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Paperback Writer
A novel by Mark Shipper - The Life and Times of the Beatles: The spurious Chronicle of Their Rise to Stardom, Their Triumphs & Disasters Plus the Amazing Story of Their Ultimate Reunion.
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First published October 1, 1980
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August 27, 2024huh. about 4/5 is the most 1/2-assed, sub-cracked-magazine lampoon of the fab four possible, but then it suddenly blossoms into, like, this bittersweet (moving, even) fantasia of a 1979 reunion fulla searching q's about fans' relation to artists & vice versa, complete w/ lyrical snippet from haunting imaginary lennon track titled "please freeze me." hard to recommend when the bulk of it's so aggressively mid but talk about sticking the landing!
March 20, 2008
This may be the funniest book I've ever read! A must-read for any Beatles fan. This hilarious re-imagining of the Beatles' career is laugh-out-loud brilliant.
To give you the gist of the book's tone: The infamous "Butcher" cover originally used on the USA release of the "Yesterday and Today" LP is depicted as the cover for "MEAT - THE BEATLES".
If this book is out-of-print (as I suspect it is), I urge you to track it down on eBay or at your local used book store. I guarantee you'll get some great laughs from reading it!
To give you the gist of the book's tone: The infamous "Butcher" cover originally used on the USA release of the "Yesterday and Today" LP is depicted as the cover for "MEAT - THE BEATLES".
If this book is out-of-print (as I suspect it is), I urge you to track it down on eBay or at your local used book store. I guarantee you'll get some great laughs from reading it!
December 18, 2014
entertaining fictional farce. i laughed out loud all the way through this jocular gem. an informed beatles fan will likely understand most of the references and appreciate the humor. i particularly enjoyed the account of a late 70s beatles reunion where the band was the opening act for peter frampton.
note that this book was written before lennon's shocking death, after which "paperback writer" seemed a bit like "vaughn meader syndrome", if you know what i mean.
note that this book was written before lennon's shocking death, after which "paperback writer" seemed a bit like "vaughn meader syndrome", if you know what i mean.
July 30, 2020
Warning: Here be spoilers.
This underrated little gem is out of print, but you can probably find it used online--and who knows, with so many long-out-of-print books coming back into print as e-books, perhaps this one has a chance. (You can always cast your vote on Amazon to encourage the publisher to release it on Kindle.)
I'd found out about this novel (yes, that's what it is, not nonfiction) from the book Fab Four FAQ, which had a section on notable Beatle books. This is a tongue-in-cheek alternate history of the greatest rock band of all time. (It came out around the time the TV-movie The Rutles did, giving fans two great satires to choose from.)
I must warn you...this novel is poignant in a way that the author never intended, being written and published before John's tragic murder. This gives the ending a somewhat painful extra layer.
The premise behind the novel is that the author supposedly conducted a lengthy interview with Ringo Starr for a book on the definitive history of The Beatles...and promptly lost the notes. So the author reconstructed the history from his faulty memory. The result is an alternate history that has some points in common with reality. For example, the Beatles DID release that album with the infamous butcher cover...but it was called "Meat: The Beatles." George DID embrace religion...but it was fundamentalist Christianity, not Hinduism/Krishnaism. Sgt. Pepper was now framed as an anti-military screed. A Hard Day's Night was a dreary existential drama with no Beatle music (which flopped so badly they never made another movie). And John and Yoko, in the solo years, made friends with Sonny and Cher for a while, going on tour with them as "The Plastic Bono Band." Only after a falling-out did John drop the "B" and re-christen it "The Plastic Ono Band."
In short, the novel is basically the history of The Beatles as seen through a funhouse mirror. In fact, from what I understand, the chapter on their marijuana-fueled meeting with Bob Dylan has been quoted as reality by one Dylan biographer, who didn't know this book was a satire. Therefore, for a while, some fans insisted that the lyrics the Beatles and Bob Dylan slapped together while high as kites actually existed. Not quite. Dylan DID meet with the Fabs, and DID turn them on to marijuana (he reasoned it was more "natural" than the uppers they took to get through shows), but they never wrote a lyric called "Pneumonia Ceilings."
Shipper slaps some seriously punny names on some of the fictional supporting characters (Candy Coating, Lee Soption, Ken Percent, Ron Number), which are a bit of a stretch. (They sound a little like the names Bart Simpson makes up in his prank calls to Moe's.) But it does fit in well with the premise of an author who's lost the notes of the real events and has to make up names on the fly to fill in the blanks.
