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That the Beatles were an unprecedented phenomenon is a given. In Can’t Buy Me Love, Jonathan Gould explains why, placing the Fab Four in the broad and tumultuous panorama of their time and place, rooting their story in the social context that girded both their rise and their demise. Nearly twenty years in the making, Can’t Buy Me Love is a masterful work of group biography, cultural history, and musical criticism.

Beginning with their adolescence in Liverpool, Gould describes the seminal influences––from Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry to The Goon Show and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland––that shaped the Beatles both as individuals and as a group. In addition to chronicling their growth as singers, songwriters, and instrumentalists, he highlights the advances in recording technology that made their sound both possible and unique, as well as the developments in television and radio that lent an explosive force to their popular success. With a musician’s ear, Gould sensitively evokes the timeless appeal of the Lennon-McCartney collaboration and their emergence as one of the most creative and significant songwriting teams in history.

Behind the scenes Gould explores the pivotal roles played by manager Brian Epstein and producer George Martin, credits the influence on the Beatles’ music of contemporaries like Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson, and Ravi Shankar, and traces the gradual escalation of the fractious internal rivalries that led to the group’s breakup after their final masterpiece, Abbey Road. Most significantly, by chronicling their revolutionary impact on popular culture during the 1960s, Can’t Buy Me Love illuminates the Beatles as a charismatic phenomenon of international proportions, whose anarchic energy and unexpected import was derived from the historic shifts in fortune that transformed the relationship between Britain and America in the decades after World War II.

From the Beats in America and the Angry Young Men in England to the shadow of the Profumo Affair and JFK’s assassination, Gould captures the pulse of a time that made the Beatles possible—and even necessary. As seen through the prism of the Beatles and their music, an entire generation’s experience comes astonishingly to life. Beautifully written, consistently insightful, and utterly original, Can’ t Buy Me Love is a landmark work about the Beatles, Britain, and America.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000WCWVLM
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Crown Archetype; 1st edition (October 2, 2007)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 2, 2007
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 15161 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 674 pages
Reviewer: Derek Grimmell
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Well satisfied with my purchase
Review: As the author points out, the volume of press given to the cultural phenomena of the Beatles has included few biographies of the band itself. Think of this as a real biography of a band -- the story of a remarkable quartet set against the cultural influences that shaped them, tracing their growth, exploring the many factors that made them more popular, and more revered, than any other musical group before or since, and tracing their demise and peculiar afterlife as never-dimming cultural icons. (Ringo Starr remains a regular guest on talk shows, after all, where he would never appear except that he had *been a Beatle.*) Apart from the writing mechanics -- lucid, clear, easy to read -- I find that Gould has brought out aspects of the people, their city, their times, and their work that no one else has done. He deserves to be commended for this.You are most likely to enjoy this book if you appreciate the band when you hear the music (and tap your feet to it), but also want to build a little bit of understanding of their phenomenon -- to develop some new insights into what made them such a remarkable cultural force. The author puts their breakthrough moments into the context of the Profumo affair and uses sociological theory, especially Max Weber, to interpret why their fans went through such frenzies, after all. You will meet Aldous Huxley and Carl Jung as well. An author can very easily fall into pseudo-intellectual BS by drawing in so many cultural influences, but in this writer's case the story of the band is the meal, while such background events and theories are the seasoning. He talks of these both to draw the reader into that time and place, and (in some cases) to illuminate why each of the band's members took the courses they did. I think he does really well at this. In particular, when he talks about the obvious sexual appeal of the band to its teenage fans, he barely mentions Freud. He stays away from the more pretentious and dubious speculations that initially greeted the band, instead pointing out that two were different kinds of handsome, one was a charismatic rebel, and one reminded people of an adorable puppy, giving the female fans a virtual smorgasbord of options for their infatuations, as well as re-forming social cliques around those totemic figures.If you are simply interested in learning as much as you can about the members and the details of their lives, you will find plenty of that material here. You may want to skip over the analytical bits, which is easier done in a print than the Kindle edition, as he does not separate the analysis neatly into chapters. You may also want to start with Hunter Davies' 1968 authorized biography The Beatles (Updated Edition), and Michael Braun's early and more gritty Love Me Do!: "Beatles" Progress. But for my money, Gould has done the best job of making the Beatles and their times come alive, as if the reader had been, not in the inner circle, but within visual range of it.

