Philip Norman > Quotes

“Yoko Ono, quite simply, did things that John Lennon did not dare.”
― Philip Norman, Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation

“Paul said it would be better for them to express their views back in Britain, because “there, people listen a bit more. In America, they hold everything against you.”
― Philip Norman, John Lennon: The Life

“wherever Haley’s voice rang out with “One, two, three o’clock, four o’clock RAHK…” the gritty drama on the screen was totally eclipsed by mayhem among the audience. Boys and girls alike went literally berserk, shrieking like banshees, tearing at the fabric of their seats, lurching out to dance in the aisles or engage in mass brawls that required dozens of police to contain them.”
― Philip Norman, John Lennon: The Life

“He has been a trouble spot for many years in discipline, but has somewhat mended his ways. Requires the sanction of ‘losing a job’ to keep him on the rails. But I believe he is not beyond redemption and he could really turn out a fairly responsible adult who might go far.”
― Philip Norman, John Lennon: The Life

“fatal stabbing of a young black spectator while Mick Jagger vainly appealed to the crowd to “cool out” and love one another. Good-bye Sixties; welcome to the future.”
― Philip Norman, Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation

“He became closest to Eric Idle, the most hyperactive of the troupe, who was exactly his age and a competent guitarist and, moreover, had to fight Cleese and Palin for screen time just as he used to John and Paul for album time.”
― Philip Norman, George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle

“You know...give peace a chance, not shoot people for peace. All we need is love. I believe it. it's damned hard but I absolutely believe it. We're not the first to say 'Imagine no countries' or 'Give peace a chance' but we're carrying that torch, like the Olympic torch, passing it from hand to hand, to each other, to each country, to each generation. That's our job...I've never claimed divinity. I've never claimed purity of soul. I've never claimed to have the answer to life. I can only put out songs and answer questions as honestly as I can, but only as honestly as I can, no more, no less.

"I used to think that the world was doing it to me and that the world owed me something, and that either the conservatives or the socialists or the fascists or the communists or the Christians or the Jews were doing something to me, and when you're a teenybopper that's what you think. I'm 40 now. I don't think that anymore, 'cause I found out it doesn't fucking work. The thing goes on anyway and all you're doing is jacking off and screaming about what your mommy or daddy or society did...I have found out personally...that I am responsible for it as well as them. I am part of them.”
― Philip Norman, John Lennon: The Life

“Alf then told John he must choose between going with Mummy or staying with Daddy. If you want to tear a small child in two, there is no better way.”
― Philip Norman, John Lennon: The Life

“staff are terrified of them, and not without reason.”
― Philip Norman, Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation

“Late one night, as he walked back alone from a Kasuals gig, a truck screeched to a halt beside him and a group of drunken white youths jumped out, screaming racial abuse. Jimmy took off across a cornfield, easily outdistanced his would-be attackers and then, rather like Cary Grant in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, lay doggo on top of Betty-Jean, until they gave up and drove away.”
― Philip Norman, Wild Thing: The Short, Spellbinding Life of Jimi Hendrix

“Paul then asked if being managed by Brian would make any difference to the music they played. Brian assured him that it would not. There was a second uneasy silence, again broken by John. “Right then, Brian,” he said. “Manage”
― Philip Norman, Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation

“For the first time since its birth in Britain’s industrial dawn, Liverpool was deliberately invoked as a source of excitement, glamour, and novelty.”
― Philip Norman, Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation

“After meeting John, my father took me aside and said, “The other one was better looking.”
― Philip Norman, John Lennon: The Life

“escaped from the theater by running into the adjacent fire station, sliding down the firemen’s pole, and escaping in a police car while one of the engines rushed out to create a diversion.”
― Philip Norman, Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation

“Imagine six apartments It isn’t hard to do. One is full of fur coats The other’s full of shoes.”
― Philip Norman, Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation

“The pièce de résistance, put into the can on the very first day, owed its inspiration to Little Richard, who would whip audiences to further frenzy between numbers by self-congratulatory cries of “Well...all right!” Buddy turned the phrase into a gentle love song infused with all his special quality of patience and optimism and his developing ability to make personal sentiments into universal ones. “Well, All Right” is a riposte to all the criticism and condescension that teenagers faced from their elders in the rock 'n' roll fifties—and have in every decade since. The setting is as adventurously simple as that of “Everyday”: Buddy plays flamenco-accented acoustic guitar, with only a plashing cymbal for company. The mood is not one of youthful anger and defiance but of maturity before its time: calm, stoical, steadfast in affirming its “dreams and wishes.” The intimacy in the voice could equally be that of lover or elder brother. Girl or boy, you can imagine you and he are alone together, gazing into the fire and imagining a bright future when the young will “live and love with all our might,” which could almost be a prophecy of the sixties' hippie culture.”
― Philip Norman, Rave On: The Biography of Buddy Holly

“have fired more people than any comparable employer unit in the world. They make Lord Beaverbrook look like Jesus.”
― Philip Norman, Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation

“felt personally betrayed that the man who had sung “Imagine no possessions” now had accumulated costly real estate and herds of prize cattle.”
― Philip Norman, Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation

“He had always loved to draw and paint, begging to be bought pencils, paint boxes, and paper rather than toys, spending hours wrapped up in worlds of his own creation.”
― Philip Norman, John Lennon: The Life

“John’s niceness about signing his Double Fantasy album temporarily disarmed him.”
― Philip Norman, Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation

“If there was any crying to do, he would do it on his own. He wouldn’t want anyone else to see him like that.”
― Philip Norman, John Lennon: The Life

“Recorded at the same time, but not destined for release until 19 months later, was John’s ‘Across the Universe’, melding the sweetest and loneliest of his lyrics (‘Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box…’) with the mantra he’d soon be chanting in the Himalayas. He wanted a female chorus totally without artifice so, rather than professional backing singers, it was decided to use two of the fans permanently on watch outside Abbey Road studios. Paul was deputed to fetch them, and picked out a pair he recognised from his own front gate in Cavendish Avenue. The girls’ awestruck voices created just the right effect for ‘Across the”
― Philip Norman, Paul McCartney: The Life

“Yoko has a refrigerated room, just for keeping her fur coats. She’s got rooms full of those clothes racks like you see at Marks and Spencer.”
― Philip Norman, Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation

“On 22 November, the day of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, Parlophone released the band’s second album, With the Beatles. Advance orders of half a million put it instantly at the top of the UK album charts, so finally ending the seven-month reign there of Please Please Me. It would eventually sell one million copies, more than any album previously released in Britain except the cast recording of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific.”
― Philip Norman, Paul McCartney: The Life

“The four who stopped running, who stood still at last in 1966, looking curiously about them, were beings such as the modern world had never seen. Only in ancient times, when boy emperors and Pharaohs were clothed, even fed, with pure gold, had very young men commanded an equivalent adoration, fascination and constant, expectant scrutiny.”
― Philip Norman, Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation

“They had scarcely become Beatles when they became beatless once again, for the Scottish tour had left Tommy Moore feeling more battered than his drums and he’d decided to return to his far more profitable occupation of driving a forklift truck at the Garston bottle factory. The others showed up there and followed his forklift around the factory yard pleading with him to reconsider but to no avail; he thus became the only person ever to resign from the Beatles.”
― Philip Norman, George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle