In her New York Times review of Bob Spitz's The Beatles: The Biography (Little, Brown $29.95), Janet Maslin refers to the "eerily gorgeous cover." I don't know how gorgeous it is, but it's definitely eerie to see the four-man life force that generated enough positive energy to change the world looking as bleakly deadpan as models in a Vogue photo spread. No wonder -- these pictures were taken by Bob Whitaker, the same Australian surrealist photographer who staged the notorious and hastily withdrawn album cover depicting the Beatles as butchers amid a carnage of baby-doll body parts. Look at John Lennon, who seems to be sinking into a coma. It would be hard to imagine a more uncharacteristic portrait of the angriest, most passionate member of the group. According to the ads, the book is currently being offered wrapped in two different dust jackets, one with George and John on the front, (as here), the other with Paul and Ringo. You have to wonder if the mind-set behind a cover so empty of attitude also determined that the two dead Beatles be paired instead of Lennon and McCartney, the creative heart of the group from the beginning to the breakup.
Fortunately, once you open the book and start reading you'll find that the Beatles are all four very much alive inside. However dedicated Bob Spitz may be to the mission of, as Maslin put it, "elevating" the story "to the realm of serious history," this massive biography is at its best when the impassive biographer gives way to raw enthusiasm and cranks up his prose in a frantic attempt to capture the sheer musical excitement that sent the Sixties soaring. Readers who have lived and still live in that music may find much here that is all too familiar, but they are sure to appreciate Spitz's no-holds-barred effort to put us on the scene when the Beatles were transcending themselves, both in performance and in the recording studio.
There are, however, moments in the narrative when I was uneasily reminded of vampire biographers who simultaneously exploit and savage their human prey as Ian Hamilton did with J.D. Salinger and as Albert Goldman did twice, feasting on both Elvis Presley and John Lennon.
Whenever Spitz goes out of his way to accentuate the negative, I think of the anecdote mentioned in a wire-service feature that tells of the schoolyard beating that the teenage Spitz, "an avid Bob Dylan fan at the time," suffered for suggesting that the Beatles were "no-talent bums who wouldn't last." It's hard not to wonder if Spitz is still smarting from that beating when he chooses to quote from a letter in which Stuart Sutcliffe, who played bass in one of the first incarnations of the band, warns his sister to "keep away from the Beatles because they're a bad lot, completely lacking in moral fiber." The condemnation stands out because it comes when the group is on the verge of its first real breakthrough; the author also neglects to qualify it by reminding the reader that Sutcliffe's letters at this time had begun to "ramble incoherently" and were, according to the sister, "bizarre, disturbed." Why weigh in with a moral judgment when the moralizer's own state of mind has been called into question?
No less gratuitously negative is the anecdote that ends the chapter about the Beatles' triumphant first visit to the U.S. Anyone familiar with the history of the group knows that John Lennon could be abusive, particularly when he was drunk or on drugs. In this instance, he'd been berating a "genial" Czech photographer "in front of a flock of lackeys." According to an unidentified witness, the abused photographer stood "clutching the camera to his chest as if somehow it might help shield an indiscreet blow" as he assured John that he'd "look good" in the picture. "'I'll look like s--t,'" John is said to have replied. "'Everyone will recognize that it's me.'" End of chapter. Why tarnish one of the story's most positive moments with an unnamed source's distant recollection, particularly when the person caught inadvertently mocking himself is someone as alert to the nuances of mockery as John Lennon?
Euphoria
In Spitz's narrative the writing comes alive with the music, as when he describes the group getting high on the first blast of rock and roll euphoria that would make them outdo themselves again and again in the years between 1964 and 1969. The prologue focuses on the impact of a specific early performance. Rock usually forgives crazed prose as long as it's in sync with the excitement. Thus, "the shocking explosion that shook the hall," the "charge" that "ricocheted wildly off the walls," then "a terrible volley that had the familiar bam-bam-bam of a Messerschmitt wreaking all hell on a local target: an assault innocent of madness." Then: "The pounding came in rhythmic waves and once it started, it did not stop. There was no place to take cover on the open floor. All heads snapped forward and stared wild-eyed at the deafening ambush." An assault innocent of madness? A deafening ambush? Who cares? When he's not minding the nuts and bolts of chronology and anecdote (he was plowing through the material for almost nine years), Spitz writes with the all-out descriptive energy of Nik Cohn in Rock from the Beginning. He does it again when he describes the recording of that "larynx-tearer" of a song, "Twist and Shout," accomplished against odds because John's voice was all but gone (he'd been "straining and draining it" all day "like a car running on fumes"). Spitz makes the performance read like the struggle of a great athlete with Paul shouting as they "miraculously crossed the finish line." Later Spitz ties himself in frenzied knots trying to describe the impact of the first song to capture the Beatles euphoria in music, "Please, Please Me." Once again rock is a forgiving subject: "Only a sigh longer than two minutes," the song "rocked the lofty studio like a small explosion, its beat unleashed to startling intensity: a bass throbbing faster than an accelerated heartbeat, a cascading harmonica riff as joyful as a birdsong, a lead vocal that drives like a sports car with a hole in its muffler, harmonies that soar and clutch each other for dear life." The sports car I could do without but it's worth some metaphorical shooting from the hip when you're trying to do justice to the ecstatic glory of the music.
The problem Spitz eventually faces is one most writers of biography and autobiography run up against. Once the subject's goal of fame and fortune has been achieved, a sort of inventory mentality automatically kicks in. It happened with Charlie Chaplin's autobiography, which was brilliant until he started hobnobbing with the likes of Churchill and Einstein. Even when the phenomenon of the Beatles' fame was so immense that it actually seemed at one with the element of inspiration they drew from, the diligent biographer still ends up dealing with the inventory. Just as the Beatles often had to go through the motions of meeting this or that dignitary, the reader endures something similar as they encounter mayors, princes, queens, rock legends, and movie stars.
Thankfully, Spitz chooses to end with the breakup rather than following the four lives beyond 1970. For the better part of a decade, he interviewed hundreds of people, creating the effect of hundreds of voices telling us what it was like, what they were like, and in his dedication, he mentions "all those whose lives are enriched by the Beatles' music." But what finally tells us the most about them is what they themselves have said over the years about how the music was made, and of course what they say through the music itself, which will go on and on enriching listeners for generations. It's happening even now in Paul McCartney's new album, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, where the presence of the other three Beatles can still be felt.