beatles history

Review: Ozzy memoir is ride through rock history
“I Am Ozzy (Grand Central Publishing, 416 pages, $26.99), by Ozzy Osbourne, with Chris Ayres: “I Am Ozzy” is a “true Hollywood story” in book format — a ride through rock ‘n’ roll history with a driver saturated in controlled substances.

The Beatles Anthology $52.83 Initially broadcast as a TV miniseries to go with the series of three Anthology double-CD albums, this set of eight documentary tapes has the heft and scope of one of Ken Burns’s expansive projects. Still, unless you are either a historian or a truly committed fan, you’ll find yourself with way more material–particularly about the Beatles’ early lives as lads in Liverpool–than you’ll want t…

Concert for Bangladesh $17.90 Before We Are the World, before the Amnesty International concerts, before Live Aid, Live 8, 46664, and all the other charitable and/or political events that have used popular music as their principal draw, there was George Harrison’s 1971 Concert for Bangladesh, a stirring affair released here in a fine two-disc set. The cause–raising money for the beleaguered people of Bangladesh (formerly East…

Wingspan (Hits & History) $19.98 While his fellow ex-bandmates busied themselves with various high-profile projects (John Lennon with Imagine and a series of high-profile media events; George Harrison with All Things Must Pass and The Concert for Bangla Desh), Paul McCartney climbed into a van with his wife and a few journeyman players and gigged at university student unions for what amounted to spare change. Of course, by 1976 t…

The Beatles Anthology Collector’s Set [VHS] $17.95 Initially broadcast as a TV miniseries to go with the series of three Anthology double-CD albums, this set of eight documentary tapes has the heft and scope of one of Ken Burns’s expansive projects. Still, unless you are either a historian or a truly committed fan, you’ll find yourself with way more material–particularly about the Beatles’ early lives as lads in Liverpool–than you’ll want t…

Raga [VHS] $19.98 This is a VHS video cassette tape….

Backbeat [VHS] $4.89 Ian Hart’s second performance as John Lennon (the first was the little-seen The Hours and Times) commands attention in this marvelous musical bio of the Beatles in Hamburg directly before their stardom. The focus is on the “5th Beatle,” Stuart Sutcliffe (Stephen Dorff), a bluesy bass guitar player who finds Germany has more interesting things (art and a woman) than music. The woman, Astrid (S…

Lennon NYC $11.98 LennoNYC DVD. LENNONYC tells the story of the legendary musician’s post-Beatles life in New York City, starting in 1971 and leading up to his untimely death in 1980. Includes interviews with those closest to John during this period, such as Elton John, music producer J…

Fire and Rain: The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, CSNY, and the Lost Story of 1970 $8.99 January 1970: the Beatles assemble one more time to put the finishing touches on Let It Be; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are wrapping up Déjà Vu; Simon and Garfunkel are unveiling Bridge Over Troubled Water; James Taylor is an upstart singer-songwriter who’s just completed Sweet Baby James. Over the course of the next twelve months, their lives–and the world around them–will change irrevocab…

A Hard Day’s Write: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Song $13.39 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 …

Who Were the Beatles? (Who Was…?) $1.77 Readers will learn about their Liverpudlian childhoods, their first forays into rock music, what Beatlemania was like, and why they broke up. It’s all here in an easy-to-read narrative with plenty of black-and-white illustrations!…

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