Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation

This book, first published in 1981 and reissued in 1993, was yet put to a third edition in 2003 to incorporate the deaths of John Lennon and George Harrison and the knighting of Sir Paul McCartney along with his disastrous marriage to Heather Mills--so it feels quite up to date. Norman tells it like it is, painting our heroes with warts and all. The chapters are divided into five parts: Wishing, Getting, Having, Wasting, and Lasting. No band seemed less poised for stardom until it was thrust upon them before some of them had turned 21. They were a core group of blokes, united in their Liverpudlian northerness, who by wit and charm and pure musical genius won over a generation, a world. Paul was the most into the group until the last, generating brilliant ideas and bossing his cohorts into resentment to get it just right. John was the edgy and angry artist, rounding out Paul's sugary songs into hits and also crafting his own remonstrations that were then tempered by Paul successfully. George, by Normans's account, was a mediocre and cantankerous player, who seemed to have his best success on his own, often disdaining his years as a Beatle. Ringo, never renowned for his talent (he couldn't do a good drum roll, according to some), emerges as the emotional center of the group,--kind, lovable, and even-tempered.But there are things in this book that you might not want to know about your heroes. How George (after a plethora of infidelities) slept with Maureen, dooming not only his marriage but Ringo's. How John's caustic personality made him yell tauntingly "Run, Cindy, run . . ." as their train pulled away from the station heading to the Maharishi without his wife as his she was trying to jump aboard. He later even had loud sex with a gal at a party, so that Yoko and everyone else in the next room could hear. Ringo and wife Barbara Bach packed away the booze. Paul became a despot over animal rights, refusing even fake fur to be present on his tours. This is after he betrayed Jane Asher with a groupie, going on to marry Linda who was the animal activist.But some of the wives shine in this account. After George had been stabbed multiple times by an intruder, his Olivia conks the guy repeatedly with a poker and lamp base, putting him into the hospital. Linda is Paul's soulmate and Yoko is John's. Barbara saves Ringo from alcoholism, and he her. But Maureen and Jane and Cynthia and Patti should not be forgotten. In a hellish fishbowl, they all stood by their men loyally for many years before being replaced. Ringo is to credited for seeing Maureen through her terminal bout of cancer long after their divorce.This is a cautionary tale of young men being given talent, wealth, and fame beyond normal reckoning. Whether along the way they handled it well or otherwise, this book reminds us of the priceless gift that they gave us all . . .

The years since 1981 when "Shout" was released in its first edition, have seen a number of richly documented and researched treatments of the Beatles Era, including author Philip Norman's own "John Lennon" in 2008. I lean toward Bob Spitz's "The Beatles" [2005] as the high water mark in terms of both style and research. That said, "Shout" takes its place of preeminence in its establishment of the Beatles' legend, creating the template of the story we carry in our collective memories today. I do regret that I read Spitz before Norman; I strongly recommend both.Norman's association with the Beatles began in 1968 when, as a journalist, he was assigned to cover the large and eccentric Beatles' Apple business empire, on the cusp of its acrimonious and laborious reorganization. Of course, Apple's situation reflected the Beatles' own accelerating disintegration, and Norman, a timely observer, appears to have imbibed the historian's enthrall over a phenomenon that began eleven years earlier, when fresh adolescent John Lennon and his Quarrymen hacked away in Skiffle style on a flatbed truck at a church festival in 1957. His motivating drive seems something like "how did we get to this point?"Some factors in the Beatles' saga are endemic to the music industry, even fifty years ago. They were complicated adolescents; like many young performers, their early handlers and employers were hardly wise or paternal; as young musicians, particularly away from the glare of scrutiny in Liverpool in the relative anonymity in West Germany, they indulged prodigiously in substances and women, tendencies that they carried through much of their later successful years; none was adequately prepared for the success and money that came their way; and finally, each [with the exception of Ringo Starr] sought desperately to discover individuality in a world that could only count in fours.Norman addresses the why of how these common denominators never quite deflected the Beatles. He captures Liverpool's ambiance, its social segregation from upscale London and the stuffy world of the BBC, the kind of city where inventiveness had a chance--note the innovation of the Cavern Club, "noon time business clubbing," so to speak, where the Beatles came to the attention of future manager Brian Epstein. Norman is highly attuned to the psychosocial interplay within the group, including Stu Sutcliffe and Pete Best, both of whom never quite made the final cut to greatness. The complex interplay of composers Lennon and Paul McCartney is depicted as the harnessing of the former's cutting passion by the latter's optimism, and vice versa.Norman makes the critical point that the Beatles were not master musicians in the technical sense; in fact, one is struck by the drive of each member to improve his style; no one seemed embarrassed to seek tutorials from other performers, such as friends in the Rolling Stones. Producer George Martin would joke that Ringo could not do a drum roll "to save his life." [524] What made the Beatles stand head and shoulders about any other contemporary group was not artistry per se as much as their amazing gifts of composition and imagination. Coupled with this was the group's uncanny ability to reinvent itself; "Revolution" is a long journey from "Please Please Me." Norman's narrative suggests that this progression was reflective of the Beatles' own responses to a changing culture around them.At some point in the mid-1960's, perhaps due to unfortunate incidents associated with touring in the Philippines and the United States, the group collectively if dimly realized that a widening gulf was separating Beatle mania from the four individuals who actually played the music. It is helpful to recall how young a group this actually was; when the Beatles dissolved in 1970, none had reached his 30th birthday. This collective condition of personal immaturity and uncertainly ties together the author's narrative of drug use, marital mayhem, social gaffes, religious charlatanism, peculiar business investments, and ever changing public image. The later 1960's would include the death of manager and advisor Brian Epstein, the powerful thrust of investor Allen Klein to save the crumbling Apple venture, the arrival of Lennon's mate/mater Yoko Ono, and the Viet Nam War/Woodstock crucible, all of which would impact upon the men profoundly.It was also becoming evident that the Holy Spirit had indeed instilled different gifts in different measures, a matter of faith to which some professed more resignedly than others. It seems that Starr, from the beginning, knew his place in the pecking order and accepted it rather early on; in later years he would consider himself just a very lucky man. Harrison, however, chafed at the creative control of the Lennon/McCartney Axis. In the waning days of the group he showed flashes of creative genius and musical artistry, but Norman believes that this creative spark was fanned in the Beatle context, a fact Harrison was loathe to admit even years later. The McCartney/Lennon rivalry is one of show business's true marvels: regardless of internal and external pressures, songs such as "Hello Good-bye" and "Hey Jude" continued to rocket to the top of the charts to the bitter end.The richness of the narrative is considerably enhanced by generally satisfactory descriptions of key personages along the way. Lennon's mother Julia and his Aunt Mimi receive continual attention; in fact, there is some justification to the criticism that the book as a whole tilts slightly in Lennon's direction. Yoko Ono's treatment is at least "neutral," no mean feat in 1981. Norman sheds considerable insight into the motivations of Brian Epstein, whose motivation in promoting the Beatles seems to have fed not only his homosexual proclivity but later an equally desperate need to prove himself.This 2003 edition of "Shout" contains an epilogue which traces the lives of the Beatles after 1970. An informative piece, it is not part and parcel of the original tale, which stands alone as the template for future generations to enter the life of the Beatles, as the author puts it, "in their generation."

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.

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

Perfect

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.

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.