When They Were Boys

June 24, 2013
Kane (Ticket to Ride), a longtime Philadelphia journalist and author who covered the Beatles’ first tour in the U.S. in 1964 and subsequent tours, works by mosaic in piecing together the shards of “the boys’ ” early stories in Liverpool, now fairly familiar: John, the smoking, dreaming milkman, raised mostly by his indomitable Aunt Mimi, sneaked out to the neighboring orphanage Strawberry Field for a dose of gritty reality; Paul, shattered by his mother’s early death from breast cancer, traded the trumpet his father gave him for an acoustic guitar; George, the so-called quiet Beatle, was in fact the stronger songwriter early on but was “shoved into the background” by team Lennon-McCarthy; and Richie Starkey, aka Ringo, hailing from the toughest neighborhood in Liverpool, son of a divorced mother, cut his drummer’s teeth with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. Self-promoting Lane tracks the musical inspirations that led to the definitive formation of the Lennon-organized Quarrymen, such as Lonnie Donegan, the band’s first gigs in Liverpool, the mysterious death of Stuart Sutcliffe, the firing of Pete Best, the playing of “Love Me Do” in Hamburg, and the honing of their look from black leather jackets to futuristic suits and ties. Many roiling, conflicting voices are brought together in a creative mishmash here. Agent: Faith Childs, Faith Childs Liererary Agency.

August 1, 2013

Veteran journalist Kane's (Ticket To Ride: Inside the Beatles' 1964 and 1965 Tours That Changed the World) latest book on the Beatles takes a fresh look at the Fab Four's early years, shining a well-deserved spotlight on the friends, family members, former band mates, employees, journalists, and many others who paved the band's way to global superstardom and helped usher in Beatlemania. Kane's research mixes new interviews with older conversations to create a seamless, nonchronological narrative structured around themes and individuals. Highlights include original drummer Pete Best's perspective on why he was sacked in favor of Ringo Starr, bouncer Horst Fascher's tales of debauchery in Hamburg, and the fascinating story of how a chance encounter with a record executive led to a big break in the band's career. Kane, who traveled with the Beatles on their first American tour and got to know them intimately, adds his own insights and anecdotes. The volume includes an extensive and wide-ranging bibliography. VERDICT This reexamination of the Beatles' teenage years, which focuses not on the band members themselves but rather on those who nurtured and influenced them through their pivotal first few years together, will inform popular-music scholars and delight fans.--Douglas King, Univ. of South Carolina Lib., Columbia

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 15, 2013
A spirited jump down the rabbit hole to the early years of what would become the Beatles, from TV news anchor and Beatles chronicler Kane (Lennon Revealed, 2005, etc.). The author details the many characters and moments in time that shaped the Beatles into the band that rocketed onto American shores in 1964. Despite being occasionally starry-eyed and corny, Kane writes with an evocative clarity, attention to detail and familiarity. He transports readers back to 1950s Liverpool and turn-of-the-decade Hamburg, to the childhood homes of the Fab Four as well as original drummer Pete Best and original bassist Stuart Sutcliffe. Kane reminds us that the Quarrymen, the Silver Beetles, the Silver Beatles and the early Beatles were a dance band: Fans went to a concert to move, to dance, and at that, the Beatles excelled long before all the screaming. But it was a serious grind to get to the point where they were finally filling clubs, and their first visit to Hamburg in 1960 was one of those near-turning points, when the grind had ground them down, the living conditions vile--they slept for months next to the toilet (John, after popping one speed pill over the line: "I would be wide awake staring around, wondering if the dirt would cake up inside me")--the payback not worth the effort. The Beatles almost dissolved before they had a chance to change the course of popular music. Kane takes special care to get the characters right, whether they are remembered or forgotten, fleshing them out without bogging down the story. Indeed, one of the pleasures of this book is its brightness, written not just for the converted, but for anyone who has even a vague interest in this slice of history. A shimmering, occasionally breathless report that should fill in many of the cracks in readers' knowledge of pop-music history.

COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

July 15, 2013
American novelist Plante has outlived most of the dear characters he depicts here in this diary kept over the many decades he lived in London with the editor and poet Nikos Stangos. Both exiles in London, Plante from a “failed life” in New York, and Stangos from political turmoil in Greece, the two met in June 1966, both in their mid-to-late 20s, and soon grew inseparable: Stangos, working then at the Greek embassy, left a love relationship with the much older poet Stephen Spender, whose Bloomsbury relationships from an earlier generation prove invaluable connections for the two young men. Living first at Stangos’s flat on Wyndham Place, then in Battersea, when Stangos was the poetry editor at Penguin and Plante began publishing fiction, then in Central London, when Stangos needed to be closer to his job as editor of Thames & Hudson, the two moved among rather well-heeled friends like Spender and his wife, Natasha; Francis Bacon; and Sonia Orwell, from drinks to dinner parties and discreet trips to country houses in Italy and France. Self-consciously aping a pared-down style of description Spender himself suggested, Plante has deliberately excised dates and scrambled chronological order so that entries take on the languid feel of the floating world. His uneasiness living among Londoners and deepening love for Nikos meld into a seamlessly charming narrative both evocative and sensual.