Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation Kindle Edition

There is something extraordinarily odd about this book. The author seems infatuated with Brian Epstein’s sex life and his treatment of Paul McCartney does not at all line up with historical facts. He suggests Paul’s post Beatle career, musically speaking, was laughable while holding up Lennon’s sometimes embarrassing solo work as that of a tortured genius. And to mock McCartney’s personal generosity toward his family, not to mention Lennon’s son Julian, while holding up Lennon as some kind of heroic iconoclast justcomes across as fanboy nonsense. There is only passing mention that the Beatles breakup was essentially caused by McCartney rightly wrestling musical leadership of the band from a declining and increasingly bizarre (Yoko) Lennon and for some reason the author points the finger at McCartney. The entire tone felt bitter without reason, although when you read the glowing descriptions of the author’s meetings with Yoko you begin to understand. Honestly, the guy is a great writer, but his bias exposes him as a bit of a hack.

I have read a couple other Beatle books (Ticket to Ride by Larry Kane and Beatleness by Carol Leonard), as well as viewed the Beatles anthology many times in its entirety. I found this book much more comprehensive than Ticket to Ride and Beatleness (which makes sense since those two titles had specific areas of focus. I love the Beatles and will read anything about them, so I found this a very enjoyable read. As another reviewer mentioned, the business parts were a bit dense to get through, but interesting nonetheless. I found there to be an inordinate number of pages dedicated to Brian Epstein. Obviously he was a major figure in their journey, but I found myself wondering why the author didn't just write a book about him. Also, I did find the author blatantly biased against Paul, though he does acknowledge this in the introduction to the book. It was very thorough, though you wonder how detailed it can be without interviews with the four Beatles themselves. I found that I learned a lot through reading the book, and would absolutely recommend it to any die-hard Beatles fan.

I teach a University level class on The Beatles and use this book as a text (great revenue producer for Mr. Norman!). There is a better book on the Fabs; which is Mark Lewisohn's epic first volume, Tune In, but it's massive and only covers until 1962. So, as a very sufficient overall view of the band, Shout!, is my go to. It walks the line from bottom line information to many, many tidbits that a big-time Beatles fan will enjoy. Some have said he's hard on McCartney in the book --- somewhat, but I think he does an excellent job overall.

I have seen many reviews for this book on amazon that comment on the books bias towards John Lennon, with the exception of the later part of the book (the section detailing the post Beatles period) I don't see this quite as much. That being said, the comments of the author in the later part of the book are rather nasty and pointless even more so towards George Harrison then Paul McCartney at one point calling George a guitarist of no great talent, a statement I strongly disagree with. Norman is rather nasty to McCartney as well and it is a problem.However my real problem with this book is its lack of insight and what I can only call a lack of interest in his subjects.None of the Beatles as individuals seem to interest Philip Norman all that much, indeed if anyone as a person stands out in this book it's Brian Epstein,I almost wonder why he didn't just write a bio of Brian instead of The Beatles.In spite of how long the book is it seemed short and there was very little that captured the authors interest. Indeed he seems to view the Beatles as a cultural and not a musical phenomena, he rarely discusses their music or goes into any details of the recording sessions of their albums. Even Stephen Davis in the rather trashy 'Hammer of the Gods' managed to include some interesting details about the recording of Led Zeppelins albums. I realize there are books that detail the Beatles recording sessions in exceptional details (like Mark Lewisohn's books) but some sort of insight, some stories about the process would have been welcome.Instead I found Philip Norman speaking in the same bored,disinterested voice threw the whole book.At one point in the new introduction he actually mentions that he rather dislikes returning to discussing the Beatles but felt it was important to do as the book put him on the map as an author. In the end I have to say the definitive biography of the Beatles has yet to appear but I hold high hopes for Mark Lewisohns 3 part biography the first book of which is suppose to come out in the next year.I would not recommend this book to anyone wanting to read a bio of the Beatles and certainly to no one that wants to know anything about the evolution and growth of their music.

Philip Norman is one of the best Beatles biographers, just as good as Mark Lewisohn. The narrative throughout the book is compelling and factual and a good read for either a Beatle fan or a casual observer. This book, along with his biographies of John and Paul, make this fan want more. Yeah, yeah, yeah!

Very interesting. It was tough getting through the business parts of the book but necessary to understand how really difficult it was for them to actually earn some money.

Lewisohn has done an exhaustive study of the group from ancestry through 1962. This book is quite thorough and goes through the whole career more than adequately.

A little too much detail for my taste, when I want to know what time it is I don't need to know how the clock was made. There is a lot of very detailed information about the Beatles growing up, their parents, friends, schools. More than I was interested in. But all in all a good book.

