Michael Braun (4)

I picked this slender volume up because John Lennon said it was the only accurate book about the Beatles. I was surprised to find it’s a firsthand account of a journalist traveling with the Fab Four during the first bloom of Beatlemania, culminating with their (brief) US tour. As such the book functions as both a documenting of history but also historical document in its own right, depicting a world in which everyone (except for Brian Epstein) assumed that the Beatles were a passing fad of show more little importance.

It is interesting to note that a few inaccuracies made it into the book, including the odd statement that Stuart Sutcliffe died of leukemia. I would be curious if this was a simple error on the author’s part, a willful deception on the author’s part (why?) or a willful deception on the Beatles part (why again?). show less

Perhaps THE great lost Beatles book (well, I guess there can't be too many of those), Love Me Do shows the author with first-hand access to the Beatles through 1963, as they built from a remarkably successful English pop group towards global phenomenomdom. Out of print for years, but well worth seeking out, as Braun penetrates the moptop cliches perpetuated by the Hard Day's Night movies and gives us four individuals with much to say, and no compunction about saying it. In turn, you also get show more a "last of old England" sense of everything changing, as indeed it did in 1963, one of the most significant single years of the twentieth century. show less

Many refer to this as the best book on the Beatles, if only because it captures their comic essence months before they arrive in America. If Alun Owens had needed a working text to draft A HARD DAY'S NIGHT, this might have worked. Braun remains a mysterious, intriguing figure; he seems to have nailed the Beatles and vanished.