But about three-quarters of the way through, this novel goes from "alternate history" to "what-if", and that's when it becomes really interesting--and rather insightful. Languishing in sub-par solo careers (actually, Shipper's a little harder on both John's and Paul's solo work than I would have been...John especially had some great solo numbers), the boys realize that they need to reunite. They finally smooth over their business differences (which, in this version, aren't quite as legally vicious) and get to work on a new album. Before that, though, they spend an afternoon simply reconnecting as friends:
"Every time one of them would attempt to bring up the matter of business, it ended up in some form of hilarity. In a sense, this was the real Beatles' Reunion, not the publicly craved for Beatles' Reunion. This was a reunion between four old friends who'd shared the most tumultuous, creative, exhilarating, terrifying, and ultimately gratifying experience of anyone outside their generation. Nobody wanted to bring up business because it was business that drove them apart...Only those who have risen to the level where they are surrounded daily by no one but those who are either afraid of them or in awe of them can know the terrible loneliness and dehumanization of such a life...It's not surprising that they preferred the friendly abuse they were dishing out to each other to the phony, illegitimate praise they'd heard from everyone else in their individual circles for the preceding nine years."
So the boys make their new album, Get Back. But there's a problem...the music isn't the same, because they are no longer the same people who created that music. Their own experiences have changed them too much for that. This comes out in another terrific scene between John and Paul, where they bond over the same feeling--the knowledge that now that their dreams of rock stardom have come true, they are no longer driven in the same way. But Paul reassures John that just because they can't make the same kind of music doesn't mean they can't satisfy their creative urges...for themselves alone.
The album comes out...and it's a major disappointment to the fans. They go on tour...but they can only get a booking opening for Peter Frampton. And the only response they can get in concert is to their old stuff. (John compares them to Bill Haley, still playing "Rock Around The Clock" nearly thirty years later.) They try to figure out why it is that, after ten years of fans clamoring for them to get back together, the same fans wouldn't support their new material.
The answer becomes clear: it was never really the Beatles themselves all those fans wanted back, but the time in their lives the Beatles represented. As John puts it, when they hear "She Loves You", that's three minutes they're back in high school with no responsibilities. (That's rather similar to what the real-life John Lennon said when asked when the Beatles were getting back together: "When you go back to high school.")
This brings up an important question for readers: if we had gotten our wish, if the Beatles had reunited when John had been alive (or if he hadn't been killed, and they'd all performed at Live Aid or something)...would the reunion have lived up to our expectations? Or would it have fallen short as it did in Paperback Writer? Of course, we have something of an answer to that question--the recording of "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love" for the Anthology, based on John's unreleased tracks. Both were good songs, but they weren't technically Lennon-McCartney songs. So if the Beatles had become an active band again, would it really have recaptured the magic of old? I like to think that their maturity and their new experience would have made for music that was just as good, even if it wasn't the same as the old days...but one has to wonder.
The novel ends on a bittersweet but satisfying note, as the band decides not to perform as a group anymore (as Paul puts it, "you can't live in someone's past and live in their future, too"). But at least they're friends again. And maybe that alone would have been better all along than the kind of reunion we fans always thought we craved.
This underrated little gem is out of print, but you can probably find it used online--and who knows, with so many long-out-of-print books coming back into print as e-books, perhaps this one has a chance. (You can always cast your vote on Amazon to encourage the publisher to release it on Kindle.)
I'd found out about this novel (yes, that's what it is, not nonfiction) from the book Fab Four FAQ, which had a section on notable Beatle books. This is a tongue-in-cheek alternate history of the greatest rock band of all time. (It came out around the time the TV-movie The Rutles did, giving fans two great satires to choose from.)
I must warn you...this novel is poignant in a way that the author never intended, being written and published before John's tragic murder. This gives the ending a somewhat painful extra layer.
The premise behind the novel is that the author supposedly conducted a lengthy interview with Ringo Starr for a book on the definitive history of The Beatles...and promptly lost the notes. So the author reconstructed the history from his faulty memory. The result is an alternate history that has some points in common with reality. For example, the Beatles DID release that album with the infamous butcher cover...but it was called "Meat: The Beatles." George DID embrace religion...but it was fundamentalist Christianity, not Hinduism/Krishnaism. Sgt. Pepper was now framed as an anti-military screed. A Hard Day's Night was a dreary existential drama with no Beatle music (which flopped so badly they never made another movie). And John and Yoko, in the solo years, made friends with Sonny and Cher for a while, going on tour with them as "The Plastic Bono Band." Only after a falling-out did John drop the "B" and re-christen it "The Plastic Ono Band."
In short, the novel is basically the history of The Beatles as seen through a funhouse mirror. In fact, from what I understand, the chapter on their marijuana-fueled meeting with Bob Dylan has been quoted as reality by one Dylan biographer, who didn't know this book was a satire. Therefore, for a while, some fans insisted that the lyrics the Beatles and Bob Dylan slapped together while high as kites actually existed. Not quite. Dylan DID meet with the Fabs, and DID turn them on to marijuana (he reasoned it was more "natural" than the uppers they took to get through shows), but they never wrote a lyric called "Pneumonia Ceilings."