Far and away the best Beatles Biog from a writer who fully researches his subject.

Perfect

I enjoyed reading this book, there was information that I never knew about. I've read other books detailing the Beatles history and there seems to be some conflicting information on some topics. Considering John and George are no longer with us, and time may have made accounts a bit blurred for accuracy I think this book is as good as it is written.

I first read this as a teenager and it enthralled me. Reading again as an adult its still interesting and informative. Paints a rich picture of this period in history and the unique proposition brought by these 4 talented individuals.

Philip Norman is an intelligent journalist with a crisp, workmanlike prose style. He first published this biography of the Beatles in the early 1980s, and has been revising it and reissuing it ever since. It has acquired a status in some quarters as the 'definitive' biography of the band, which I for one don't think it has earned.Let me make myself clear: I do not think that every book about the Beatles has to be a hymn of praise. The best critical books about the Beatles are the ones that are willing to take the band to task about something or other; Ian Macdonald's classic 'Revolution in the Head' is impatient with the band's drug-induced willingness to fool about; Devin McKinney's brilliant 'Magic Circles' has little time for 'Sgt Pepper' and argues that the White Album is the best Beatles album, precisely because it's such a mess; Jonathan Gould's 'Can't Buy Me Love' has a robust independence of judgement that seems to fit no particular pattern. But these are part of what make those books great. Macdonald, McKinney and Gould are all writing about what they regard as the best and most important band ever, which makes it all the more important that they register when the Beatles have screwed up.However, Philip Norman's 'Shout!' has two major flaws. One, which is a fairly common one and which has been pointed out before, is Norman's lazy acceptance of the myth of McCartney-as-conservative/commercial-charmer as against Lennon-as-radical/avant-garde-innovator. This narrative about the Beatles, which was brewing when they were still an active band and which was subsequently fostered by Lennon in interviews he gave during the immediate post-breakup period and given support by the evidence of McCartney's rather glib and garrulous solo work, is given its most detailed and complete form in this book. It's pretty obvious that Norman basically despises McCartney and regards Lennon as the point of the band. This is not a very helpful or fruitful way to approach the Beatles, because it blinds the reader to the real conditions of the way the band operated and it hinders an understanding of the much more complex tensions within the band. It ignores the fact that McCartney was experimenting with tape loops, improvisation and randomness long before Lennon ever was and it also denies the extent to which they still collaborated as musicians long after they had stopped writing songs as full-time co-writers.The second, and much more serious flaw of 'Shout!', is the fact that Norman doesn't seem to think that the Beatles were anything other than a rather successful pop group. This is a critical mistake when writing about the Beatles, and it's common to much of the earlier commentary about them. The truth, like it or not, is that after a certain point in their career, the Beatles were much more than just a big pop group. Beatlemania was not like previous kinds of fan enthusiasm, as many people (the Beatles included) realised fairly early on; Lennon himself commented to US journalist Michael Braun (in Braun's exceptionally canny book 'Love Me Do!') that what surrounded the Beatles as early as 1964 was 'beyond showbiz'. If you don't think that this is true, if you think that the Beatles were - again, in Lennon's own (albeit much later and rather disingenuous) words - 'just a band that made it very, very big', consider how many other bands of that era have inspired such a level of mania, and such a quantity of dreams, fantasies, literature, academic commentary and nostalgia. The Beatles are, among many other things, the only major rock band in which one of the band has been assassinated and another one has been the victim of a murderous assault which arguably hastened his own death; Mick Jagger may be a big star but nobody has ever tried to off him, and while Pantera's Dimebag Darrell was also murdered by a deranged fan, Pantera were just unlucky; they have never inspired the same kind of mass craziness as the Beatles. That alone is evidence of the Beatles' strangeness.Norman's pedestrian unwillingness to be impressed by the lunacy that the Beatles attracted to a greater degree than any other band in history is a major flaw in his book. It makes the whole story curiously depressing, because since Norman has no very deep appreciation of the Beatles' highs, he can't make you feel the tragedy of their all-too-visible lows. His book is an attempt to deal with the Beatles phenomenon as just another thing worth writing a book about, but the truth is that the times have changed and Norman's book has been lost in a flood of more interesting Beatles books. I don't think that most serious commentators on the Beatles expect Mark Lewisohn's forthcoming three-volume biography to be the Fabs' equivalent of Richard Ellmann's 'James Joyce', but it will at least contain more reliable information than Norman's book.Hunter Davies' book is more fun to read, and Jonathan Gould's 'Can't Buy Me Love' is more sensitive, better-written and much more intelligent.