Author Bob Spitz to Speak at the Library

Rock journalist Bob Spitz, author of, The Beatles: The Biography, will speak about and sign copies of his book on Thursday, November 2nd, 2006, at 7:30 P.M. in the Library.

About the Book:
The product of almost a decade of research, hundreds of unprecedented interviews, and the discovery of scores of never-before-revealed documents, Bob Spitz's The Beatles is the biography fans have been waiting for-- a vast, complete account as brilliant and joyous and revelatory as a Beatles record itself. Spitz begins in Liverpool, a hard city knocked on its heels. In the housing projects and school playgrounds, four boys would discover themselves-- and via late-night radio broadcasts, a new form of music called rock 'n roll. Spitz takes us down Penny Lane and to Strawberry Field (John later added the s), to Hamburg, Germany, where-- amid the squalor and the violence and the pep pills-- the Beatles truly became the Beatles. We are there in the McCartney living room when Paul and John learn to write songs together; in the heat of Liverpool's Cavern Club, where jazz has been the norm before the Beatles show up; backstage the night Ringo takes over on drums; in seedy German strip clubs where George lies about his age so the band can perform; on the lonely tours through frigid Scottish towns before the breakthrough; at the Abbey Road studios, where a young producer named George Martin takes them under his wing; at the Ed Sullivan Show as America discovers the joy and the madness; and onward and upward: up the charts, from Shea to San Francisco, through the London night, on to India, through marmalade skies, across the universe-- all the way to a rooftop concert and one last moment of laughter and music.


"A consolidating and newly illuminating work. . . It chooses perception over presumption in ways that set it off from the pack."-- Janet Maslin, The New York Times

"With this massive opus, veteran music journalist Spitz tells the definitive story of the band that sparked a cultural revolution. . . . Although this is a hefty volume steeped in research, Spitz writes economically, and with flair, letting the facts and characters speak for themselves. . . [Readers] will come to appreciate the band even more for knowing the incredible personal odysseys they endured." -Booklist, starred review

Click here to listen to an NPR story about the book.

Please call 203-637-3870 for more information about this and other Library events.