Moreover, his observational accounts are often threaded within third person reportage, so it’s sometimes not clear whether Braun is writing about what he witnessed, or whether he’s conveying an account of the event after the fact. However, Braun didn’t provide as much observational material as I think he could have, given his unfettered access to the band over a three-month period.

My one criticism of the book is that I anticipated that it would provide, to quote Lewisohn, “an unparallelled view into the Beatles’ personalities” vis a vis more passages like this one. I got here by myself, and this is the longest I’ve ever done anything, except being at school, and that was false.” ‘I don’t want to think about it,’ says John. was brought up by an aunt after his mother died and hadn’t heard from his father until the paper received a letter from someone who claimed to know him. Shepherd’s account of John’s upbringing–John lived with his mother and two sisters until his mother was tragically killed when he was 14–was standard fare, and a tale which simultaneously misrepresented Mimi’s parentage, lopped a whole 3 years off John’s age at the time of his mother’s death, and avoided any mention of John’s father altogether. John’s upbringing, in particular, was a major bugaboo for early Beatle biography, and Braun’s willingness to present it, relatively unvarnished, distinguished Love Me Do from other works, such as Billy Shepherd’s The True Story Of The Beatles, which was released around the same time. While its revelations are hardly earth-shattering today (swearing, drinking, opinionated pop stars from broken homes–who knew), it was ahead of its time in comparison with other works of the era. I’ve read so many good things about Braun’s book (Mark Lewisohn remarked that it might well be the best book written about the Beatles, in his glowing forward to the 1995 edition) that I was delighted to download a copy of it on my Kindle and have a read.īased on Braun’s travels with the Beatles in late 1963 and early 1964, the book’s bonefides rest on its authentic portrayal of the band as real people rather than one-dimensional caricatures. Michael Braun, copyright 1964 Karen Hooper

Love Me Do! by Michael Braun