The definitive ‘Beatles’

Press, 13 December 1986, Page 28

The definitive ‘Beatles’

The Beatles. By Hunter Davies. Cape, 1986. 479 pp. Illustrations. $22.95 (paperback). (Reviewed by Margaret Quigley) I have diligently read all 479 pages of this, “the only authorised biography, updated and with additional illustrations” and I now know a great deal more than I ever wanted to know about the “fabulous four.” Certainly it is true that the Beatles were an astonishing phenomenon. A group who could compose and sing, and attract an enormous and frenzied following, they were the outstanding success of the pop scene during their relatively short span together. Few who lived through the Beatlemania years will forget them, and their music is still played and enjoyed by the youth of today when the three remaining members of the group are middle-aged men with children and gardens. Hunter Davies first published this book in 1968, after spending eighteen months in close contact with the Beatles. He was the first and only writer to whom they gave open access and authority to interview their families. He talked at length to them, their parents, families, relations and girlfriends; he was given family photographs and reminiscences. Brian Epstein, their manager, organised

Davies’ contract and gave him all the help he could. The result was a bestseller.

Now, nearly twenty years after it first appeared and twenty-five years since John, Paul, George, and Ringo emerged as a professional group, Hunter Davies has gone back to revise and update the biography of the mop tops from Liverpool who made pop history. A lengthy and rather self-indulgent introduction describes how he came to write the book and some of the difficulties he had to overcome. It includes some stories, especially about Brian Epstein’s private life, which he felt unable to print twenty years ago.

Davies has remained friends with the Beatles through the years and he has continued to collect original manuscripts of their songs, and old photographs, many of which are now included in this revised edition. An additional "Postscript 1985” briefly records the splitting up of the group, their solo careers, John Lennon’s death, and what the remaining three are doing (and not doing) today. Any reader hoping for new and interesting revelations will be disappointed however. Hunter Davies takes his position as friend and official biographer very seriously and anything unpleasant, while not entirely ignored, is skimmed over very lightly. “It’s the classic period, the Beatlemania years and what led up to them, which fascinated me,” he writes in the introduction. "I loved the songs. Still do. I am bored by the later rows and the silly scandals and the legal arguments.” This confession is borne out by his writing which turns quickly from anything remotely critical of the four to more adulation.

The book as a whole is episodic, unpolished, and frequently jarring in style, but it is a first-hand account of an amazing phenomenon and it contains an updated discography and appendices listing Beatle shrines, books, and memorabilia — any information in fact that a Beatle fan might possibly want, and a great deal more than the ordinary reader will be able to endure.