Shipper slaps some seriously punny names on some of the fictional supporting characters (Candy Coating, Lee Soption, Ken Percent, Ron Number), which are a bit of a stretch. (They sound a little like the names Bart Simpson makes up in his prank calls to Moe's.) But it does fit in well with the premise of an author who's lost the notes of the real events and has to make up names on the fly to fill in the blanks.
But about three-quarters of the way through, this novel goes from "alternate history" to "what-if", and that's when it becomes really interesting--and rather insightful. Languishing in sub-par solo careers (actually, Shipper's a little harder on both John's and Paul's solo work than I would have been...John especially had some great solo numbers), the boys realize that they need to reunite. They finally smooth over their business differences (which, in this version, aren't quite as legally vicious) and get to work on a new album. Before that, though, they spend an afternoon simply reconnecting as friends:
"Every time one of them would attempt to bring up the matter of business, it ended up in some form of hilarity. In a sense, this was the real Beatles' Reunion, not the publicly craved for Beatles' Reunion. This was a reunion between four old friends who'd shared the most tumultuous, creative, exhilarating, terrifying, and ultimately gratifying experience of anyone outside their generation. Nobody wanted to bring up business because it was business that drove them apart...Only those who have risen to the level where they are surrounded daily by no one but those who are either afraid of them or in awe of them can know the terrible loneliness and dehumanization of such a life...It's not surprising that they preferred the friendly abuse they were dishing out to each other to the phony, illegitimate praise they'd heard from everyone else in their individual circles for the preceding nine years."
So the boys make their new album, Get Back. But there's a problem...the music isn't the same, because they are no longer the same people who created that music. Their own experiences have changed them too much for that. This comes out in another terrific scene between John and Paul, where they bond over the same feeling--the knowledge that now that their dreams of rock stardom have come true, they are no longer driven in the same way. But Paul reassures John that just because they can't make the same kind of music doesn't mean they can't satisfy their creative urges...for themselves alone.
The album comes out...and it's a major disappointment to the fans. They go on tour...but they can only get a booking opening for Peter Frampton. And the only response they can get in concert is to their old stuff. (John compares them to Bill Haley, still playing "Rock Around The Clock" nearly thirty years later.) They try to figure out why it is that, after ten years of fans clamoring for them to get back together, the same fans wouldn't support their new material.
The answer becomes clear: it was never really the Beatles themselves all those fans wanted back, but the time in their lives the Beatles represented. As John puts it, when they hear "She Loves You", that's three minutes they're back in high school with no responsibilities. (That's rather similar to what the real-life John Lennon said when asked when the Beatles were getting back together: "When you go back to high school.")
This brings up an important question for readers: if we had gotten our wish, if the Beatles had reunited when John had been alive (or if he hadn't been killed, and they'd all performed at Live Aid or something)...would the reunion have lived up to our expectations? Or would it have fallen short as it did in Paperback Writer? Of course, we have something of an answer to that question--the recording of "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love" for the Anthology, based on John's unreleased tracks. Both were good songs, but they weren't technically Lennon-McCartney songs. So if the Beatles had become an active band again, would it really have recaptured the magic of old? I like to think that their maturity and their new experience would have made for music that was just as good, even if it wasn't the same as the old days...but one has to wonder.
The novel ends on a bittersweet but satisfying note, as the band decides not to perform as a group anymore (as Paul puts it, "you can't live in someone's past and live in their future, too"). But at least they're friends again. And maybe that alone would have been better all along than the kind of reunion we fans always thought we craved.
November 23, 2012
This "spurious" tale of the Beatles' history came out when fans were truly clamoring for a reunion. Shipper takes the well-known and oft-told tales of the band's rise to fame, their brilliance, their breakup and post-Beatles life and twists it ever so slightly, sometimes not so gently, to give us a look at what a reunion MIGHT have been. In essence, Shipper was saying that in their brief time together the Beatles gave us everything they had -- which John and George said themselves -- and to wish for a reunion might tear down all those good memories. This was written about 4 years before John's death, and I'd be willing to bet that if he had read this he would've been highly amused by it. If you care about the Beatles, you owe it to yourself to find this book. Like me, I think you'll find yourself smiling, with a little bit of regret as well, when you're done.
September 12, 2021
I think I must have originally bought this book in 1981 or 1982, after John Lennon died but before I finished high school. I was a huge Beatles fan back in those days, and pretty much everybody knew it; at my 30th high school reunion no fewer than 10 people told me their clearest memory of me from high school was my Beatles obsession. Anyway, I think I originally bought this book because the idea of a Beatles reunion was bittersweet since Lennon was dead. And then I shoved it onto a shelf and forgot I even had it until I was packing up my books to move to a new house.
