Dad of Divas' Reviews: Book Review - The Beatles and Me on Tour

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Book Review - The Beatles and Me on Tour

The Beatles and Me On Tour
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About the Book
In the summer of 1964, the Beatles embarked on a record-breaking pandemonium-inducing tour of America and Canada. Released today, “The Beatles and Me on Tour” presents the first chronicle of that tour told by an insider: author/journalist Ivor Davis, then a young reporter for the London Daily Express. Ivor traveled with the Beatles as the only British newspaper writer invited on the entire tour.

Through thirty-four days and twenty-four cities, Davis traveled with the Beatles boys fresh from Liverpool—from their hotel suites to backstage at concert arenas to their private jet. He fended off excited girls, and their insistent mothers, attempts to hook up with the band. Ivor played all night games of Monopoly with John Lennon, became the ghostwriter of a newspaper column for George Harrison, and witnessed the night Bob Dylan “deflowered” the young marijuana virgins.

Why did he wait fifty years to write this book?

“Being stationed in America in the sixties,” said Davis, “was a continual roller coaster ride of news and earth shaking events to cover as a journalist. I traveled with Bobby Kennedy and was at the Ambassador Hotel the night he was assassinated. I was smuggled into the University of Mississippi when James Meredith enrolled and on the front lines of the Los Angeles Watts riots three years later. Then came the seventies with the Angela Davis and Daniel Ellsberg trials to cover. Not to mention the Patty Hearst conviction. I switched jobs to the Times of London and took on more entertainment stories. So much news to cover moved my Beatles experiences on the back burner.”

Davis did take time in 1969 to co-write “Five to Die,” the first book published on the Sharon Tate murders. As foreign correspondent, he traveled throughout the western hemisphere covering riots, floods, earthquakes and politics. As Editor at Large for Los Angeles Magazine, he and his late wife, Sally Ogle Davis, wrote more than 100 major magazine and cover stories. He reported four World Soccer Cups for CBS radio.

In “The Beatles and Me on Tour,” Davis recounts in frank and amusing fashion, the rip-roaring adventures of the most legendary band at a critical moment in the history of rock ‘n’ roll. The book recreates a world long gone but not forgotten, especially for the hundreds of thousands of girls who spent a summer night fifty years ago screaming for their dream, the Beatles.




My Take on the Book
For anyone that has been a Beatles fan, this will be an amazing book to pick up and read. This books offers a glimpse into the Beatles that has not been seen in the past and will not be seen in the near future. The book is written with such insight and such insiders knowledge you are truly taken behind the scenes and you get to see how crazy and turned upside down the world of the Beatles truly was. While I was not alive when they were first coming out, I have always been a fan of their music and can just imagine what it would have been like to have been a part of this tour. This book gives you that opportunity.

The author provides a ton of inside knowledge and some great inside scoop on your favorite Beatles, but also on what it was like to be a part of this crazy time in history. This is a must read for anyone that is, was or will be a Beatles fan as it will give you a new respect for what they did and what they went through to make it.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

A Great book on The FAB FOUR. Probably the greatest on the Touring Years in America..Well Done- 5 Stars!