Book Review – All You Need is Love

Ever since I began reading books about my all-time favorite group, have searched out for those that didn’t exactly regurgitate the same stories. Or, if they did, added something new or took a different approach with dissecting The Lads and their impact. Harder than it looks as so many have taken on this subject with varying degrees of success and scope. 2024’s search came down to Peter Brown’s and Steven Gaines’ unique amalgamation of unpublished and unvarnished interviews.

This piqued my interest since Peter Brown was one of Brian Epstein’s personal assistants during the 1960s and continued to work for The Beatles’ Apple Corps as a senior executive after Epstein’s death. While Steven Gaines (born 1946) is an American author, journalist, and radio show host. Both co-wrote The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of The Beatles, which covered the period from the group’s teenage years, Beatlemania, and their break-up, until after Lennon’s murder in December 1980.

Another oral history of The Beatles, as it were, this time centered “… from never-before-seen interviews”, so a must-read for this Beatlemaniac senior then:

All You Need is Love: The Beatles in their own words

Must be said right from the start of this review, the selection of “All You Need is Love” for the title is a tad provocative. Originally written by John Lennon for the world’s first televised satellite link-up between 25 countries worldwide, known as Our World, it encapsulated the optimistic mood of the Summer of Love (1967). A rather joyous song, with a straightforward simplicity of message perfectly rendered in melody and verse for the time and the global audience all ears to hear it.

The polar opposite of what’s conveyed in the unearthed interviews, now printed on the book’s pages, which I surmise was the point.

Pretty quickly, after diving into the tome, I flashed back (perhaps too often… maybe it’d PTSD) to aspects of Peter Doggett’s You Never Give Me Your Money: The Beatles After the Breakup. At least with some of the uncovered interviews post-1970, and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. Just that a number of the facets that come to light to the reader, besides the breathtaking impact the Fab Four had on the world at the time, are the twists and pressures of others that would lead to their devastating breakup.

That may turn off a few readers, but that’s clearly not Peter’s nor Steven’s intent, and the interviews are a fascinating lot to peruse and gleam from, with some gossip on the side.

Particularly, from the women with their inside looking out perspective of their significant others in the maelstrom of Beatlemania and other key points of their lives: Yoko along with ex-wives Cynthia Lennon, Pattie Harrison Clapton, and Maureen Starkey. The only thing I’d really wish more of would be from Linda McCartney which hadn’t seen the light of day, but the others provided more than enough to whet appetites and are easily a highlight of the book.

Not to say the others represented here are lacking, from “Magic” Alex Mardas, Arthur Janov (Primal Scream), the cad Allan Klein, Peter Brown himself, along with the lawyers, accountants, businessmen, and other important behind-the-scenes functionaries and Liverpool friends who were always under the radar. Just be ready for Rashomon-like interpretations of the same events, as would be expected from those too close to the event horizon of the phenomenon that was The Beatles.

I’d also have to agree with another’s analysis of the tale: “A gothic tale of drugs, sex, music, greed, booze, and genius…an entire generation’s loss of innocence.” ―People

All You Need is Love offers another thoughtful overall perspective for the voracious fans of the group, its members and their history (before, during, and after) that fills in the gaps in-between John M. Borack’s The Beatles 100 compendium and Doggett’s insightful but difficult codex of their breakup. Is it entertaining? Yes, but is it easily digestible for Beatlemaniacs? For this reader and I’d surmise for others, it is not since it delves into “The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long” realm.

While it’s not as blistering as the latter’s list of the legal and personal woes in the band’s separation, nor as observant and intuitive as the former, this book will linger… and isn’t that why we read?

Audiobook

All You Need is Love was also released by Audible in audiobook format on the same day of publication of the book (April 9, 2024), along with the Audio CD by Macmillan Audio. Clocking in at a reasonably paced 9 hours 44 minutes in length, it also brought an interesting aspect to the proceedings since it offered not one central narrator but an entire lot to interpret the book’s uniquely candid and previously unpublished interviews to bear.

Adam Stevens, Anthony Howell, Ben Jacobson, Emma Gregory, Todd Kramer, Philip Stewart, Robert G. Slade, ShinFei Chen, Stefan Menaul, and Mickey Knighton do the heavy lifting. And whoever did the Alan Klein voicing portions was so good at it, you wanted to take a shower afterward to wash it off. They were that suitable. And while any revisit of The Beatles and their times is always welcome by this listener, the audiobook and its narrators made you relive the time for better and for worse.