It's a testament to how good a book is that you seem to say every chapter is the best. I'm not going to go back and read my 21 previous reviews of Rob Sheffield's Dreaming the Beatles - right, I'm reviewing this book just about chapter by chapter - because I'm more in the mood to write this review than do even a modicum of research, but it sure feels like I've said that lots of times in the past nearly year. And each time I say that, I usually put in the proviso that this chapter really is the best in the book. Which is exactly how I feel about this one, which is about The Beatles in the decade of the 70s, not individually (the focus of some of the other chapters in this book), but, somehow, as a group, typified by Capitol's release of their Rock 'n' Roll Music double-vinyl album in 1976, and kindred releases, and lost chances, all culminating with the Dakota in New York City in December 1980.Sheffield brings his customary intensity and light touch to the subject, getting us to twist and shout and just about everything in between and before and beyond as we read this chapter. We learn that even Ringo felt used by the album - "When Ringo feels degraded, you know things are out of hand" - and how John's line to the effect that one can be a "delinquent" by buying a "rock and roll book" empowered Sheffield. As is clear from the first page of Dreaming the Beatles, this is as much Sheffield's autobiography as it is The Beatles biography, and that's key to why it's such irresistible reading.
We hear again about what we already knew - John and Paul, in New York at the Dakota, almost went down to Rockefeller Center for an impromptu appearance on Saturday Night Live in response to Lorne Michaels' running gag - and some things we didn't, like Lennon's statement (in a sworn affidavit) at the end of November 1980 that The Beatles had "plans to stage a reunion concert". Lost opportunities, which just an excruciating month later became impossible to ever recover.
Sheffield importantly mentions that Lennon was murdered by someone with "a legally purchased handgun". I don't have to tell you the sick synchrony of that with the legally purchased semi-automatic that took the lives of 17 people, many of them students, at Parkland High School in Florida last week. Not only is the legal age (18) at which someone can purchase a firearm lower in many states than the age at which someone can buy a drink (21), it is easier to purchase a more deadly long gun than a handgun in many states as well. This insanity has to fucking end, beginning with voting out of office all the NRA-whipped Republicans who stand in the way of sensible gun reform.
The murder of John Lennon didn't get that reform, and so far neither have the subsequent mass shootings at schools, concerts, and houses of worship. But the murder of John Lennon did extinguish a part of our innocence - at least, my innocence - in a way slightly different but related to the awful eradications of innocence that attended the murders of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy. Dion's "Abraham, Martin and John" (written by Dick Holler) captured part of this in 1968.
The end of 1980 also brought the loss of Marshall McLuhan (who actually had been interviewed by John and Yoko a few years earlier). McLuhan died of natural causes - a stroke - but his death was as traumatic and life-changing for me as Lennon's. Tina and I went up to Toronto for Marshall's funeral (I'd worked with Marshall at the end of the 1970s), and I've written half a dozen books either completely or mostly devoted to explicating and expanding his work since then (Digital McLuhan, McLuhan in Age of Social Media, etc).
I've written no books about John Lennon or The Beatles, but he and they have figured in my science fiction novels and stories. One nice thing about time travel is you can have a chance to undo some terrible event, like the murder of John Lennon, by traveling back to the past. But that's fiction. In the world of reality, the best you can do is read Rob Sheffield's book.
And I'll be back soon with a review of one of the dwindling number of remaining chapters in this one of a kind book, Dreaming the Beatles.
See also Review of Rob Sheffield's Dreaming the Beatles 1 of X: The Love Affair ... 2 of X: The Heroine with a Thousand Faces ... 3 of X: Dear Beatles ... 4 of X: Paradox George ... 5 of X: The Power of Yeah ... 6 of X: The Case for Ringo ... 7 of X: Anatomy of a Ride ... 8 of X: Rubber Soul on July 4 ... 9 of X: Covers ... 10 of X: I. A. Richards ... 11 of X: Underrated Revolver ... 12 of X: Sgt. Pepper ... 13 of X: Beatles vs. Stones ... 14 of X: Unending 60s ... 15 of x: Voting for McCartney, Again ... 16 of x: "I'm in Love, with Marsha Cup" ... 17 of X: The Split ... 18 of X: "Absolute Elsewhere" ... 19 of X: (Unnecessary but Brilliant) Defense of McCartney ... 20 of X: "All Things Must Pass" ... 21 of X: Resistance ... 22: The 70s Till the End ... 23: Near the Science Fiction Shop ... 24 of 24: The Last Two
And here's "It's Real Life" -- free alternate history short story about The Beatles, made into a radio play and audiobook and winner of The Mary Shelley Award 2023
"Ian, Isaac, and John" and "Saving Lennon" in this antho
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