Marc Shapiro - Beatle Wives: The Women the Men We Loved Fell in Love With

There have been literally hundreds of books about The Beatles over the years.

The history of the Fab Four as a legendary band has been told countless times, as have detailed biographies of John, Paul, George and Ringo. Important pivotal moments in the bands career have been reported at length in books several hundred pages long. Discographies. Filmographies. Quote books. Trivia books. Photo books both formal and informal. The fascination with The Beatles continues unabated. The more you give Beatle fanatics, the more they want to know.

I wrote a Beatle book some years ago entitled Behind Sad Eyes: The Life of George Harrison . It was an honest, no punches pulled look at the Quiet Beatle and it did quite well. As has literally every Beatle book ever written.

But even the best, most researched and most often cited books have had their flaws. With many, there was an agenda to propagate, an element deemed not quite as important to the story as others. Occasionally, there would be a sense of incomplete to many of them. In many of them, it always seemed that something was missing.

For instance Even the most successful of these tomes has, with rare exception, given the wives of the Beatles historical short shrift. Most often, the wife of a Beatle has been condensed into a cipher, someone with little substance or consideration other than being the wife. When wives have been showcased at all, it has most often been as a mirror to the flawed nature of the husbands, watching as affairs, drug taking, etc., piled up around them and, occasionally, to mirror the wives own indiscretions in the face of their spouses bad behavior and often overwhelming fame.

And when, historically, things in the lives of The Beatles went critically or personally wrong or ventured into petty gossip, the hatchet of public opinion has often fallen on the necks of Beatle wives, leaving bloody marks.

To this day, Yoko Ono is still considered by many as the person who, single handedly, broke up The Beatles even though the band was well on the way to breaking up before she entered the picture. And who comes out smelling like a rose in the George Harrison/Eric Clapton bromance? Certainly not Patti Boyd who, according to several books, had her own moral lapses while married to George. Even the largesse of Paul McCartney in letting his wife Linda sing live on stage and occasionally in the studio turned on her rather than him when it was discovered and propagated over the years that Linda was often embarrassingly off key.

But it was to their collective credit that none of the Beatle wives ever totally ran for cover.

During the heyday of Beatlemania and beyond, most were accessible to the press and, when asked, were not shy about sharing their feelings about the care and feeding of a Beatle husband. But there was that frustration that had to be brewing when their personal lives became completely overshadowed with questions that began and ended with variations on the theme of What was it like to be the wife of a Beatle?

Pure and simple, the wives of The Beatles have never been given center stage, let alone a legitimate day in the sun. Until now.

The idea behind Beatle Wives: The Women the Men We Loved Fell in Love With was centered around the notion of turning the tables, making these women the center of attention on all fronts and moving their famous husbands to the background, appearing largely in shadow and then only as their actions and anecdotes pertain to their wives. In conception, the idea of a book focusing on the wives was a bit of a gamble. How interesting would a book on The Beatles that did not feature The Beatles in a featured role go down? But these are different times and the angle this book would take seemed worth the risk.

From the beginning, the idea was to document the nine Beatle Wives in extensive detail, literally from birth to death and/or the later stages of their lives. Who and what they were before meeting their famous husbands, the courtships from their point of view, how they became part of the Beatle universe and, most importantly, how they moved, personally and creatively within it. There would be a new take on it all, a feminist/modernist look at these women, philosophically and socially, abroad in a strange new universe. We would see the humanity, the faces and the personal and professional challenges they faced, all wrapped up in a bit of history whose relevancy is valid well into the 21st century.

Early love and marriage for individual Beatles came at a turbulent time. There were changes socially, politically and sexually at every turn. Beatlemania was raging around the world. Everyone wanted to know The Beatles and, by association, everyone wanted to know who these young superstars fell in love with and married. And years later, with equal rights on so many levels a serious issue, the modern world looks back at the women who married The Beatles and still wants to know who they are.

And in the tradition of six degrees of separation, I had my own real-life encounter with a Beatle wife to throw into the mix.

Back in 1974 when I was one of countless, faceless freelance journalists in Hollywood trying to turn a buck, I landed a gig writing press bios for a start up record label called Dark Horse Records . The significance was not lost on me. Dark Horse Records was founded and operated by George Harrison. During several visits to the Dark Horse offices, I dealt with an office assistant named Olivia Arias. The shorthand impression was that Olivia was kind, professional and to the point. Yes it was that Olivia who would go on to marry George Harrison.

As with all Beatle ventures, Beatle Wives: The Women the Men We Loved Fell in Love With lived and died by an extensive amount of research. And along the way, there were many surprises. Through the eyes of these women, I found the strength in these women as well as the heretofore emotional frailty of their famous husbands.

In a sense, writing this book was relatively easy. The nuts and bolts of The Beatles and their lives have long been set in stone. The names and dates have not been changed to protect the innocent. But the difficult part, and perhaps the most important part, was stitching together pivotal moments from the wives perspective.