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A Hard Day's Write, 3e: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Song | 
| Author: Steve Turner
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy New: $15.65
You Save: $9.35 (37%)
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Rating:  21 reviews
Sales Rank: 6943
Media: Paperback
Edition: Updated
Pages: 224
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 10.9 x 8.4 x 0.5
ISBN: 0060844094
Dewey Decimal Number: 780
EAN: 9780060844097
ASIN: 0060844094
Publication Date: October 1, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A lavishly illustrated, rollicking account of the real people and events that inspired the Beatles' lyrics. Who was "just seventeen" and made Paul's heart go "boom"? Was there really an Eleanor Rigby? Where's Penny Lane? In A Hard Day's Write, music journalist Steve Turner shatters many well-worn myths and adds a new dimension to the Fab Four's rich legacy by investigating for the first time the ordinary people and events immortalized in the Beatles' music and now occupying a special niche in popular culture's collective imagination. Arranged chronologically by album, the book breaks new ground by exploring how private incidents influenced the group's writing and how their music evolved. Turner reveals that Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was really a drawing by Julian Lennon of his childhood friend; Bungalow Bill was an all-American tiger hunter; Doctor Robert was a New York 'speech doctor'; and much more. A longtime Beatles admirer, Turner tracked down and interviewed the real-life subjects of the songs, probed public records and newspaper archives, and spoke in depth to the people closet to the Beatles to unearth tales that have never before been made public. The result is a book that chronicles an untold story of the Beatles themselves. Illustrated with over 200 photographs, A Hard Day's Write is a visually alluring and highly entertaining journey to the land stretching just beneath your conscious mind, mapped out with strawberry fields, fool-topped hills, and long and winding roads.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 16 more reviews...
 Hard to put down May 26, 2009
Alexis Jimenez (miami, fl)
This book is amazing. I could not put it down at all. I love The Beatles but I appreciate the music so much more now! A MUST BUY!
Awesome and educational May 11, 2009
Megan E. Crockett (Phoenix, AZ USA)
If every you have a question about how a Beatles was written, or who they are singing about this is the book for you. It has so much information! The pages are laid out in a nice way and it has a lot of old pictures especially pictures of the people who the songs are about. If you are a Beatles fan you should definitely read this book. Its awesome. Its great even to have just as a reference. There have been a lot of times when a Beatles song came on and someone said that they wondered what that song means. With this book, you dont have to wonder any more.
 I Don't Want to Spoil the Party, but . . . March 22, 2009
doublefantasy
52 out of 56 found this review helpful
As I bought this book based on all of the very high praise found on this Amazon page, I now feel obligated to warn future potential buyers that this book is nowhere near all it's cracked up to be.
First of all, if you've read at least a few other Beatles books before, a lot of the information in this book purported to be "revelatory" is actually old news, and well-known even by casual fans. Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds was a drawing by Julian Lennon? Well, I'll be. Strawberry Fields Forever was a reference to John Lennon's special, childhood hideaway? No way! Penny Lane is a district in Liverpool? These are the kinds of shockers that just keep coming and coming.
Of course, as someone who truly does obsess over the Beatles, I was expecting to reread lots of things I already knew. The problem is the things I didn't know. There was, in fact, all kinds of information that I had never before come across. To the point that I would almost be impressed.
If I could believe a word of it. And sadly, I can't.
The book is riddled, just riddled, with ridiculous typos and factual errors. There seems to have been no copy editing done in this book outside of computerized spell checking. And so all kinds of typos remain, because the words they spell are in the dictionary. One of my favorites is when the author seriously refers to previous Beatles films as "Help! and Hard Day's Write." Yes, the author got the Beatles film confused with his own book, and no one managed to catch it. A mere few paragraphs later, he claims that the song added to Let It Be... Naked is I've Got a Feeling. Which it is not. He also claims that George Martin came up with the idea for the Sgt. Pepper Reprise, even though it's well-documented that Neil Aspinall was the true inspiration behind the idea. On and on it goes.
