I was looking for an inexpensive and quick-to-read Beatles book on Amazon last week to read on my flight home from Houston and The Beatles: In Their Own Words by Barry Miles filled that bill perfectly. The fact that it was compiled by Beatle friend and author, Miles really sealed the deal for me.
However, this book was just a typical run-of-the-mill Beatles interview book. I would think that I was familiar with 80% of the interviews in the book and I can't say that anything in the book was a surprise.
The interviews are transcribed word for word and do not go in chronological order, but instead are by theme. The themes were The Beatles story, Press conferences, songwriting, the songs, the films, drugs & politics. The time frames of the quotes seem to skip all over the place, but I wasn't sure what year each quote was from.
I particular quotes that really hit home for me since I read this book shortly after heard "Now and Then" for the first time were these quotes by John:
"Beatlemusic is when we all get together..." "So when the combination works you come out with what we call 'Beatlemusic.' Of course we don't write songs together anymore. We haven't written together for two years. Not really, anyway. When The Beatles perform that makes it into Beatlemusic. I mean it's a long time since we've sat down and written for many reasons. We used to write mainly on tours. We got bored, so we wrote. Today, the Beatles just go into the studio. And IT happens!"
The Beatles: In Their Own Words was interesting enough to read on the plane, but if you are looking for a book of transcripts of great Beatles interviews, this isn't the book. There is a great book called Speaking Words of Wisdom that was self-published and has many more interviews than this Miles book does. However, Miles' book was fine, even if you might be able to quote along with the words in the book at times.
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