The Beatles, from left: George Harrison, Paul McCartney, John Lennon and Ringo Starr.
Courtesy of Apple Corp.
Forty-one years ago, they published the greatest Beatles biography of all time. The love you makewho spent three months in 1983 at the top The New York Times bestseller list. The book would make its co-authors — former Circus Steven Gaines, editor-in-chief of the magazine and author of 13 bestsellers, and Peter Brown, former protégé of Brian Epstein and confidant of the Fab Four, are the most famous Beatleologists on the planet.
And also two of the most reviled, at least by a certain Paul McCartney, who was said to have been so outraged by the gossipy reports in the volume that he set fire to his copy.
It turns out that Gaines and Brown aren’t done with the Beatles yet. Last month, after decades of avoiding the subject, they published All You Need Is Love: The Beatles in Their Own Wordsan oral history of the Mop Tops based on hundreds of hours of recorded interviews that Gaines and Brown conducted while researching their original history, including conversations with McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison, Yoko Ono, Cynthia Lennon and many others.
The Hollywood Reporter sat down with the two old friends and colleagues for a long, winding discussion about their new book (which stayed at the top of Amazon’s bestseller list for a month before it was even published), about how they handled the criticism of their old book. one and on their theory as to why McCartney hated it so much (something involving venereal diseases and sheep).
Your first book was a huge success – it’s considered the definitive Beatles book. Why, 40 years later, write a sequel?
STEVE EARNINGS Well, I mean, there’s so much interest in the Beatles. It never ended. And I realized that even though The love you make is the best-selling Beatles book of all time – it has sold over 500,000 copies – there was even more to tell. And we had all these tapes of all the interviews we’d had since the first book. We tried to decide what to do. Can we let people hear them? But it turned out that it is illegal to broadcast someone’s recorded voice (without permission). So we couldn’t do that. And so I had the idea that maybe it would be good if we just transcribed the tapes and turned the transcriptions into a book.
You have been friends for a long time…
EARNINGS We have been seeing each other for 40 years. Wait, it’s been 40 years since we wrote the book together. It’s been 50 years since Peter and I met.
Peter, you were involved with the Beatles from the beginning, when you worked for Brian Epstein. You even toured with them in the 1960s, didn’t you? How was it ?
PIERRE BRUN When we traveled the world doing shows, we always took commercial planes. No one at that time had their own private plane.
Wait, the Beatles flew on commercial jets? With regular passengers?
EARNINGS Amazing, huh?
Were they mobbed on those planes or did people keep their distance?
BROWN Not on the plane. But there would be crowds of girls and boys waiting for the plane. Thousands and thousands of children are waiting to get off the plane. It was just crazy. This had never happened before.
EARNINGS Tell him about Manila. Weren’t you beaten by Imelda Marcos’ henchmen during this tour?
BROWN No, what happened was that the Beatles were invited to a party at his palace before one of their concerts. But the Beatles never did that kind of thing. They never accepted this kind of invitation. Never. Brian realized they couldn’t be subjected to that kind of crowd. People were getting too frenzied and crazy with them. And we told Marcos’ person that no, we were not going to go to this event in his palace. And he said we had to do it and we just said no. So we didn’t go there but when we got back to the hotel after the concert that evening, the television was showing the palace with all these children waiting for the Beatles…
EARNINGS They called them “orphans” and “disabled children”…
BROWN And the news was about how rude the Beatles were to these children and to the president’s wife by not showing up to this party. So, the next day, when we woke up, all the facilities in our hotel were turned off. There was no breakfast, no housekeeping service. We were just told to go to the airport. And when we got to the airport, there were all these angry people. And all these policemen. And they kept checking our passports and preventing us from boarding the plane. We didn’t think we could leave Manila. But we finally got on the plane and left.
It’s a crazy story. So why do you think that, all these years later, there is still so much interest in The Beatles? What was so special about them?
EARNINGS First of all, it was the music. The music has made its way. It was joyful. It was fun. At first, they were just a pop group. But their way of dressing, their thoughts, their ideas…
BROWN You’re too young to know this, but the fact is that in the Western world, especially in the United States (in the early 1960s), there was nothing new or cool. There were black artists, but they were not acceptable. And then there were a lot of white people who weren’t very interesting. And this wasn’t just the case in the United States. It was everywhere. And somehow the Beatles came along.
EARNINGS They were truly scouts in the world. We were very, very open in the 1960s, about peace, flowers, LSD, the hippie movement, the anti-war movement. A new generation was coming to power. The class system in England was dissolving, collapsing. The entire middle class and lower class were rising up. And I think all of that affected the Beatles. And then also (the world) got to know them. They were great people. They were interesting people.
The love you make was obviously a huge bestseller, but you also received a lot of heat, a lot of criticism for supposedly betraying the Beatles.
EARNINGS In Peter’s name, they say in journalism, if you’ve been through it, you are. And Peter lived it. Peter lived every second of it. I mean, he was part of it. And he deserved to tell this story as much as anyone. The criticism was therefore very unfair. None of them have the right to say that Peter betrayed them. He absolutely didn’t do it. It’s also his life.
Was there a moment, Peter, while you were writing this book, where you realized that some of these people were going to be angry with you?
BROWN No, I don’t think I did at all. I mean, the thing is, they’re famous people. They have been around for a long time. They are adults and they survived very, very well. I thought what we were doing was telling the truth.
And yet, Paul would have responded by burning the book..
BROWN Paul has always been a drama queen. I don’t know. I don’t remember the details. He only made a big deal about it later. I mean, he was a close friend of mine. I introduced him – even though he says it’s not true – to his wife Linda. She was a friend of mine and she wanted to become a photographer. She came to me and showed me her portfolio of photos she had taken. There were a lot of photos of the Rolling Stones, very beautiful photos.
EARNINGS I can only imagine why Paul was so upset, but that’s just a guess. When he went to Scotland with Linda, he had venereal crabs. It was in the book. And he sent an assistant to the pharmacy to get something, and it had to be in a hurry because he didn’t want Linda to know. But all they had was sheep dip, that when the sheep got it, you put it on them. So he settled for the sheep dip. It’s the only thing that could annoy him. But otherwise, I don’t understand why Paul was angry.
John Lennon would not have been angry. John Lennon had no secrets. He lived his life very, very openly. When he struggled with heroin, he wrote a song called “Cold Turkey.” There were no secrets in John’s life. Paul lived in a sort of bubble and wanted everyone to like him, and he’s adorable and wonderful and everything else. But John wouldn’t have cared at all. And I bet if John was alive, he wouldn’t have been angry at all.
Even about the part where you talk about his alleged sexual affair with Brian Epstein, you don’t think he would have been upset about that?
EARNINGS Yes of course. I bet he would have been upset at Liverpool. He fought with another guy (over rumors of a bisexual tryst with Epstein). But now, this year, I mean, believe me, he wouldn’t have been the least bit bitter. But here’s the problem: When we published this book in 1984, there was still no openness, understanding and education. So it was a very explosive thing to write. But I’m sure if we had published this for the first time now, people would shrug their shoulders.
So, is there anything in the new book that will shock or offend anyone? Are you preparing for a second round of controversy?
BROWN I think we’ve gathered the truth, that’s what it is. And I don’t think for a moment that any sane adult person would think that’s inappropriate.
EARNINGS I don’t think most people will be upset. I think people will be delighted and amazed. The first reviews I’ve seen are all great. People really like it. I’m very proud of it. I hope Peter is too.
BROWN I am convinced that there is nothing inappropriate in what we did. In fact, we tried very carefully to tell a story that fascinates millions of people in different parts of the world. They are all fascinated by…
Gn entert
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