Welcome back to episode 33 of I Saw The Beatles! This week’s very special guest is Joy Cohen (…and today just happens to be her birthday)! Joy saw the Beatles three times…at the Philadelphia Convention Hall in 1964, at JFK in 1966 and at Shea Stadium in 1965. We also be asking her about her tattoo….
Source: I Saw The Beatles – Episode 33 with guest Joy Cohen 05/30 by I Saw The Beatles | Pop Culture
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This is another review of another book I picked up a couple week’s ago at a used book store for $5 – Society’s Child: my autobiography by Janis Ian. Now here’s a strange little twist…I follow Janis on Facebook, but I couldn’t tell you why or when I started. I just do. I don’t own any of her albums, nor have I ever followed her career. She’s just been kinda there…and I do enjoy her posts. So, when I saw this book, I guessed it was about time I got to know her a little better.
You know the story…little Jewish girl from New York makes it big and leads a fabulous, glamorous life filled with the very best of everything? Well, this ain’t that story! This is the story of a young girl from a family where her father was blacklisted during the McCarthy era forcing him to find a new job and move his family every two years. It’s the story of an awkward 15 year old that wrote her first hit song ‘Society’s Child’ in 1966 and had to leave a stage midway through the song to the yells of “Nigger lover!”
What should have been an amazing life, was nothing short of tragic. Only once before have I ever read an autobiography and thought to myself, “Why is this person still alive?”, and that was Danny Bonaduce’s book. Despite her overwhelming success in Japan and Australia, behind the scenes Janis was used and abused by a series of friends, lovers and colleagues. And then in 1975 came her Grammy winning song…At Seventeen…a song that brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it. I lived the pain in that song…
By the age of 37, Janis Ian had been robbed, drugged, physically abused by her husband and eventually lost everything she owned to the IRS when her accountant (who was stealing from her) failed to inform her for 7 years about several IRS inquiries. And yet, she endured. This tiny, fragile little woman chose to live on.
This 360 page autobiography published in 2008 is a real page turner. There is honestly never a dull moment throughout, making it hard to put down when it was well past my bedtime because I had to work the next day. (And for those who are concerned about whether this review is on-topic for a Beatles blog, Janis does mention the Beatles twice.)
If you can either beg, borrow or buy a copy of Janis’ story, please do so. It’s going to teach you that everything that shines, isn’t gold, but sometimes it’s not money and fame that matter. And for that reason…
I rate this book, 4 out of 4 Beatles!
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Welcome back to episode 32 of I Saw The Beatles! Today’s very special guest is Laura Wishinsky who got to experience seeing the Beatles at Shea Stadium in both 1965 and 1966!
Source: I Saw The Beatles – Episode 32 with guest Laura Wishinsky 05/30 by I Saw The Beatles | Pop Culture
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A couple weeks ago, while performing my side hustle as a publicist, I stumbled upon a website where I can get ARC copies of new books for free in exchange for a review. The site is filled with mostly self-published fiction authors, but a quick search on “music” and “biographies” turned up The Magic Years: Scenes from a Rock and Roll Life by Jonathan Taplin.
Published May 7, 2021, this 286 page memoir is a real page turner…I only wish I had read a hard copy and could have actually turned pages instead of reading a .pdf, but that’s my problem…not the authors! I love a good page turner…literally!
If you’re a Bob Dylan fan, you’re going to love this book. If you’re a fan of The Band, you’re going to love this book. If you’re a fan of folk music, rock and roll, Martin Scorcese, George Harrison, this is the book for you. Jonathan Talpin has worked with all of them one-on-one and so many more famous names.
A lonely child, sent off to boarding to school and pegged by his father to follow in his footsteps and become a lawyer, somehow the universe had other plans for Jonathan when he would take a train into Boston on weekends to go to the folk music clubs. By the time he was in Princeton, he was already working as a tour manager for some of the biggest names in the folk music industry.
Excellent book…but sometimes it can leave you scratching your head as to what was happening in between a lot of the excitement. And then there is the question of how he managed to have $500k to lend to Martin Scorcese to finance a film? I’m sure there is a terrific explanation, but for now we’re all going to have to just keep guessing.
I will add a warning that this book does get a bit political leaning in the last couple chapters and is bound to irritate some people. This is the man who wrote Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy Which left me asking, how the hell he got into that field? And for that reason…
I rate this book, 3 out of 4 Beetles!
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Welcome back to Episode 31 of I Saw The Beatles! This week’s very special guest is Ida Langsam of New York who saw the Beatles three times in New York City!
Source: I Saw The Beatles – Episode 31 with guest Ida Langsam 05/27 by I Saw The Beatles | Pop Culture
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Welcome to Episode 31 of I Saw The Beatles! This week’s special guest is former Albany, NY, radio disc jockey Rick Snyder. Rick saw the Beatles three times, compliments of the radio station, including one time while escorting six busloads of kids!
