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Fluffy
Administrator
USA
10739 Posts |
 Posted - 07/11/2003 : 6:05:02 PM
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Book Recommendation:
Liverpool Fantasy by Larry Kirwin(of the band Black 47)
I was driving around the B 52's band, crew and tour manager the other day and the TM recommended this book to me. I was playing a CD called "Songs From the Material World: A Tribute to George Harrison" in my car and it got me and the TM talking about The Beatles and I told him what a huge fan I was and he asked if I had heard of this book his friend had written. I had not, but was very interested. Later the TM asked me to run out and buy him a copy of the CD and while I was at the book store I picked up a copy of the aforementioned book for both me and my dad(as he is also a big Beatles fan). I have only started it but so far it is wonderful.
The premise is this(from the back of the book):
It's 1987, and the Beatles are gathering in Liverpool for a reunion. It has been 25 years since John Lennon walked out of EMI studios during the recording of Please Please Me, taking George and Ringo with him. Paul has since become the world-famous Las Vegas entertainer Paul Montana, and he returns to a changed Liverpool for the first TIMe since 1962, hoping to reunite with his boyhood chums. Father George, now a Jesuit priest, is recovering from a nervous breakdown; John is embittered and on the dole-his son Julian is a member of the semi-fascist National Front. Ringo lives on the earnings of his entrepreneurial hairdressing wife, while he and John sit in weekends with old rivals, Gerry and the Pacemakers. The streets are uneasy-the National Front has recently gone into govt with the Tories. It is Lennon's curse that he can imagine what MIGHT have been. Liverpool Fantasy is a blackly comic meditation on the enduring hazards of friendship, the alchemy of collaboration, life as a musician, and what the world without the Beatles looks like.
If you still aren't convinced, read some of the reviews at Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1560254971/qid=1057960090/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/102-0332414-4883319
Or go to the book store and read Jack Douglas' intro to the book. It's too much to type here, but Jack Douglas worked with John solo and with Yoko and with George on Concert for Bangladesh. He was with John during the "lost weekend" daze, and with him 10 mins before he died in the studio. JD says that he was amazed at how brilliantly Larry Kirwin captured his characters. JD asked:
"Was LK there with me? Was he there by my side in Liverpool when I saw and heard 1st hand the love those people had for the Beatles? Feels like he was. Was he a fly on the wall during the Imagine Sessions? He must have been.......Or on those drunken nites with John in L.A.? Or with us when at the Double Fantasy sessions John would ask me, "are we finished then?" and when I told him we were, he would come into the control room, sit next to me and tell me stories about him and the boys that would go on for hours sometimes saying 'you really don't get it yet Jack'. I do now. Larry gets IT. Larry must have been there with me. How else could he have written a book like this.
His description of the reunion is hair-raising. I had heard John speak of it many TIMes(it was almost at hand)and it is what I imagined it might be. It is a nightmarish book, but when I confront the reality of what happened to John I almost wish for a Liverpool Fantasy." -Jack Douglas Producer/Composer
I found these for anyone interested in checking them out. They are press clippings from the assassination of John Lennon.
http://www.angelfire.com/pq/yesterdaysmusic/papers.html
http://members.tripod.com/~taz4158/jlpress.html |
Peace & Keep the Faith
Fluffy         
"THE MUSIC BUSINESS IS A CRUEL AND SHALLOW MONEY TRENCH-- A LONG PLASTIC HALLWAY WHERE THIEVES AND PIMPS RUN FREE AND GOOD MEN DIE LIKE DOGS. THERE'S ALSO A NEGATIVE SIDE..." -Hunter S. Thompson |
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4 BIG Beatles fans (all else may ignore)
