This Bird Has Flown: The Enduring Beauty of Rubber Soul, Fifty Years On

Second time getting burned by Backbeat Books (an imprint of Hal Leonard Publishing) and their sub-par editions on classic Beatles albums. The other was Robert Rodriguez's book on "Revolver." I almost gave up on that one, but ended up sticking around for the technical discussions of the recording sessions. I can't finish Kruth's book. I thought Rodriguez felt smug and better than his subject at times, but that is nothing like the total disdain and occasional antipathy that Kruth has for his subject matter (which shows up in a number of way, but mostly just by way of the lack of anything substantial or vital the writer has to say about "Rubber Soul"). This is hardly a celebration of "Rubber Soul" and its enduring beauty.Both of these volumes could use much better care in editing, as they're unbelievably sloppy and at times just so poorly written, especially Kruth's book on "Rubber Soul." I thought Rodriguez was bad about fact-checking and citing sources, but Kruth's book is a complete joke, I'm sorry to say. Yeah, it's cool Kruth got to interview some people (though no one really in the Beatles' circle), but their observations mostly feel tangential, as do the sections on "cover songs." And his book is riddled with unwarranted claims and assumptions that run counter to most of Beatles lore and scholarship, or which just come across as flippant. A real waste of time. Buyer beware.

I just finished this book and for some reason I felt compelled to write a review. Overall, I was quite disappointed with this read, especially since I enjoyed the one on Revolver so much.First of all - what works? Well, Rubber Soul being unique in that the US and UK both got different animals all together, Kruth does a good job of laying out why, and what was different. He also includes a discussion on all songs that ended up on a Rubber Soul, plus one unreleased track.He also notes some really interesting (some very obscure) cover versions of these songs which are readily available on various websites. Listen with a computer near by and you can sample these pretty easily. Some are fun, some are...best left to the internet.What doesn't work? It's disjointed in places. Each song includes a tangent to another topic that Kruth feels may have influenced the composition of the song. Sometimes it's a stretch, many time it's a leap.He spends very little time on McCartney's songs. Songs like "What Goes On" or "Run For Your Life" are given lots of real estate in this book. Clearly the author has picked favorites, so Lennon and Harrison fans may not find much issue with this, but McCartney fans or generalists might start to get irritated towards the end of the book.It's repetitive. I'm not talking about the format, which lends itself to repetition. No - he rehashes the same anecdotes several times. We hear, for example, multiple times Norman Smith's account that McCartney was a tyrant in the studio and George hated him. He really dislikes solo Macca tune "The Back Seat of My Car" enough to slam it a few times in the book. He's constantly bringing up "Honey Pie," "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" and "Rocky Raccoon" and usually has a clever description for them - "knuckleheaded" being one. Ringo's voice is described as "warbling" on several occasions.Incidentally, it's been pretty much agreed by this point that McCartney was *not* rerecording George and Ringo's parts, not only did technology limit this, but with leaked studio outtakes, it's pretty apparent. This and other places he needs to go back and check a few sources or get a new editor. His description of "I'm Looking Through You"'s recording process is a mess. He describes the same session twice, with a different acoustic guitarist each time. You guessed it, it's Paul that flubs the intro twice (heard on the US version only).Sometimes I just flat out disagree with the guy, which is okay, and I don't take points off his score. But, his summation of "We Can Work it Out" as "rather patronizing and insincere" leaves one wondering about his credibility. His use of much of the rest of the section to discuss McCartney's ego.doesn't help either.Finally - and most egregious - HE GETS THE WORDS WRONG. Yes, some of the most well known songs in popular music - and the subject of his book - he totally misquotes.I gave this book 3 stars because "it's okay" - I did enjoy bits of it but overall walked away feeling disappointed. Your mileage may vary.

There's a plethora of great—some rarely discussed—information here, albeit often presented in a very scattershot manner, as others have pointed out. But to any Beatles fan who wants to know what REALLY happened, the few factual errors are egregious. For me, the greatest misrepresentation of the “Beatles Story” is John’s relationship with Yoko. Page 130: “It is no wonder that John threw himself at the Japanese queen of mind games the moment he laid eyes on her.” He did no such thing. They first met on 9 Nov. 1966 at the Indica Gallery in London (shortly after he finished filming “How I Won the War” in Spain) and didn’t consummate their relationship until 19 May 1968 at his home in Kenwood. A full year and a half later. So in between that first meeting and them becoming a couple, he wrote and recorded “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” “Magical Mystery Tour,” and went to India with his mates to study with the Maharishi. It was finally there, in Rishikesh that Yoko’s relentless letters got to him and over a month after returning to London on 12 April, Lennon had Yoko over on 19 May when they recorded “Two Virgins” together and then had sex for the first time. Peter Brown, in his 1983 “The Love You Make,” opens his “tell-all” (considered the first of its kind by a true insider) with the scene of Cynthia returning home finding the two “having breakfast in their bathrobes.” And to make it worse, Mr. Kruth revisits the subject fifty-six pages later (186, last paragraph) and makes it seem like a mere day or two passed from their first meeting at the gallery to consummation. “In the meantime, Cynthia was away on vacation.” Inexcusable. It’s sad that these types of careless historical misrepresentations (and Mr. Kruth's is hardly the only one) continue to muddy the waters of the epic story that is The Beatles.