Reviewer: RJ
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A walk through an age
Review: This book was not what I really expected for a Beatle biography. Mr. Gould integrates very well how the Beatles fit into the history of the 1960s but, as well, how history also molded itself around the Beatles. For those of us that lived during this time, we are re-immersed in all that went on and not only what The Beatles were doing at this time. For those who are Beatle fans but came to them after they disbanded, it helps to see everything in its context. The Beatles were not in a bubble but were a product of the '50s and '60s. Beatlemania had just as much to do with the time in which we grew up as it did with the Beatles themselves. "Can't Buy Me Love" does an excellent job in showing us that, no matter what other music was being created at the time, however raw or tame one would consider their music, The Beatles were a success because of their timing in history, how they borrowed from others and yet had their own unique and inimitable view of what music should be, where it should be headed. They were defined by their times but also defined their times. Other bands came from Liverpool and were relative flashes in the pan. Other bands disparaged their music, their showmanship, etc., and yet quickly became dated, footnotes in pop/rock history, by following a different muse."Can't Buy Me Love" is one of the most fascinating and engrossing books on The Beatles that I have read in quite a while and is a necessity for any serious Beatle Fan.

Reviewer: Elfinstone
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Yeah Yeah Yeah
Review: Like many other reviewers, I have read a copious amount of Beatles-related books from Hunter Davies's 1968 biography to Pattie Boyd's recent memoir. This book belongs in every fan's library. This is not to say it is easy reading. Gould's all encompassing reportage can be tedious at times and his song reviews can get a bit florid. (The Beatles as "muezzins.") However, it is a very good overview of the Beatles, their music and their times. I did notice a couple of minor errors in regard to certain dates, but overall, the book is well-researched from original sources. As a jaded reader on this subject, I was surprised to find out a number of things that hadn't been printed before. I liked the early years the best and was intrigued with his categorizing of the Beatles as an "oldies" band. It is an interesting perspective and makes their success as singer-songwriters only the more dazzling. I can't say I always agreed with him on the critiques of their songs. Personally, I've always liked Paul McCartney's version of "Til There Was You," complete with the Liverpudlian prounciation of "saw" as "sar." I got a little confused with the albums, however, because he used the chonronolgy of the British releases, rather than the American versions with which I'm more familiar. However, as the book is well indexed, I intend to listen to the albums and read the critiques of the songs as they play. Having slogged through Geoff Emerick's book, "Hear, There and Everywhere," where he describes in minute detail all the Beatles recording sessions he engineered on, I found it interesting to compare Emerick's opinion of the Beatles individually with Gould's. Both Emerick and Gould consider Paul the better musician. Emerick thought John was careless and vague, as did Gould. However, where Emerick criticized George and Ringo as being mediocre, Gould took the time to analyze and praise Ringo's drumming, George's guitar playing and his growth as a songwriter. His description of the last recording sessions of the Beatles and their breakup has a meloncholic tone. He concludes with general analyses of the post-breakup Beatles individual careers. He also devotes a lot of his criticism to Yoko Ono but says nothing of Linda McCartney's participation in Wings. All in all, this was a very satisfying read.

Reviewer: JOHN
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I was delighted to be able to snag this hardback at a great price. All the praise it has engendered is valid - it is the best book about The Beatles.

Reviewer: Hohenbalken
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: A surprisingly interesting read. I specifically like the description with regard to the albums. The history of the Beatles is already well known - Gould does take hold of some of the negative aspects but nothing that hasn't been told or suggested before. My personal feeling is that the Beatles as individuals are probably quite ordinary - it is the music, their ideas and the presentation of concepts that make them extraordinary. I think Gould attempts to present it in that manner. Recommended.

Reviewer: nfldmojo
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: The book was delivered fast and it’s a decent read.

Reviewer: Padraic
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I've read many books on the band, this is up near the top. Great value also.

Reviewer: 懐古館守衛長
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: ビートルズの歩みや、世界に与えた音楽・文化的影響、それら自体が素晴らしい夢物語であるので、このCDで聴かれる、ことさら大仰で芝居じみた朗読（朗詠といったほうがよいかもしれない）がときに邪魔です。淡々と、ドキュメンタリー然とした読み方でも、十分にビートルズの足跡とビートルズが存在した時代の空気が原文のコンテンツの隅々から匂いたってくる作品なので、Theatricalな盛り上げ朗読は無用と思います。しかしながら、30時間以上に及ぶ、短縮していないオリジナル原文すべてが24枚のCDに収められており、朗読スピードも程よく速いので、ビートルズを愛し、彼等が用いた言語（英語）の学習・ブラッシュアップに励むリスナーにはきわめてコストパフォーマンスの高いオーディオ・ブックだと思います。