It has been more than half a century since the world’s biggest band broke up, and still, with the Beatles, there’s always something new. Even if your bookcase is groaning under its ever-expanding library of Beatles books, this spring brings three new tomes you may want to explore.
“The Beatles by Jim Marshall: Live at Candlestick Park 1966,” curated by Amelia Davis with text by Joel Selvin, is a photo book featuring the work of photojournalist Jim Marshall, the official photographer for the band’s final live concert in 1966. There are the concert shots, of course, but also backstage moments with guests from Mick Jagger to Joan Baez, as well as close-up portraits of each Beatle.
In “With a Little Help From Their Friends: The Beatles and The People Who Made Them,” writer Stuart Maconie takes a new tack by telling the band’s story in short chapters from the perspective of one hundred different people in their lives. It starts with Ivan Vaughn who introduced John Lennon and Paul McCartney and ends with Allen Klein, who drove them apart. In between are famous names like John’s Aunt Mimi and Paul’s dad Jim as well as George Martin and Yoko Ono but also figures like British journalist Maureen Cleave who was one of the first journalists to take the band seriously and to earn their trust; Pablo Fanque, the 19th-century circus performer who inspired “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” and Glyn Johns, the legendary studio maven who served as engineer on “Let It Be.”
Most distinctive, however, is “Where the Music Had to Go: How Bob Dylan and the Beatles Changed Each Other and the World,” by New York Times editor Jim Windolf. The book retells the story of Dylan and the Beatles, but focuses mostly where they influenced or interacted with each other. In a recent video interview, Windolf noted that there are plenty of Beatle fans who find Dylan abrasive and overrated, while there are Dylanologists who sneer at the pop songwriting of Lennon and McCartney.
He loves them all. “When I was 12 years old, I would listen to [Dylan’s] ‘Desire’ and McCartney’s ‘Band on the Run’ back to back,” he recalled in a video interview.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
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Q: How did this book come about?
I’d been a guest on a Beatles’ podcast, “I Am the Eggpod,” discussing an essay I’d written on Paul McCartney’s “Venus and Mars,” and I wanted to go back on there and thought the Beatles and Bob Dylan would be a good subject, so I started doing some vague research so I could sound like I knew what I was talking about.
That led me to realize that the facts weren’t settled: different biographies would have different times and places for their first meeting and other bigger factual errors.
It was kind of murky whether all four Beatles had seen the 1966 Royal Albert concert — some accounts said it was only John and George — but when I interviewed Paul, he had such a distinct memory of the electric portion. And there’s another account of all four Beatles trying to visit Dylan after the show. So that was another small thing.
Initially, I wanted just to get an accurate account of how many times that they saw each other and what happened and then I put on my critic’s hat and look at how they influenced each other and how deep it went.
This eluded other biographers because they treated each moment as an isolated incident and hadn’t tried to put it in a broader context, while I was looking for this connection.
Q: In the ‘60s, Dylan seems resentful over John Lennon being influenced by him, writing “Fourth Time Around” almost as a diss track, but he not only was influenced by the Beatles himself, he was known for reconfiguring folk melodies, especially from Great Britain, to write his songs. Did he have a blind spot there?
It’s true that he took parts of melodies, even for “Blowin’ In the Wind,” from folk songs and old spirituals that he heard other groups singing, which annoyed those groups. That was standard for him.
It must have been more that Lennon was copying his style than stealing any particular Dylan song, so he felt encroached upon — maybe it’s because Lennon and the Beatles were bigger and he thought, “Doesn’t he already have enough and now he’s coming into my territory with ‘You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away’ and ‘Norwegian Wood.’”
Q: So were they more friends or rivals in the ‘60s?
They did have some tension, but I think they genuinely liked each other. The way Dylan laughs at Lennon’s jokes, it shows somebody who has real affection for somebody else, and Dylan said at the time, “I always like to see John,” so I just take it on faith that he’s not lying in that statement.
Lennon and Dylan couldn’t decide who was the alpha male, but George Harrison looked up to Dylan and was more deferential toward him and that helped him have a long-term friendship with him.
McCartney’s a bit off to the side because he has such a different set of talents from Dylan. I think Dylan pushed him to change the way he wrote songs, although they sound nothing like Dylan songs, but he just challenged himself to write more interesting lyrics and write about different kinds of things. They became friendly in 1971 when McCartney was making “Ram” in New York, and they were both with their wives and kids so it was a good match.
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Q: Did your perceptions of Dylan or any of the Beatles change while you were writing the book?
The one thing that stands out to me is realizing that McCartney is the toughest of them all, which didn’t occur to me beforehand.
Lennon is mercurial and all over the place — one day he thinks he’s Jesus and one day he’s insecure. And Dylan vacillates in that same way. McCartney is so cheerful and positive in his demeanor that it conceals his steely toughness, where he can withstand anything.
It is true that McCartney was bossy in the studio, but he had reason to be because he was the best arranger of anybody. I always feel bad for George, but Paul knew what he wanted for “Hey Jude” — he wrote it and he was right, it would have been worse with George’s guitar licks.
McCartney just forges ahead, and nothing can stop him.