Stuart Shea - Fab Four FAQ: Everything Left to Know About the Beatles ... and More!

Copyright 2007 by Stuart Shea and Robert Rodriguez

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, without written permission, except by a newspaper or magazine reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review.

Published in 2007 by Hal Leonard Books

An Imprint of Hal Leonard Corporation

19 West 21st Street, New York, NY 10010

All memorabilia in this book are from the private collections of the authors unless otherwise noted.

Book design by Snow Creative Services

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Shea, Stuart.

Fab Four FAQ: everything left to know about the Beatlesand more! / by Stuart Shea and Robert Rodriguez.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-1-4234-2138-2

ISBN-10: 1-4234-2138-8

1. BeatlesMiscellanea. I. Rodriguez, Robert, 1961 II. Title. III. Title: Fab Four frequently asked questions.

ML421.B4S25 2007

782.421660922--dc22

[B]

2007019752

www.halleonard.com

This book is respectfully dedicated to Arthur Hegewisch, who, in 1962, invented the Close and Play phonograph.

Contents

Sunday night, February 9, 1964.

It was just a little over two months since that tragic Friday morning in Dallas, Texas.

But a great healing wind blew through America, for this was the night we all met the Beatles, live, on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Full of fire, the Beatles lit up our lives with an energy and hope we all thought that we had lost forever.

I remember that night so well. I was in Los Angeles, visiting my mom, and though I had heard about this new rock-and-roll band from England, I really hadnt given them too much attentionthat is, until I heard the first note of I Want to Hold Your Hand.

It hit a nerve inside me that ultimately changed my whole life forever.

Paul became my bass teacher, John my singer/songwriter coach, George my guitar teacher, and Ringo made it all swing with a smile.

What an incredible time! I observed, I learned, I was swept away into a world I never knew existed.

Eventually, I did get to meet and hang out with the Beatlesalthough I was so shy back then I was sort of in the shadows, watching David Crosby and Roger McGuinn jockey for position to win the Beatles favor. Meanwhile, Michael Clarke, Gene Clark, and I were sort of in observation mode.

But I was there!

Chris Hillman

May 2007

An original member of the Byrds, Chris Hillman played bass and sang on seven of their albums and wrote many classic songs, including So You Want to Be a Rock & Roll Star, Have You Seen Her Face, and Time Between. Since his time with the Byrds, hes also played in several other legendary ensembles, including the Flying Burrito Brothers, Manassas, and the enormously successful Desert Rose Band. He is a highly rated mandolin player, guitarist, and singer/songwriter, as well as one of rocks most admired bassists. Please check in with what Chris is up to at www.chrishillman.com.

Dont let anyone fool you. A book is as much a process of discovery for the writer as it is for the reader. And we discovered plenty of new things about the Fab Four as we wrote this booksome facts that others knew, some previously little-known spins on history, and some concepts we formulated that we hadnt considered before.

Our goal was to write a book for Beatles fans that told them some things they didnt know, and to further illuminate and interpret things they did know. Of course, the most fanatical of Beatle-ologists may know most, or all, of whats in hereone thing you discover as you go about your business in the world is that theres always someone who knows more about a given subject than you do.

But this book celebrates the fact that theres still so much to know about the Beatles, so many facts to tease out, so much interpretation yet to come. The Beatles, with their effect on pop culture, politics, fashion, the entertainment businessand, of course, the structure of rock and rollare one of those phenomena through which one can examine the entire spectrum of the 1960s. And the fact that their rise coincided with the advent of color television, more affordable color photography, and new techniques in film and audio recording makes the evidence brighter, splashier, more vivid to us today in a way that vintage black-and-white film of the equally revolutionary Elvis Presley is not.

One can look at Beatles history in so many ways: for example, the way they affected the future of recorded music through their production tricks, new instruments, complicated arrangements, and the like. Or through their competition on the pop charts. Or through the prism of live performances, their films, their wives, girlfriends, and children. How did they grow and change through their experiences, their work, their lives?

The Beatles existed as four human beings, and as a popular phenomenon. They made the news; they changed society. They expanded the borders of what a pop group could stand forwhich not everyone necessarily thinks is a good idea. They suffered tragedies, gained unimaginable triumphs.

And how fascinating it is to explore how the group unfolded. The Beatles narrative takes in equal parts talent, drive, luck, and divine (!) providence, existing in a hermetically sealed time and space called the 1960s, one that the Beatles, as much as anyone else, helped move from grainy black-and-white to blinding color.

But despite times fleeting natureand surely the one great lesson of the 60s is that all things must pass awaythe promise, optimism, and positive energy of the Beatles continue to penetrate the circles of music, culture, and social history. Through a concrete body of musical work, this energy captivates new fans every year even though (or perhaps because) we know how painfully the Beatles story ended. Their story combines perfectly the innocence of a time and the hard-won experience of its youtha time of poets in the marketplace, popular musicians aspiring to higher things, and a total lack of a road map.

Because all of this was a first. The Beatles set the entire template for rock and roll bands as we know themfor an attempt at band democracies, for giving the drummer a song, for a cute one and a quiet one and one who would say the right thing and one who would say the wrong thing.

Despite all the words already written about the Beatles, there were still new things we wanted to read, old things we wanted to better understand, classic things we wanted interpreted. But we also wanted to see a book aimed at the general reader that gave real, interesting history and analysis about the Beatles. Many Beatles books are either ridiculously simple or ridiculously complicated. We wanted to bring the knowledge in an entertaining and provocative way. We hope we succeeded at giving you a raft with which to sail down the Sea of Time.

Do You Want to Know a Secret?

The need for a book like this became clear when we realized that there is still information out there, truly critical for those who like the Beatles, that not that many people know. And we realized how much we didnt knowuntil we started digging around, learning more, listening more, and listening differently, and really thinking, in various ways we hadnt previously, about the Beatles and their music.

For examplehow weird is it that very early pressings of mono copies of Revolver had a different version of the albums last song?