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August 21, 2017 · 9:30 am

Book Review: “My Beatles Hell: The Tragical History Tour of Beryl Adams” by Lew Baxter

My Beatles Hell: The Tragical History Tour of Beryl Adams by Lew Baxter is one of those books that you keep seeing popping up in Amazon’s recommended reading list or on other people’s bookshelf and eventually you hunt down a used copy and probably pay way to much for it, only to realize that ….yeah, you paid too much for an awful book!

To be completely honest, I started this review yesterday, but decided that I needed to read more than 93 of the 222 pages in this book to be able to give an honest review. Sixteen pages later, I’m more adamant in my opinion that this book is a sham!

She was scathing about the legions of folks – mostly men – although the recently published “ramblings” of Pauline Sutcliffe on her newly “exotic” brother caused incandescent ire in Beryl. These are people, she ranted, who’ve relentlessly jumped on the Beatles’ bandwagon over the last four decades; many touting mythical tales of links with the Fab Four or fabricating stories to make themselves look good or to savor some vicarious pleasure.

This is just a huge embarrassment to the Beatles world. There are very few who don’t/didn’t come under fire from Beryl in this book including Alastair Taylor, Peter Brown, John Lennon, Cynthia Lennon, Bob Wooler (who was married to Beryl), Allan Williams (who was Beryl’s live in lover) and Brian Epstein (for HIS decision to sack Pete Best). I’d truly like to believe that if Beryl hadn’t passed away suddenly (from mad cow disease), she would never have allowed this awful portrayal of her, her time as Brian Epstein’s secretary and her life to have ever been published!

Lew Baxter should be ashamed of himself. And for that reason…

I rate this book, 1 out of 4 Beetles!

4beetle

Documentary Review: “Brian Epstein: Inside the Fifth Beatle”

I delved back into my Amazon Prime account to see if there were any new Beatles flicks I could watch for free. That’s where I discovered the 2004 documentary – Brian Epstein: Inside the Fifth Beatle. If you don’t have Amazon Prime, you can rent it for $1.99 or buy it on DVD for about $5 or less at Amazon. Or you can skip all of the above and just watch the documentary online here for free!

Okay, now that you know you can buy it, rent it or watch it for free….maybe you’d like to know if it’s at all worth it?

This hour long film actually isn’t bad at all! There are many familiar names and faces of people that provide personal stories and commentary on working with the fifth Beatle – Brian Epstein. Included among theses are promoter – Sid Bernstein; Brian’s personal assistant Alistair Taylor; Brian’s secretary Beryl Adams; Mersey Beat owner Bill Harry; Beatles first manager Allan Williams; historian Richard Porter; and Beatles chauffeur Alf Bicknell. (Interesting note that Alistair, Beryl and Alf all passed away within months of this documentary being released.) There are snippets of conversation with Cilla Black, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Derek Taylor mixed in with the often repeated, but tolerable newsreel and film clips.

One point I couldn’t help but notice is that Alistair Taylor is very prominent in this film and provides most of the narration and maybe that was because he was the closest to Brian before and throughout the Beatles years. And interestingly, Alistair also wrote several books on the topic of the Beatles himself, but I’ll save the topic of Alistair’s books for next week’s review!

Though this film is 13 years old, it proved to me that there is still more for me to learn about Brian Epstein. And since one of my criteria for rating system in my reviews is based on whether or not it provides factual information for anyone that is new to The Beatles, I’d have to say that this easily passes that test. And for that reason…

I rate this documentary, 3 out of 4 Beetles!