What They've Been Saying about It's Real Life: An Alternate History of The Beatles (the novel)

"Paul is original his books and music are different than the norm -- they are clever!" -- Billy J. Kramer🎶

"a wild ride" -- Michael McLuhan 🎶

"now I’m desperate to hear songs from the Asimov/McCartney musical" -- Thomas MacFarlane, The Beatles and McLuhan and Lennon and McCartney: Painting with Sound 🎶

""I got so hooked that I stayed up way beyond my bedtime and read it in one go. It was not just extremely entertaining (I started looking forward to the Tom Petty phone calls) but also a nifty take on averting the grandfather paradox." Geoffrey Winthrop-Young, Kittler and the Media🎶

"Paul Levinson's It's Real Life is an incredibly unique and captivating peek behind rock and roll's mysterious curtain. The idea that the story delves into an alternate world adds to its page-turning intrigue. Highly recommended!" -- Steven Manchester, #1 bestselling author, The Menu 🎶

"brilliantly entertaining ... it’s no wonder this novel is such a transportive experience: it does exactly what our favorite songs do. It transports us, makes us remember, and wish ... you couldn’t find a better escape than Paul Levinson’s It’s Real Life." -- Anthony Marinelli, Amazon 🎶

"one of my favourite moments treats us to a Beatles concert in Central Park" -- Keith Soltys, Core Dump 🎶

"a fascinating tale of what could have been had John Lennon not been murdered ... a passionate celebration of a musical genius whose life was prematurely cut short ... a science fictional celebration [by] a master of speculative fiction and alternate reality, Paul Levinson" -- Chris Cosmain, Novikov Windows and The Amazon Anomaly 🎶

"Such a wonderful story! I grew up as a real science fiction fan and time travel and alternative history has always been a favorite SF genre of mine. The story offers such a speculative piece that keeps one thinking. A detective story mixed with all of this. Just a wonderful story. With synchronicity mixed into it and the mention of Roots of Coincidence, one of my favorite books from long ago. In many ways, a story for our times after Covid as many think we are living in some alternate reality or alternative history." -- John Fraim, Amazon 🎶

"What would you do if you came from an alternate reality in which John Lennon was never killed — and you became accidentally aware of our own universe? This excellent, eerie novel explores that question in ingenious style. It’s a page-turner with philosophical heft and a great sense of rock history (not to mention some surprise cameos by Lennon, David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, and other luminaries). Highly recommended for fans of Philip K. Dick and/or the Beatles." -- SVL, Goodreads 🎶

"Paul Levinson's It's Real Life is a page-turning exploration into that multiverse known as rock and roll. But it is much more than a marvelous adventure narrated by a master storyteller...it is also an exquisite (and absolutely non-didactic) meditation on the very nature of alternate history." -- Jack Dann, A Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History 🎶

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Get the novel on Kindle, paper, or in hardcover here.

Book Review: Do You Want to Know a Secret? The Autobiography of Billy J. Kramer

The music of the 1960s was unique and extraordinary, and typified and accompanied the events of that age - the good and the bad, the Civil Rights movement, women's rights, getting to the Moon, but also the Vietnam War, riots in the streets of America, and the assassinations - and made that music an indelible emblem of that decade, much as Shakespeare's plays did for the Elizabethan era, and Impression for the end of the 19th century.  Hegel termed such spearheads of artistic endeavor the "spirit of an age".

When you're actually living through such times, though, rather than looking back at them in history, it can be tough to say that this or that creative surge is really a spirit of an age.   Possibly we love those creations because we just happened to grow up with them, not because they have enduring relevance. When, in the 1970s, I had characters in a time-travel story listening to the Beatles in the 1990s (the story later became Loose Ends), several editors asked me if was sure that the Beatles would still be on anyone's mind 20 years from then.  I was sure.   But only time could prove that.  As indeed it has.

The Beatles were at the top of that enormous accomplishment, followed by Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and you can debate who follows on that list. But the accomplishment of the Beatles was and continues to be in a class of its own, with the group's recordings still listened to daily by millions of people around the world.

We naturally want to know as much as possible about these geniuses. Autobiographies are great, but, let's face it, everyone wants to make themselves look good, and the impulse to leave out details that make you look not so good is likely irresistible.   Biographies can help with this, but they suffer from another problem, usually being too removed from the action as it's happening to provide a completely responsive and accurate account of lives and events.

Here is where Billy J. Kramer's autobiography, Do You Want to Know a Secret, comes in, providing not only Billy's own story, but what he witnessed first-hand of the Beatles, Lennon and McCartney in particular, who wrote most of Billy's greatest songs.   This makes Billy's account refreshingly original, real, and important.

