About book A Hard Day's Write: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Song (1999)
The only saving grace of this book is that I'm a Beatles fan and was interested in the content. The content is the only thing that got me to give this book 2 stars. The writing, however, is dreadful. I read someone's comment that the writer is pompous, which I have to say, I agree. Steve Turner will raise a question speculating about connections or the meaning of a song, though his question is barely based on whatever facts were presented. Not only that, his writing can also be very long-winded and his sentence structure occasionally confusing. Things that disappointed and/or annoyed me:1. Steve Turner reveres the Lennon-McCartney duo. I have no problem with that except that the result is that he dismisses George Harrison almost completely. "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" is perhaps one of George's greatest songs, yet Turner devotes a mere 12-line paragraph to it. Ringo's "Don't Pass Me By" receives more attention, which, in my opinion, is undeserved. I'm not saying that Ringo's first composition for the Beatles is insignificant, but I really thought Turner felt that George's songs were inferior to John and Paul's. George made important contributions too.2. The portrayal of the creation of the White Album is not necessarily accurate. I felt that Turner skated over the fact that at that point, the Beatles were composing and recording alone. He only mentions Ringo's quitting the band during these sessions in a sentence regarding something on Abbey Road or Let it Be. Not everything was harmonious as much as some historians would like everyone to believe and this inaccuracy might not be caught by some readers who don't know the history well.3. Whoever was Steve Turner's editor was extraordinarily sloppy and whatever Turner paid him/her should be given back. The punctuation is an atrocity. There are superfluous spaces between words, too many commas in unnecessary spots, missing and extra/unnecessary quotation/apostrophe marks, and typos. A few examples of typos or straight up blunders:-Stuart Sutcliffe's girlfriend, Astrid Kirchherr, is in the book as "Astrid Kirchner." It's not just wrong in the book's text, but also in the index. -Little punctuation mistakes, like on page 129-130: ...'Ooh. Where are you going, man?' I told them I was going for a Guinness. They said., 'Oh. Say something beautiful for me, will you?'" Here I'm pointing out after "they said." These little punctuation mistakes drove me crazy and perhaps won't have any effect on other readers' experience, but there were far too many of them for me personally. I think that if a book is published, it should be done properly.-One of the worst mistakes, in my opinion, occurs on page 172: "Committed to completing a final movie for United Artists, but with no inclination of emulating Help or A Hard Day's Write, the Beatles fulfilled their contract with Let It Be..." First off, Turner specifically mentioned in the section about Help! that the importance of the exclamation point in the title was to get around possible copyright infringement; yet, the exclamation point in this sentence is quite obviously missing. Not only that, but while referring to the movie A Hard Day's Night Turner or his editor accidentally left in the title of the book being written. I'll let some of the punctuation/grammatical mistakes go, but these two mistakes (in one sentence, nonetheless!) are unacceptable.To say the least, if I had written anything like this for my college writing class, I would've failed miserably due to carelessness and style. It's unbelievable that something this sloppy went to print. I know that some people are not as picky about stylistic or grammatical elements in a book, but when I read something, I don't want to be distracted from the content. Unfortunately, this was the case for this book.Finally, I was hoping to get some new insight to some of the Beatles' songs. I will admit, I did learn some new things like who were the inspirations behind "Polythene Pam" or "Doctor Robert," but the majority was nothing revelational. Frankly, I think reading the information on a website like The Beatles Bible is better written and more accurate than buying this book. However, if you are really into reading things about the Beatles, I would say this is for casual fans of the band who wouldn't be too bothered by editorial errors. I also recommend to take it out of the library and not buy it.
I'm posting this for its relevance to my present reading of Ian MacDonald's Revolution in the Head and anticipated reading of John Blaney's Together Alone, all of which was triggered by the recent releases of McCartney's exquisite "Memory Almost Full" (despite its dreadful lead track) and the George Martin Beatles revisitation "Love."A Hard Days' Write makes a fitting companion for Mark Hertsgaard's A Day in the Life and Alan W. Pollack's extensive song-by-song musical analyses at http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/D.... It considers the source material for the Beatles' ouerve, track by track by track. As such, it is occasionally revealing (and apparently well-researched), but fairly lightweight inasmuch as the focus is on the Beatles' lyrics -- which for the most part cannot stand alone -- and not their music-making, which was exquisite. Had I not read this simultaneously with the Hertsgaard, I probably would not have bothered. The Alan W. Pollack notes (which ignore the lyrics to focus on the music and follow the MacDonald, which I'm using to fill in the gaps) are much more highly recommended.
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I found this to be an interesting take on The Beatles music. Author has gotten facts through various sources including John, Paul, George and Ringo and others who were close to the boys through the years the group was together (most of whom have written books themselves and cites those resources). Book tries to clear up some facts that have been floating around as myths for years spread at the time different songs were popularized. This is not a book summarizing the music theory and counterpoint behind their songs, this is more in the form of paragraph stories about their individual songs separated by albums earliest to latest that were written and composed by the group.
—Laura
This book is phenomenal! I have learned so many interesting things about the lyrical aspect of the Beatles. It gives a story to how every single Beatles song was influenced, based on many, many interviews Steve Turner had with the Beatles. Here are two I really liked:In "Martha my Dear," Martha was Paul's Old English Sheepdog. He said, "You can read into this song all you want, but it really is me just singing to my dog." and in "Dear Prudence," Prudence was a girl living in India. She meditated for 3 weeks straight in her room, and people thought she was going insane. John wrote her a song, and Prudence was flattered when she found out, though John had never sung it to her.It's a really fun read for a Beatles fan!
—Alicia Ellis
This book was simply not what I expected, though it consists of a decent sampling of stories, quotes, and photography. The goal of the book is to track down the inspiration for each Beatles song, or barring that, the circumstances in which it was written. Do not expect details about who wrote which parts of the Lennon/McCartney collaborations (although this info is occasionally included) or how the songs fared on the pop charts (ditto) or what's going on musically in each song (almost never included - apparently that is another book). Do expect capsule biographies of musicians the Beatles were trying to imitate, and a handful of the immortals captured in song (e.g. the real-life Bungalow Bill). It's a fine reference to keep around, but not a book to read from start to finish (which I admit I did not - I skipped around and usually read about an album's worth at a time; I've probably read about half of the book by now).
—Alex
