The Beatles marking time – Books and Literature

Review of the book “1,2,3,4: The Beatles marking time”, by Craig Brown

One day I read a quote from Lennon in which he came to say (more or less) that while people would kill to be a Beatle for at least one day in their life, he would change himself without hesitation to that person for all eternity. I thought about that phrase for a long time because, in my opinion, it contained the nature of what the Beatles were to those who lived through it (including themselves). What that music group meant for culture, youth and society in general, which was about to experience one of the most radical and important revolutions that humanity has experienced and which this group inspired, without a doubt, with its songs , its aesthetics and its freshness.

OK. We have already been told all this a thousand times.

Like the thing about Paul being dead and the guy playing Paul being an imposter because he crossed the Abbey Road crossing with his foot changed and so on, you know what I mean. Pink sauce. Or what Lucy in the Sky With Diamons It is a plea in favor of LSD and I don’t know what nonsense.

Because there are dozens, what do I say dozens, hundreds of biographies/essays/graphic novels/comics/journalistic reports/interviews/fiction and non-fiction books about the Beatle phenomenon that keep telling us more or less the same thing as always: that they were the hell and they changed the world (until Yoko appeared. Sorry).

Vale.

But for a former (because old and ex, I mean) Beatlemaniac like me1,2,3,4 The Beatles marking time It is not another biography about the Fab Four. No. Not at all, damn it. Because if this wonderful book suffers from something, it is common places, which because they are common, begin to be boring.

Because there are many ways to tell the story of a global and immortal phenomenon like this. But doing it from the perspective of different people, whether anonymous or not, who lived it firsthand, who saw it born, grow, explode, mature and transform until it disappeared, is the one I liked the most of all the ones I have had. occasion to read by far, and I have read quite a few.

That’s why, 1,2,3, 4 The Beatles marking time It is a unique book. The definitive one, damn it. And that is why it has won one of the most prestigious prizes awarded in non-fiction literature worldwide, the Baillie Gifford Prize, in addition to being defined as the best non-fiction book of the year in the English-speaking world. Total na.

Full of overwhelming anecdotes, memorable and unknown chapters that shaped the group’s history, confessions, unlikely situations or stellar moments, with comments and opinions from all kinds of people who lived under the Beatle sky for a decade, seasoned with enormous doses of British humor and irony, documented with the journalistic rigor and verisimilitude that is required of a work of this type, 1,2,3,4: The Beatles marking time It is an essential book for lovers of the Liverpool Four and, without a doubt, an excellent Christmas gift when we don’t really know what to buy a father, a mother or a sister without making us look like a dachshund. When all we can think of is looking over and over again on the Internet and saying in a low voice… Help!

(Oh: and if you are also one of those who believe in coincidences, think that the new Beatles song, yes, the one that has been created from ChatGPT is, in addition to being bad, an absolute declaration of intentions:

Now and then.

Well that.

And Merry Christmas and such.