Review: Volume One - The Beatles Years magazine

THE BEATLES YEARS VOLUME ONE

Anthem Publishing ISBN 9 772632 696005

£9.99

 

This is the first of four magazines to be issued every 3 months.

When I first saw this, I wondered what new information I could find out. As I read the first page, I started to doubt the content as the date of John and Paul’s first meeting was stated as 6 July 1956, when any Beatle fan worth his or her salt knows it was 1957.

However, as I started to read the book, I found the early part of their career particularly interesting. There is a terrific photograph of The Quarrymen performing in 1997 performing at the 40th anniversary of the garden fete where John met Paul (so they did know the date!). It features Eric Griffiths and is one of the few colour pictures I have seen of The Quarrymen with Eric.
There are features on Tony Sheridan, who performed ‘My Bonnie’ with the band, which was released as a single in Germany and was the record that alerted Brian Epstein to the existence of the band.

Their stints in Hamburg feature quite heavily in the early part of the book.

There is a large feature on Brian Epstein. The Pete Best sacking is written about drawing information from The Anthology and as we progress through the book it covers their fashion and hairstyles. The first two albums Please Please Me and With The Beatles have the songs with a brief piece about them. Some are analysed from what The Beatles thought about them drawing information from many sources such as the book Many Years From Now by Barry Miles, and John Lennon’s interviews with David Sheff in 1980.

We end this volume just as Beatlemania had broken in the UK. A good read for fans old and new. Those of us who know the story won’t learn anything new, but for fans who only know part or none of the story, this will be a good read.

Ernie Sutton.