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Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America
| Our Price |
$ 14.04
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| Retail Value |
$ 15.95 |
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| You Save |
$ 1.91 (12%) |
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| Item Number |
2438311 |
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Item Description...
Product Description
Nearly twenty years in the making, Can't Buy Me Love is a masterful work of group biography, cultural history, and musical criticism. That the Beatles were an unprecedented phenomenon is a given. In Can't Buy Me Love, Jonathan Gould seeks to explain why, placing the Fab Four in the broad and tumultuous panorama of their time and place, rooting their story in the social context that girded both their rise and their demise.
Beginning with their adolescence in Liverpool, Gould describes the seminal influences----from Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry to The Goon Show and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland----that shaped the Beatles both as individuals and as a group. In addition to chronicling their growth as singers, songwriters, and instrumentalists, he highlights the advances in recording technology that made their sound both possible and unique, as well as the developments in television and radio that lent an explosive force to their popular success. With a musician's ear, Gould sensitively evokes the timeless appeal of the Lennon-McCartney collaboration and their emergence as one of the most creative and significant songwriting teams in history. And he sheds new light on the significance of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as rock's first concept album, down to its memorable cover art.
Behind the scenes Gould explores the pivotal roles played by manager Brian Epstein and producer George Martin, credits the influence on the Beatles' music of contemporaries like Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson, and Ravi Shankar, and traces the gradual escalation of the fractious internal rivalries that led to the group's breakup after their final masterpiece, Abbey Road. Most significantly, by chronicling their revolutionary impact on popular culture during the 1960s, Can't Buy Me Love illuminates the Beatles as a charismatic phenomenon of international proportions, whose anarchic energy and unexpected import was derived from the historic shifts in fortune that transformed the relationship between Britain and America in the decades after World War II.
From the Beats in America and the Angry Young Men in England to the shadow of the Profumo Affair and JFK's assassination, Gould captures the pulse of a time that made the Beatles possible---and even necessary. As seen through the prism of the Beatles and their music, an entire generation's experience comes astonishingly to life. Beautifully written, consistently insightful, and utterly original, Can't Buy Me Love is a landmark work about the Beatles, Britain, and America.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Item Specifications...
Pages 672
Dimensions: Length: 8" Width: 5.1" Height: 1.5"
Weight: 1.25 lbs.
Binding Softcover
Release Date Nov 4, 2008
Publisher Three Rivers Press
ISBN 0307353389
EAN 9780307353382
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Availability 0 units.
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Reviews - What do our customers think?
 | Boring, Boring, Boring Feb 4, 2010 |
| Long, drawn out and BORING! After having read many Beatles books... well..., I couldn't even find it in me to finish this one. | | |  | The Beatles' music Jan 20, 2010 |
| Highly readble account of The Beatles rise, development and separation, with the emphasis on a discussion of the music from a professional musician. This aspect of the book is the strongest, with the author writing confidently and sparely. Also he makes an attempt to place their story within a historical, sociological and psychological context. This part of the book is less successful, with the prose often seeming forced and pretentious. Knocked it down a star here. | | | | Pompous Sep 23, 2009 |
This is just so pompous. The author is described as a musician. But in one place he describes drums as 'thunderous'. I've played in several bands and done plenty of studio work and I've never heard a musician talk that way.
In other places, describing a Beatles song, he'll say something like 'the Beatles are telling us'. The use of the present tense to refer to the past is one of these horrible conceits that literary critics use ('Shakespeare is saying', 'Joyce is reminding us'). It's unbearingly pretentious. The Beatles would have hated it.
If you want to read something meaningful, read Geoff Emerick's book. If you want to learn about their music, read 'The Beatles As Musicians'. | | | | Good but a lot of information Sep 1, 2009 |
| I thought the book was researched and written well. I really wanted to read this book but found myself glossing over sections that didn;t related directly to the Beatles. All in all I am happy I read this book but slightly guilty I didn't read the entire book. | | |  | A Great Book! Jul 12, 2009 |
I grew up during the Beatle era and it wasn't uncommon for my parents or the 17 year old kid next door to be humming their tunes. Later on in high school I had friends who were Beatles fans. They always had the Beatles 8-Track going in their cars. But, while I grew up listening to the Beatles, I was never a big fan. I think it was just over exposure. To me, analyzing thei music was like analyzing "Happy Birthday."
Once the group broke up in the late 1960s, it seemed like the only people who really "understood" the Beatles were these aging hippies who couldn't move on. According to them, unless you knew the secret messages or codes within the Beatles' songs, you were never going to understand what they were trying to say. I picked Jonathan Gould's book up off the table in the BU Bookstore last spring on a whim.
Boy, Jonathan Gould's book is so good. His book is a well-researched history of this remarkable group with his expert comments on every album and every song. He addresses all of the myths regarding the Beatles and sets the reader straight. I no longer feel out of the loop. In fact, there wasn't much of a loop after all. Gould's narrative allows the readers to met the Beatles on their own terms. The Beatles were gifted musicians and song-writers, but hardly the gods that many of their fans believed. The book moves along quickly and never, ever bogs down. I can't even pick a favorite chapter; they were all so good.
The great thing about this book is that Gould shows and doesn't tell. He begins the book by re-creating the scenario in Liverpool at the time when the Beatles were beginning. He expert handling of the society, the culture, and the music makes this book a great read. It's simply one of the best books I've ever read.
If you want to know what the world of popular culture looked like between 1950 and 1970, check this book out. You won't be disappointed. | | | Write your own review about Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America
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