rob sheffield, dreaming the beatles

Rob Sheffield writes about love. Look at the titles of his books: Love Is a Mix Tape, Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man’s Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut, Turn Around Bright Eyes: The Rituals of Love & Karaoke, and now Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World. Even On Bowie, the one book without the word love in the title, got right down to it in the introduction: “This book is a love letter to Bowie, a celebration of his life and his music.”

When asking yourself, “Do we really need another book about The Beatles?”, the answer should be “Yes, when it’s written by Rob Sheffield.” I can’t say I came to his books about Duran Duran, karaoke, and Bowie because I was a fan of any of those topics. But I’m a fan of Sheffield, and he has never let me down, to the point where now I care about Duran Duran et al.

Another thing I like about Sheffield is his age. He was born in 1966. The first batch of writers about rock music were of a different generation: Greil Marcus, Robert Christgau, Dave Marsh, Jaan Uhelszki, Lester Bangs, Ellen Willis. (In terms of personal influence, I’d include Ralph J. Gleason, born in 1917.) Many of them came to our attention in the 70s ... “rock criticism” didn’t quite exist until then. But they were people who had lived when The Beatles were on Ed Sullivan for the first time. Thankfully, there are many great writers about music from Sheffield’s generation: Ann Powers and dream hampton come to mind. But their perspective is drawn from the times in which they live, and with pop music, the teenage years are especially important. As an example, Sheffield was 15 when Duran Duran’s first album was released. When I was 15, the White Album was released.

So Sheffield wasn’t “there” during Beatlemania. But to the extent this distances him from the subject, he is able to offer a new look. And he makes a great case in Dreaming the Beatles that the time of The Beatles has never left us. He has lived with The Beatles for most of his life ... in the book, he describes seeing Help! when he was five (“They entered my life”), and the enthusiasm with which he writes about The Beatles to this day demonstrates how they have never left his life.

Sheffield’s books all merge with memoir, and I guess if that bothers you, you might want to look elsewhere. In this case, though, it’s even more appropriate than usual, for the reasons I’ve already stated: He was only 4 years old when The Beatles broke up, so unless he’s doing some straightforward “and then they recorded this” type of book, his personal relationship with the band is crucial. Having said that, he takes the subtitle seriously. He tells the story, not just of his own relationship to The Beatles, but to the whole world’s love affair with the group.

While he writes a lot about the relationships between the band and their fans, he also talks about the relationships within the band, and not always by simply citing biographical trivia, as when he discusses a favorite of mine, “There’s a Place”:

You can hear John woke up with a stuffy nose; you can also hear how nervous he and Paul are, their voices quavering as they stretch out the vowels, “plaaaace” and “looow” and “goooo,” Ringo urging them on with his drum crashes. It’s another Buddy Holly homage, one they wrote on their guitars in the front room of Paul’s dad’s house on Forthlin Road. John and Paul sing about escaping to the place you go when you feel low – in your mind, where you hear the voice of the girl who tells you things you want to know, the place you go to remember the things she said that swim around your head, the place you talk yourself out of the fears you wouldn’t confess to your closest male friends. Except here are John and Paul, trading off the confession out loud. It’s done and dusted in under two minutes – no time for waffling or kidding around, the voices say, this is it, this is how I feel, let’s go, let’s tell it.

It’s a close reading that doesn’t depend solely on the lyrics, it’s a close reading that encompasses the performance. This happens throughout the book ... every time he points out something going on in a particular track, you instantly want to hear it. And when someone can help you hear a Beatles’ song with a fresh ear, well, that’s a lot harder than it seems.

Sheffield spends much of the second half of the book talking about the post-Beatles years of the four lads. This makes sense, since his own relationship with the band began after they’d broken up. But it also reflects the ways The Beatles as a band are still in our dreams ... just because they weren’t together after 1970 didn’t mean they no longer mattered.

Love Is a Mix Tape may always be my favorite of his books. But Dreaming the Beatles is right up there with the others.

Comments

[Charlie Bertsch]

I still haven't looked at this, but am excited to do so. The Beatles may not have been as important to me as they were to Rob Sheffield, but they mattered a lot. Honestly, I'm not sure I would have made it through my middle-school years without them. And I know that my daughter, born in 1998, wouldn't have survived dropping out of high school and made it to college one year early if the band had not been there for her. And by "there", I mean REALLY there. The amount of Beatles content readily available to her exceeded what I had to go on by so much that it seems unfathomable. I'm not generally the sort of person to worry about relative greatness. But the fact that this exposure never felt like overexposure, to her or to me, suggests to me that The Beatles were really that great.

[Steven Rubio]

Yep. The world isn't tired of them yet. Working their way through the generations ... people like me (and older), people like you and Rob, all the way to people like your daughter.

[Tomas]

And now my kids!