbachev had their summit and shook hands, I sort of felt, well, John and I did have an effect.
End of chapter. He's made his point.
On the joyful side of things, he's also really good at getting across the excitement of the concerts, the reason why those early press interviews with the Beatles felt so refreshing, witty and new, and the marvel of the ever changing music. (And is not above making fun of himself; teen him way very unimpressed by the Abbey Road cover, considering it a let down compared to previous covers, and had no idea it would be the most recognizable, most imitated and parodied Beatles album cover of them all.) And he finds some unexpected angles that do manage to paint a portrait of an era and a place through a single chapter, as in the one that compares and contrasts the 1963 - 1969 Christmas messages from the Queen to the ones recorded by the Beatles for their fan club. The framing Brown chooses to open and finish his book with also is new - well, not the opening, but the ending to correspond with it. The first chapter describes record store owner Brian Epstein using his lunch break to visit, with his employee Alistair Taylor in tow, the Cavern, where he sees the Beatles for the first time. The last chapter starts with the aftermath of Brian Epstein's funeral in 1967, and then goes back in time through Brian's life, each section earlier than the previous one, ending on that moment of the opening chapter where he tries to verbalize for the first time the impact the Beatles have had on him to Taylor. Brian Epstein is of course present in many a chapter other than these two, but by placing him in this way Brown doesn't just underscore his importance to the saga but also in a way makes him the pov. Which, given that moment in one of the Beatles concert movies where Brian says that everything the fans felt for them, he's felt for them - and there you have the key difference between Brian Epstein and, say, Elvis' manager Colonel Parker, to say nothing of Allen Klein - , strikes me as an inspired choice.
Nitpicks first: Craig Brown can tell a story, and most of the chapters I enjoyed reading, regardless as to whether there was new content or not. Unfortunately, the exceptions to this rule happen relatively early in the book, though not to a degree that they stopped me from reading further. But they did irritate me. As I said, this is also a book about fandom, and two chapters have Brown himself taking the tour in Liverpool that includes the childhood homes of John and Paul. The description of the somewhat self important (in his telling) guides with their insistence that the stuff they rattle off to 130 000 visitors a year is "confidential, private information" that must not be recorded comes across as somewhat snooty, but it's nowhere as irrating as the "Brown takes a tour in Hamburg" chapter where he decides to write the dialogue of every German he meets phonetically, in "accent". I hate it when writers do that - not just when it's supposed to be a German accent, it's just as annoying when it's supposed to be a French one, a Scottish one, for for that matter Scouse - because it makes comprehending what each word is supposed to mean really hard for me, no matter how fluent I am in English. Also, I just don't think it's funny, which evidently it's meant to be.
(I should add here that later chapters, where he's letting various female fans talk, come across very differently - with affection for the women, who do most of the talking and looking back, and when they make a bit fun of their younger selves, it's a case of "laughing with", not "laughing about". But the Mendips, Forthlin Road and Hamburg tour chapters really annoyed me.)
On to the praise: Craig Brown often hits on hilarious, eminently quotable tales, and not just when he's quoting the Beatles themselves in full snarky, goofy glory. As I said, he also devotes some chapters to dedicated haters of the Fab Four, and none was more so than Anthony Burgess (yes, A Clockwork Orange Burgess), who wasn't just seething throughout the 60s but was still ready to fire off Beatles-loathing sallies decades after the band was no more, which tells you a lot about Burgess. (And yes, the over the topness of his hatred does make it funny.) Stories like the one about Ms Deckers which end unhappily are written with a matter of fact compassion, while he comes across as pretty even handed in his depiction (and selection of quotes by and on) such vivid yet controversial characters as John's aunt Mimi. (Opinions on Mimi vary from "Stern yet loving" to "vicious control freak from hell", with the later two voiced memorably by both Julia Baird - John Lennon's younger sister - and Cynthia Lennon (John's first wife).) He's also pretty good in showing how inevitably skewered everyone's memories inevitably are - as with the "Beatles meet Elvis" encounter which everyone involved later described somewhat differently from each other, or the "John beat up Bob Wooler at Paul's birthday party" tale, where the description of the reason for the violence and the extension of the injuries greatly varies not just with the describer, but also with the times (i.e. John Lennon himself gave various different descriptions of this incident to different people over the years) , with the biographers, depending on their own agenda, often adding to it (so unsurprisingly the version where it's a miracle Wooler survived is the one in Albert Goldman's biography).