So, is the reason that "Badfinger Boogie" was the original title for A Little Help From My Friends because John had an injured finger at the time of writing? Perhaps. Sounds believable. But who knows. The inexcusable errors, coupled with the painful lack of any citations, leaves me unable to trust a word, no matter how much I'd like to.
As a final note, while other reviewers refer to John Lennon constantly being psychoanalyzed by the author, even to the point of ridiculousness, and the glossing over all of Paul's compositions as written about Jane Asher, George Harrison is the one who gets the true short end of this stick. All of his song entries are excruciatingly short, up to and including a mere 97 words -- I counted -- written about While My Guitar Gently Weeps, one of the greatest Beatles songs ever written. Though Turner could find a whole page of information about It Won't Be Long and how he believes that John's mother inspired the song's sentiments (WHAT?), he couldn't find nary a word to say about what George's profound lyrics in this song said about his philosophical thoughts or world views.
It's a shame, because this really could have been an excellent and truly invaluable book, as the cover quotes all claim. Indeed, it should have been. But it's not. It instead goes down as one of the worst Beatles books I've ever read. And that means a lot.
 Well and little known stories behind the creation of Beatles songs March 11, 2009
Wayne Klein (My Little Blue Window, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Steve Turner's A HARD DAY'S WRITE: THE STORIES BEHIND EVERY BEATLES SONG focuses on all the material written by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Star that has appeared on offically released albums. Turner gives us a peak into how the popular songwriting team of Lennon & McCartney would turn ordinary every day events or items from their personal lives into the enduring classics that every Beatles fan knows. The book is extremely well written (although there are a couple of proof readings that slipped through the cracks for example there's a picture in the book with an incorrect caption claiming that Chuck Berry sued John Lennon for plagerism--it was Morris Levy's music company that did. Turner also misses the chance to tell about the fiasco of the John Lennon "Oldies" album that was marketed on TV as a result of this suit and the settlement)and factual for the most part.This third edition is the most handsome one yet and the book appears in a coffee paper size in paperback. Turner has filled the book with a nice mixture of rarely seen photos so that this treasure trove of Beatles trivia won't make most fans feel that they've been there and done that with previous Beatle books.
Turner also dispells some myths about the band's popular songs for example "Yellow Submarine" although clearly written as a children's song had a rumors floating around for years that it was about drugs (heck, just about every Beatls song had that rumor but this was one unusual one that I hadn't heard before). Turner also digs up the news item that inspired Paul McCartney and John Lennon to write "She's Leaving Home" and even discovered that the girl that McCartney wrote about in his song had met her idol three years before the song was written (although McCartney never knew it). He also finds out that McCartney's song got a lot of the incidental facts right even though he didn't know the facts of the missing person's report. Likewise, he tackles McCartney's popular "Michelle" and points out that jazz singer Nina Simone was the inspiration for the song and the playing style of Chet Atkins.
"Baby You're a Rich Man" a Beatles b-side that used the same question/answer approach of "With a Little Help from My Friends" was a Lennon-McCartney collaboration with John bringing the unfinished "One of the Beautiful People" and Paul's chorus of "Baby You're a Rich Man". There are also the familiar stories about songs such as "Hey Jude", "Let It Be", "I Am the Walrus" and "Something" (although here it states that George denied that he wrote the song about his wife Patti wherease the popular assumption was that he DID write it about her)in addition to little known stories about some of the "Anthology" tracks. He often comments on the various songwriter's approach and style and how their personality informed their music.
The book has an extensive discography for the band and bibliography with books and interviews that Turner used as the source to verify some of the tales told here. Turner's goal was to write a book that would occasionally surprise the surviving Beatles as well with info about the people that might have inspired a story and their fate. Turner has a terrific job here. The only thing that might have improved his book would have been more first person interviews about the songs included here from some of those who knew the band well. Also, Turner should focus on the songs that have appeared on various bootlegs that they wrote and recorded over the years that appeared on various solo albums (John's "Child of Nature" which morphed into "Jealous Guy"--why THAT song hasn't appeared on an offical release is beyond me).
Fabulous! February 26, 2009
Lauri Franklin (Tucson, AZ USA)
If you love the Beatles, you'll LOVE this book. A fresh spin on familiar things you thought you knew!
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