Billy himself was a singer, somewhere between Elvis and Ricky Nelson, with a joie de vivre all its own, as you can see in this video of him singing my favorite of his recordings, "From a Window," released in October 1964 in the U.S. at the height of the first wave of Beatlemania.   (He's still a fine singer - see my review of his performance at the 50th Anniversary British Invasion Concert in Tarrytown, New York, last year.)



We learn in the book that the song was written by Paul McCartney - news to me, because I'd always thought its lyricism was Lennonesque, and now I have an even more impressed view of the early McCartney and his songwriting skills.   Later in the book, Kramer (born William Howard Ashton in 1943 in Lancashire, England) tells us how he now regrets turning down another song McCartney offered to him a year later - "Yesterday".   Kramer went on to record a Bacharach and David song - "Trains and Boats and Planes" - but Dionne Warwick had the bigger hit a year later, and this was the beginning of the end of Kramer at the top of the charts.

But his memories are as peerless as ever, and are presented in this volume with a fabulous set of photographs, and a keen eye for detail.   We learn yet again, for example, that Lennon could be a bit of a jackass, as when he lashes out at Billy - saying "you're nothing and we're [the Beatles] the greatest" - after Lennon tried to grope the girl Billy was standing with and Billy objected.

And lots of other makers and shakers from that era come to life Kramer's book.  Brian Epstein, who managed Billy as well as the Beatles, staunchly opposed Billy's recording of "Little Children," a non-Beatles song, as a little weird - which it is, but it still became a huge hit for Billy J. Kramer and the Dakatos.   Billy loved Sonny Bono's "Needles and Pins" and Jackie DeShannon's "When You Walk in the Room" - I do, too, especially "Walk in the Room," one of my all-time flat-out favorites - but the Dakatos didn't, and as preposterous as it might seem that a bunch of sidemen, however talented, could have their way in this, they did, and the songs went on to become big hits for the Searchers, much to Billy's expectation and regret.

We're fortunate indeed that Billy has given us such a vibrant, colorful, incisive, and fact-filled book. Grab a copy if you want to be aptly informed for your children or grandchildren - or, hey, just for yourself.

British Invasion 50th Anniversary Concert in Tarrytown, NY: A Review

Tina and I just got back from the British Invasion 50th Anniversary Concert at the Tarrytown Music Hall on Main Street in Tarrytown, NY - a few miles from home, attended with tickets she bought for my birthday this month - and we loved it!

Lots of highlights, but here are some that were especially standing-ovation outstanding -

• Chad and Jeremy, the original duo, in good voice and humor, singing their songs.   The harmony rang true and haunting and beautiful in "Yesterday's Gone" and "A Summer Song," just as it did in the 1960s.  I sang some of these songs with my group, The New Outlook, in the Alcove at CCNY (instead of going to classes), and Chad and Jeremy's performance tonight was the closest I've actually come to taking a time machine back 50 years.
• Billy J.  Kramer was in great baritone voice, and altogether excellent. Hearing him sing "Bad to Me" and "From a Window" (a fabulous, under-appreciated song) was about the closest anyone can come in 2015 to hearing an early Lennon and McCartney performance - though I guess McCartney could do it now if he was so moved - and "Little Children," not by the Beatles' writers, was grand, too.   He also did a fine job on "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore" - better known as by the Walker Brothers - which just happens to be one of my favorite songs.
• Speaking of McCartney, Denny Laine was on hand, as well, singing "Go Now" - from the original Moody Blues, i.e., before "Nights in White Satin" - and "Band on the Run," from his tenure in Wings, in a great closing encore with all the artists on stage. 
• The Searchers' "When You Walk in the Room" - written and first recorded by Jackie DeShannon - has also always been one of my favorite all-time songs.  Mike Pender of The Searchers gave it a rousing performance at the concert, along with their more famous "Needles and Pins" (written by Jack Nitzsche and Sonny Bono).
• Terry Sylvester of the Hollies delivered a pitch-perfect "Bus Stop".
• Peter Asher mc'd, provided witty repartee and sage musical history, and did a great job with his own hits - "I Go to Pieces," "Lady Godiva," "I  Don't Wanna See You Again," and of course "World Without Love" (the last two by Lennon & McCartney) - sadly without Gordon, who died in 2009.  But the backup band sang and played perfectly, and made every performance worthwhile.
• On a more personal note, it was good to say hello to Andrew Sandoval, who put my "Hung Up On Love" on the Rhino Record compilation album Come To The Sunshine: Soft Pop Nuggets From The WEA Vaults (my group The Other Voices sang that - actually, another name for The New Outlook - and I co-wrote with Mickie Harris).

Time's winged chariot forever hurries near, making concerts like these rare and wonderful.  If you came of age in the 60s, and loved this kind of music, give yourself a treat and see this concert if you get a chance.