Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America | 
| Author: Jonathan Gould
Publisher: Harmony
Category: Book
List Price: $27.50
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Rating:  39 reviews
Sales Rank: 113460
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 672
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.6
ISBN: 0307353370
Dewey Decimal Number: 782.421660922
EAN: 9780307353375
ASIN: 0307353370
Publication Date: October 2, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 34 more reviews...
 Comprehensive - Almost to a Fault June 24, 2009
R. J. Marsella (California)
Gould's book may be the most serious and detailed examination of the Beatle's phenomenon ever written. He does an exceedingly good job in writing about their music and their development as musicians and artists. He explores the sociological context of the 60's and his writing on this topic is often engaging making the pages fly by.
Some of his analysis does get to be a bit overblown and there are considerable passages where he seems to be stretching a bit to make some profound connection that in the end feels sketchy at best.
The role of Brian Epstein in the lives and trajectory of the Beatle's career as explained by Gould was a very interesting aspect of this book. It is clear that the death of their friend and manager left a huge gap affecting their artistic focus by forcing them to pay closer attention to their business interests and ultimately contributing significant tension to their personal interactions.
Overall despite the book's shortcomings I enjoyed reliving the Beatle's story and while I grew up a faithful follower of the band and their music I learned quite a bit from Gould particularly about the music itself.
 Seriously? June 5, 2009
W. K. Gray (South Carolina)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I'm widely read in the matter of Beatle history, which is not to tout my own authority, but, rather, to assert that I'm more than a dabbler in the topic, and I have to say that this is EASILY the most wind-blown, over-blown, just plain blows writing I've ever come across on any topic. The excruciating passage passage on charisma, in which Gould invokes Freud and Weber, while worthy of modest consideration, does not merit the ten or so pages it receives given that he doesn't provide a scrap of evidence for his assertions other than the fact that he thinks it's so plainly so. In fact, there is no way to even verify the merits of his argument and his assertion that only in the light of this view is it possible to have a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of Beatlemania is patently self-aggrandizing.
While Gould's writing on the music itself is at times thrilling, it is likewise annoying in spots. The passage on "Norwegian Wood" was irritating in the extreme. Seriously - why do we need parallels drawn between Norwegian teak furniture and the teak used to make George's newest musical love, the sitar? Are we to believe that the Beatles gave ANY of this a second's thought? And, if not, how is it relevant?
Gould is an able writer, and by and large this book is a real contribution; I just don't see any evidence of his having employed any discrimination against his own estimations. At all. Ever.
Wrapping The Beatles Up in Their Cultural Moment May 25, 2009
S. Sinclair (Howell, MI, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a good effort that does what many of the 'Beatle' books haven't attempted in the past, which makes for an interesting treatment on the subject(s). The author brings a heavy dose of cultural studies, a more recent trend in modern scholarship, to expain the Beatles phenomenon, with a rigorous sociological and historical argument. He does a nice job of putting the Beatles squarely into their own time and context. First, before they exploded on to the World stage, as they were influenced by American culture and British domestic events. Second, after conquering the world, with their friends and contemporaries in art, music, film and poetry. I think this was the most interesting part if the book: their relationship to their comtemporaries in the avant-garde. His technical interpretations of their songs are more impressive than his subjective interpretations, as some of those come off as stretched. There are also some very good observations and factual tidbits that even a know-it-all Beatlemaniac will be surprised with. Recommended.
 Awsome book to read April 14, 2009
Gift Card Recipient (CA USA)
I read this book and I thought that it was a great bio. He is great on the detailing the albums and the songs and how they came to be. I see some great musical history in this book.
A marvelous read! March 26, 2009
S. Kohn (Cleveland, OH)
I just finished this book, and I thought it was terrific. The author did a great job of explaining the historical and cultural currents that surrounded and informed the Beatles and their successes. Occasionally the historical sidebars went on a bit long, but this was not a problem. The historical references were as interesting as the details of the Beatle's lives and the analysis of their music. By the end, I felt like I had a much better understanding of the sixties. I highly recommend this book to any Beatle fan. It is an impressive accomplishment.
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