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NORMAN, PHILIP: : Shout! - THE TRUE STORY OF THE BEATLES

LONDON.ELM TREE,1981.

ISBN 0241103002.

UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn,2nd imp (same year as 1st).VG+/VG-.No owner inscrptn but price-clipped to dw/dj.B/w photographic dw/dj with coloured and red letters to upper wrap with white letters to spine/backstrip,with the title Shout! maybe faded? Minimal shelf-wear to edges with some light creasing and a small closed nick to top edge,whilst bottom edge has some minimal waterstaining internally,unaffecting the bds.Fore-edges lightly marked with top edge slightly dust-soiled with contents bright,tight and clean.Red paper-covered boards with gilt letters to spine/backstrip and plain white endpapers.UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn,2nd imp,xvipp+ 400pp includes prologue,epilogue and 32pp b/w photographs many previously unpublished. On 8 December 1980,a hail of shots outside a sedate old apartment building in New York, brutally ended the greatest story in the history of popular entertainment. John Lennon,casual founder and wayward leader of the Beatles,the Liverpool singing group which rose like a dictatorship over two generations, was gunned down,ironically by one of the untold millions of young people whom his songs had excited,entranced and inspired. A senseless murder,indicating how far the world had come since the Beatles' happy uproar first galvanised it,has since prompted fresh millions to rediscover the music with which they jolted and charmed the staid Sixties.In 1981,20 years after Brian Epstein first stumbled on them,the Beatles have never been bigger.Norman brilliantly describes in this definitive biography the incredible metamorphosis of four boys in scuffed shoes into beings more pampered and adored,and deprived, than the ancient Caesars.A story that had become formalised into myth when the Beatles ended their partnership in 1970, proves, in Shout!, to be one of continuous and extraordinary revelation. Here are the amazing facts,not as the myth says but as they really happened. Here are the wild,often comical days at the very beginning in Liverpool,and the wilder all-night life the teenage Beatles led on Hamburg's notorious Reeperbahn.Here is Stu Sutcliffe,the brilliant,tragic 'fifth Beatle',and Astrid,the beautiful,ghost-eyed German girl who first gave them the look that was to take the world by storm.Here is Brian Epstein,portrayed with candour and sympathy,the sensitive, nervous young businessman whose taste and flair refined the Beatles into a style that became the decade's quintessence,and yet who was by his nature destined only for sadness,loneliness and a death still shrouded in mystery.Here,as no writer has ever captured it,is Beatlemania:a publicity trick raised by eerie historical coincidences,to an adoring madness such as the human race has never seen.Here is the bizarre story of the Beatles assault on America,and of the bungle over merchandising rights that robbed them of fortunes literally beyond computation. Shout! is an intimate chronicle of the barely believable escapades of John, Paul, George and Ringo among the blizzards of money, mansions, girls and drugs.It is a penetrating social history,pinpointing the moment when crafty politicians first saw the wisdom,now accepted,of using young people's music to reflect glory on themselves.It is,above all,a critical and poetic celebration of music such as no four musicians will ever make again:from the primitive joy of the early albums to the psychedelic triumph of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.The climax is an eye-witness account of the collapse of Apple Corps, the Beatles own business Utopia, into squalor,anger and suspicion.Shout! The True Story of the Beatles is,like its subject,a phenomenon. Please contact seller,because of the value of this item,for correct,insured shipping/P+p quotes - particularly ALL overseas buyers - BEFORE ordering through the order page! N.B. ALL buyers please note,stocks' actual shipping/P+p costs are adjusted and any difference is refunded,after order's receipt and before the order's despatch,especially if the item(s) are offered either P+p included/FREE. ** N.B. US/Canada customers please be aware: Standard AIRMAIL postage from UK to these destinations can now cost more than the price of the book! If speed is not of the essence,then Economy rate is recommended - at approx. anything from a 1/3rd to 1/2 of the standard USAIR quote/rate - sometimes arriving sooner than the 42 days - but not always. **

UK,8vo HB+dw/dj, 1st edn,2nd imp.
Not SIGNED.

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