Source: I Saw The Beatles – Episode 30 with guest Rick Snyder 05/18 by I Saw The Beatles | Pop Culture
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Last month I decided I needed to get out of the house, and while on my adventure, I came across a used bookstore where I stumbled upon a copy of Cornflakes with John Lennon: And other tales from a rock ‘n’ roll life by Robert Hilburn. I kept thinking the author sounded familiar, but it wasn’t until I actually started reading and realized that he was a Los Angeles Times music critic that it occurred to me that I had seen his name while I was doing research on Jim Croce. Hilburn had reviewed a Randy Newman show in 1972 with Jim opening and had given Randy one paragraph and Jim three & a half paragraphs worth of praise. But I digress…
No reason to beat around the bush, this book rocks from beginning to end. Published in October 2009, this 270 page tribute to rock ‘n’ roll is a real page turner. Hilburn spent over 30 years as the Los Angeles Times rock critic, so he knows what the rock and roll public want and doesn’t let them down with the stories in this book. He starts off immediately with a story about John Lennon, then fills the rest of the books with personal, inside stories and encounters with the likes of Bono, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Elton John, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Janis Joplin, Ice Cube, etc. (Hell, even I liked Bob Dylan after reading this book!) And Robert lets us get a peak into the world of Curt Cobain, or so it appears…
Robert Hilburn becomes with friends with almost every rock, country and folk star he reviews and interviews along the way, even admitting to giving them advice on their shows which he seems surprised to find they take to heart the next time they hit the stage. He gets phone calls and invitations from rock gods around the world…he had the job we all dreamed of having! There were a few hiccups along the way…George Harrison got miffed and stopped taking his calls and requests for interviews. But all-in-all, Hilburn sure makes it all sound like the ultimate joy ride for the last 3 decades.
I don’t know why I’m still talking. If you’re like me and somehow missed this book when it came out, take my advice and go to Amazon.com where you’ll find plenty of used copies for under $5 and add this book to your collection. The stories about Lennon alone are worth $2! And for that reason…
I rate this book, 4 out of 4 Beetles!
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The Last Days of John Lennon by James Patterson
Does that title and the author sound familiar? The title you might recognize because it’s the same as the book written by Frederic Seaman in 1991…but I’ll discuss more about him later.
The author of this book, James Patterson, is the world famous author who has written over 200 mostly fiction books since 1976 and sold in excess of 375 million copies. I’m not sure why he chose to write a book about John Lennon. Maybe because he’s a hardcore Beatle fan like the rest of us? I could probably look it up somewhere, but in the end, it’s not really important as to why he wrote this book. He’s a talented writer and maybe he just wanted to break up the monotony of writing all that fiction.
The other thing I can’t explain is why it’s taken me a month and a half to read this book. From the get-go I just couldn’t seem to get into it. You’d think with the subject matter and the author this would be a no brainer that anyone would read in one sitting. It could have been me that was the problem because I knew the ending and didn’t want to deal with reading the (bloody) details again. But, there were a couple other things that didn’t sit right with me.
This book is not the “last days” of John Lennon’s life. In fact, Patterson starts at the very beginning of the Beatles creation when John Lennon met Paul McCartney. Intermixed with the Beatles story is the story of Lennon’s killer starting 2 days before he actually shot Lennon. Maybe that’s what the title is about, but it’s not what 80% of this book is about. And for Beatles fans who know the story of their rise to fame, it’s a bit much to have to rehash the whole thing again. There really are no surprises there.
As for the story of John’s killer’s, it’s a little too detailed..to the point of wondering where Patterson got all this inside information into the killer’s psyche. There are over 90 pages of “Notes” in the back of this book, detailing the sources for every page of the book, but sometimes even the notes don’t explain some of the ‘thoughts’ Patterson includes. I have to wonder if he was slipping in some of that fiction he’s famous for into his text.
And while I’m talking about Patterson’s notes, let’s bring back the subject of Frederic Seaman and James Patterson borrowing(?) the title from his book. Coincidence? Accident? I don’t know if we’ll ever know the truth about that one, but what I can tell you is that Fred Seaman is mentioned three times in this book as having conversations with John Lennon, but not one of those conversations is sourced back to Fred’s book. For those who are heavily into the story of John Lennon, his assistant Fred Seaman, and Yoko Ono, this might leave you scratching your head. Or maybe it’s just me…
All in all, this book is really well written (as to be expected), but I think the title may be a little misleading and the content a little redundant for diehard Beatles fans, but maybe we weren’t the target audience. And for that reason…
I rate this book, 3 out of 4 Beetles!
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I’ve been a little slow these days in getting my books reviewed. Once again, it’s not because I’m not reading. It’s just that I’m mixing in Beatles books with other books as you may have noticed from my last several posts.
I bought this book a little over a month ago and it’s been sitting on the stack of books next to the couch waiting for me to post my praises of it to my audience. Well, today is the day…
After Abbey Road: The Solo Hits of The Beatles by Gary Fearon was published on May 18, 2020. It’s a 240 page reference guide to all the hit songs that were released by the individual members of the Beatles after their breakup in 1970. There are a couple songs that predate the break-up, but you get the gist. There are 220 songs in all up until the November 2019 release of In A Hurry by Paul McCartney.
There are several things I really love about this book. The first being that Fearon lists all the songs in the table of contents in the front of the book. The second thing I love about this book is that the song titles are in chronological order according to their date of release. And last, but not least, is that Fearon is very brief but concise about the history and meaning of each song limiting them to one page that includes: title, which Beatles recorded it, written by, recording date, release date and title of the album it appeared on. Also listed at the bottom of each page are the other musicians who played on the song.
This isn’t a book that you would sit down to read cover to cover (unless you’re caught in lockdown during a pandemic), but it is a great reference book that I think every true Beatles fan should have on their shelf! And for that reason…
I rate this book, 4 out of 4 Beetles!
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Welcome back to Episode 29 of I Saw The Beatles! This week’s special guest is Richard Adler who had the pleasure of his first concert experience being that of seeing the Beatles perform at Carnegie Hall! But that wasn’t all…he went on to see them 3 more times!
Source: I Saw The Beatles – Episode 29 with Richard Adler 03/29 by I Saw The Beatles | Pop Culture
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