One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time
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Get 3 months for £0.99/mo
One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time
Buy Now for £16.99
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Narrated by:
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Mark McGann
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Kate Robbins
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Craig Brown
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By:
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Craig Brown
About this listen
SHORTLISTED for the Baillie Gifford Prize’s 25th Anniversary Winner of Winners award
WINNER OF THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2020
A Spectator Book of the Year • A Times Book of the Year • A Telegraph Book of the Year • A Sunday Times Book of the Year
From the award-winning author of Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret comes a fascinating, hilarious, kaleidoscopic biography of the Fab Four.
John Updike compared them to ‘the sun coming out on an Easter morning’. Bob Dylan introduced them to drugs. The Duchess of Windsor adored them. Noel Coward despised them. JRR Tolkien snubbed them. The Rolling Stones copied them. Loenard Bernstein admired them. Muhammad Ali called them ‘little sissies’. Successive Prime Ministers sucked up to them. No one has remained unaffected by the music of The Beatles. As Queen Elizabeth II observed on her golden wedding anniversary, ‘Think what we would have missed if we had never heard The Beatles.’
One Two Three Four traces the chance fusion of the four key elements that made up The Beatles: fire (John), water (Paul), air (George) and earth (Ringo). It also tells the bizarre and often unfortunate tales of the disparate and colourful people within their orbit, among them Fred Lennon, Yoko Ono, the Maharishi, Aunt Mimi, Helen Shapiro, the con artist Magic Alex, Phil Spector, their psychedelic dentist John Riley and their failed nemesis, Det Sgt Norman Pilcher.
From the bestselling author of Ma’am Darling comes a kaleidoscopic mixture of history, etymology, diaries, autobiography, fan letters, essays, parallel lives, party lists, charts, interviews, announcements and stories. One Two Three Four joyfully echoes the frenetic hurly-burly of an era.
©2020 Craig Brown (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers LimitedListeners also enjoyed...
Critic reviews
‘A ridiculously enjoyable treat . . . Brown is such an infectiously jolly writer that you don’t even need to like the Beatles to enjoy his book . . . brilliant . . . hilarious . . . And at a time when, like everybody else, I was feeling not entirely thrilled about the news, I loved every word of it.’ Sunday Times
‘A celestial combination of writer and subject . . . One Two Three Four is a critical appreciation, a personal history, a miscellany, a work of scholarship and speculation, and a tribute as passionate and worshipful as any fan letter.’ Esquire
‘The perfect antidote to these times.’ Julian Barnes, Guardian
‘Kaleidoscopic … It’s like a compilation of mobile phone footage in a modern editing style as you piece together this extraordinary journey. I think it’s the most exhilarating way of reading a biography; a masterpiece’ Alexander Armstrong
‘It’s ingenious, wholly original (not a given, what with the subject matter), absolutely gripping, funny, sad and moving. A complete treat.’ India Knight
'I have never been very interested in the Beatles. In fact I wouldn’t cross the road to see them . . . even Abbey Road. Yet I can’t put this wonderful book down.' Barry Humphries, Telegraph
‘A brilliantly executed study of cultural time, social space and the madness of fame . . . One Two Three Four, by putting The Beatles in their place as well as their time, is by far the best book anyone has written about them and the closest we can get to the truth.’ Literary Review
‘Brown seems to have invented a wholly new biographical form. In a polychromatic cavalcade of chapters of varying length, the man with kaleidoscope eyes conveys what it was like to live through those extraordinary Beatles years . . . If you want to know what it was like to live those extraordinary Beatles years in real time, read this book.’ Alan Johnson, Spectator
Fabulous
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Entertaining Bio
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This quote forms the ironic epigraph of ‘One Two Three Four: the Beatles in Time’ by Craig Brown.
This playful biography contains 150 short chapters containing anecdotes about the Beatles. It is mainly chronological with the occasional aside. I certainly learned a lot of information and trivia about the Beatles and those in their circle.
I obtained its audiobook edition via Audible, narrated by Mark McMann and Kate Robbins, and supplemented this with its ebook via BorrowBox. This kind of book is perfect for the audiobook format given the amount of recollections and the like. However, I appreciated having the ebook to hand to clarify points and for the archive photographs as well as Brown’s extensive list of sources.
While mostly impartial, it seemed clear that Brown is no fan of Yoko Ono. He also includes the occasional ‘what if’ aside, such as if Gerry and the Pacemakers had overtaken the Beatles in fame.
Overall, I enjoyed it. While I was never caught up in Beatlemania as such, I did love their music and they still rank as my favourite band.
Playful biography of my favourite band
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- the account of a Hamburg club owner where they played
- taking a tour of Lennon's and McCartney's childhood homes
- what was the story behind the policeman who knocked down and killed Lennon's mum?
- the FULL story of the Ed Sullivan TV show, including the story of other artists who appeared on it
- what is the story - before, during, after - of Jimmie Nicol who replaced Ringo when he had tonsilitis?
- fan accounts of their obsession with one or all of The Beatles
- Aunt Mimi's story
Loosely following the narrative of the emergence, growth, stardom, and end of the group, and taken from contemporary or later accounts and interviews, this is a never less than entertaining passage through some of the more oblique aspects associated with the most famous musicians in pop history.
There are three narrators, and their imitations of the characters involved range from acceptable (George and Ringo) to quite good (Paul). However, I would like to tell one of the three that John's Aunt Mimi is "Me-Me" not "Mimmy"!! but it's a minor irritation. One of the most enjoyable (because unpredictable) Beatle books you'll find.
Everything you didn't know about The Beatles
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