This isn't a book, it's a blog between covers. And there are better blogs.The difference between blogs and books is the quality of writing, research and what you make of it: the quality of thinking. Anyone can write a blog, and everyone does. The intellectual stamina and writing style to create a book worth reading is something else again, and John Kruth doesn't have it.When editors mislay the difference, it's a death knell for book publishing - - because why buy books with no difference?A typical example of how bland this book can be:"In 1965 Paul McCartney was a man with a truly deep connection to his art."This says nothing, and adding "truly" and "deep" doesn't make it any truer or deeper: it's a truism to start with. Sometimes a writer has to say babble to get started on a paragraph; but having served its purpose, any good writer cuts those tags in revision so a paragraph starts meaningfully with more immediacy. It's bad editing from the publisher on top of bad writing.Some reviewers found the focus all over the place: random connections with events well after and well before 1965. It reads like waffle to make up enough blogs to fill a book. A child blubbering its lips with its fingers makes the same kind of noise.Tangential research can animate a subject but for this to work, the focus on the subject has to be clear, and have a centre of gravity. It's supposed to be 1965, recording RUBBER SOUL.A cultural span of two years in the Sixties is worth two decades of developments any time since. In flitting all through the Sixties by spasmodic jerks of a short attention span, much cultural detail is lost, merged in the mulch. The year 1965 itself is mislaid.It superficially covers the Beatles' general development from mid-60s on into their solo careers. RUBBER SOUL tracks are covered but feels obligatory and rehashes common knowledge.There's no creative thinking around the research, so it reads like bad hack writing..No references, no endnotes: the book relies on a thin bibliography. It's not always possible to know the quotation source. One quotation, from a 1977 George Harrison interview that I've checked from 3 different sources, is rewritten to make it more cogent but the paraphrase is still put in quotes as if Harrison expressed himself that way.Once a writer has been caught doing that, you can't trust any quotation as verbatim.A few nice turns of phrase are stranded in pages of trite thinking and common knowledge.More bad writing that a good editor would have clipped and a good writer wouldn't have written in the first place:" 'Beatles concerts,' as Lennon rightfully complained, had 'nothing to do with music anymore. They're just bloody tribal rites'."Breaking up a quote like that only works if your interjection has something to add, if only a context. "Rightfully" is asinine validation that the quote doesn't need. Ample concert footage in the public domain and well documented comments from players and witnesses through those years have verified the point. The author's verdict - - yes, Lennon was correct in his assessment, friends and neighbours - - shows no awareness of when to hold back so that an author's interjection CAN count when he weighs in. Kruth makes Lennon's great comment sound banal by his mediation.Again:"But their satori would end abruptly after Lennon (wrongly) accused the Hindu holy man of philandering.""Wrongly."Some folk who were there suspect the Maharishi of philandering, and after decades of reading material on The Beatles I've read nothing conclusive either way in terms of quotations from insiders or critical comment. The fact that two Beatles continued to like the Maharishi just fine might simply make the Mahirishi The Fifth Philanderer - - it doesn't address the incident. Only Lennon's comment did that.So when John Kruth pronounces Lennon's accusation "wrong", and puts the assertion in brackets as if it goes without saying, with no supporting reference, it's another imprudent interjection oblivious to criteria for research and for drawing conclusions.You don't have to be a scholar to have credibility, but you do have to know what you're talking about.Piano in 'Lady Madonna' "bore the unmistakable traces of Fats Domino's keyboard work."Aside from overstating the speculation as "unmistakable," and aside from the anachronistic clumsiness of Fats Domino's piano-playing being "keyboard work," this paragraph misses the closest influence on 'Lady Madonna' - - Humphrey Littleton's piano riff on 'Bad Penny Blues', produced by George Martin. This isn't esoteric knowledge: it's widely documented.Why am I talking about 'Lady Madonna' when the book's about RUBBER SOUL? Don't ask me, ask the author.In a paragraph on 'Taxman', the one line he quotes is,"George handed political figures Sir Edward Heath and Harold Wilson their heads on a silver platter as he warned, 'declare the pennies on your eyes',"- - oblivious that this is Lennon's contribution.Why am I talking 'Taxman' in a book about RUBBER SOUL? Ask the author. Ask his editor. Ask Amazon for your money back.