Interestingly, Brown entirely avoids the question most people writing books about the Beatles get asked - "who's your favourite Beatle?" - but instead answers one for himself which I haven't seen asked before in fandom, to wit, if you could be any Beatle at any point in their lives, which one and when would you want to be? (Craig Brown would like to be Paul during his years of living with the Asher family at Wimpole Street ("living with Jane, cossetted by her family, blessed by luck, happy with life, alive to culture, adored by the world, and with wonderfull songs flowing as if my magic from my brain and out through the piano: I want to hold your hand, I'm looking through you, The Things we said today, And I love her, We can work it out, Here, there and everwhere, Yesterday") (Put like that, I can see his point.) Generally speaking Brown keeps a good balance between the four in the stories he chooses to tell - there are far more George anecdotes, for example, than in anything penned by Philip Norman - except in the last section, ca. 1968-1970, which is very Lennon centric, but very much not in a Philip Norman way. Chapter 140, which tells the tale of John and Yoko's encounter with Gloria Emerson (transmitted by the BBC), utterly skewers the former two simply by using their own words. It does some across as perhaps the most cringe worthy John and Yoko event ever, as they proceed to lecture Emerson, who had been a foreign correspondent in Saigon, was by no means a pro establishment figure and would return to Saigon to cover such subjects as the false American body count, the use of hard drugs by G.I.s and the effect the war has on the Vietnamese civilian population, on Vietnam and the effectiveness of their peace protests, and listen not to a single thing Emerson had to say. And the conclusion of that chapter is absolutely lethal. The most Yoko hating rant by a 1960s fan does not compare with ths effective dagger-by-quote without any bashing at all:
Years later (Gloria Emerson) said that, by the end of her time there, she had lost count of the number of young American soldiers she had comforted in their final moments.
Nineteen years later, in the December 1988 issue of Q magazine, Yoko spoke to the journalist Tom Hibbert about the legacy of the bed-ins, in which she and John had stayed in bed 'for peace'.
HIBBERT: Are those bed-ins something you look back on with pride?
YOKO: Oh yes. Pride and great joy. Those things we did were blessings. At the time we were doing it peopole used to sort of laugh at us - we were hoping that they would laugh with us but it didn't work out that way. But in the end, you see, it did have an effect. Last year when Reagan and Gorbachev had their summit and shook hands, I sort of felt, well, John and I did have an effect.
End of chapter. He's made his point.
On the joyful side of things, he's also really good at getting across the excitement of the concerts, the reason why those early press interviews with the Beatles felt so refreshing, witty and new, and the marvel of the ever changing music. (And is not above making fun of himself; teen him way very unimpressed by the Abbey Road cover, considering it a let down compared to previous covers, and had no idea it would be the most recognizable, most imitated and parodied Beatles album cover of them all.) And he finds some unexpected angles that do manage to paint a portrait of an era and a place through a single chapter, as in the one that compares and contrasts the 1963 - 1969 Christmas messages from the Queen to the ones recorded by the Beatles for their fan club. The framing Brown chooses to open and finish his book with also is new - well, not the opening, but the ending to correspond with it. The first chapter describes record store owner Brian Epstein using his lunch break to visit, with his employee Alistair Taylor in tow, the Cavern, where he sees the Beatles for the first time. The last chapter starts with the aftermath of Brian Epstein's funeral in 1967, and then goes back in time through Brian's life, each section earlier than the previous one, ending on that moment of the opening chapter where he tries to verbalize for the first time the impact the Beatles have had on him to Taylor. Brian Epstein is of course present in many a chapter other than these two, but by placing him in this way Brown doesn't just underscore his importance to the saga but also in a way makes him the pov. Which, given that moment in one of the Beatles concert movies where Brian says that everything the fans felt for them, he's felt for them - and there you have the key difference between Brian Epstein and, say, Elvis' manager Colonel Parker, to say nothing of Allen Klein - , strikes me as an inspired choice.