Anyway, it was fun to run across it again. It's still just as cute and funny as I remember it, though now that I'm older and don't have as much patience some of the jokes got old much more quickly. The ending was definitely bittersweet, and I'm not sure the reunion would have actually gone as badly as the writer envisioned it, but it's certainly one possibility (or, at least, it WAS certainly one possiblity) for how things might have gone. I do wish Shipper had had the freedom to write the dialogue more closely to the profanity-laced way the actual Beatles talked, though.
Anyway, it was fun to run across it again. It's still just as cute and funny as I remember it, though now that I'm older and don't have as much patience some of the jokes got old much more quickly. The ending was definitely bittersweet, and I'm not sure the reunion would have actually gone as badly as the writer envisioned it, but it's certainly one possibility (or, at least, it WAS certainly one possiblity) for how things might have gone. I do wish Shipper had had the freedom to write the dialogue more closely to the profanity-laced way the actual Beatles talked, though.
October 29, 2007
Humorous reimagining of the Beatles' career (when Lennon said they were 'Bigger than Jesus', he meant 'Taller'). Some of the jokes are played too long, and the honesty of the end of the book adds a sad note to a book that didn't need one (especially as the book was written before Lennon's death and thus could have been free of real melancholy). Recommended for Beatles fans and those with an interest in the cult of Beatlemania.
June 10, 2011
Everyone pretty much knows the story of The Beatles rise to fame, but try to imagine a humorous tale in the same vein as a Monty Python skit or a Rutles twisted fictional story. It's as if everything you previously knew about The Beatles was completely and utterly wrong.
A very amusingly funny and creative alternative story of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr — The Beatles.
A truly classic fictional novel.
A very amusingly funny and creative alternative story of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr — The Beatles.
A truly classic fictional novel.
August 9, 2024
The author's name is actually Shipper.
Read this soon after it was published, when the list of Beatle related books was much much smaller.
It's a fun read, and a parody of the Beatle lives in the '70s.
A little cringey in places, the humor is more silly than smart, and the characterizations are fanciful.
Read this soon after it was published, when the list of Beatle related books was much much smaller.
It's a fun read, and a parody of the Beatle lives in the '70s.
A little cringey in places, the humor is more silly than smart, and the characterizations are fanciful.
September 12, 2020
This book might have been hilarious when it was first published (either 1978 or 1979), but I found it sad and somewhat offensive. Sad because a number of the "characters" in this novel have died since it's publication, and offensive in how the author characterizes the member of The Beatles (and others around them), which has nothing to do with how or who they are in reality.
I wanted to read this (and bought an over-priced used copy since it is out-of-print) because the hosts of a Beatles podcast I sometimes listen to both raved about it. I supposed it is intended to be somewhat irreverent, but like I said I just found it offensive, and rarely funny.
I wanted to read this (and bought an over-priced used copy since it is out-of-print) because the hosts of a Beatles podcast I sometimes listen to both raved about it. I supposed it is intended to be somewhat irreverent, but like I said I just found it offensive, and rarely funny.
July 22, 2021
Written before John Lennon's tragic assassination, this book hysterically re-imagines the Beatles as a mostly talent-less group of people who almost lucked into fame and their tragic reunion after their breakup. It's sharply written but just re-reading it makes me sad once more at the great loss we suffered when Lennon was killed making a Beatles reunion in our reality impossible.
August 6, 2017
I LOVED this book the first time I read it, which was many years ago. It wasn't as hilarious the second time around, but I still enjoyed it.
July 18, 2021
mildly amusing at times, although pretty repetitive and silly. touching ending :)
December 15, 2023
My least favourite book about the Beatles. I didn't appreciate the humour.
March 17, 2009
This is silly and fun, and back when I read it (check the date and gasp!) I would have given it four stars at very least. The story of writing a song with Bob Dylan is the best part of the book. Note that this was written when it was still possible for the Beatles to reunite.
July 30, 2007
I loved this book when I was 12---now not so much.
Silly.
Silly.
October 9, 2008
Fun, Pythonesque twisting of the Beatles hagiography.
Read
July 24, 2011funny....a book that I haven't seen for 25 years!
December 24, 2012
one of the best books i have ever read!
July 4, 2013
Thought this parody book would have been funnier.
May 16, 2014
Hilarious!
April 3, 2015
great satirical novel, p[acked with jokes only true fanatics will understand. I laughed my act off!
August 2, 2019
Reread this for the umpteenth time. One of my feel good books :)
February 21, 2016
I waited almost 40 years to find a copy of this book, in Beatles circles it's regarded as very funny. Maybe it was when it was published, but it was not worth the wait.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews