Those Were the Days: An Unofficial History of the Beatles Apple Organization 1967-2002, by Stefan Granados (Cherry Red Books). It was difficult to come up with new angles for a full-length Beatles book a few decades after they'd broken up, but Granados found a good one that hadn't been fully explored with this history of Apple. Apple was most known for its record division, naturally, but also got involved with film, electronics, music publishing, and retail during its colorful and rather unstable history. It's the music that gets the principal coverage in this thorough and very well-written story. It draws from several dozen first-hand interviews with many Apple insiders, including musicians Doris Troy, Jackie Lomax, Joey Molland and Mike Gibbins of Badfinger, David Peel, and other more obscure artists), A&R/production people (Peter Asher), promotional representatives (Pete Bennett), and figures involved in the less flamboyant, administrative end of things. Unfortunately there aren't direct quotes from the surviving Beatles or Apple mainstay Neil Aspinall, or from some other interesting dramatis personae like Billy Preston}and Mary Hopkin, but many of those gaps are filled in by vintage second-hand quotes. The picture that emerges is a little less chaotic than the one that has usually been painted of Apple, pointing out that it was actually a pretty successful record label, even apart from its many releases by the Beatles and ex-Beatles. At the same time, there was a good deal of disorganization, and the story of the gradual toning down of its idealistic, anything-goes beginnings to a more functional record label, and finally one that wound down its operations apart from caretaking the Beatles' legacy, is absorbing and a little sad. Arguably there could have been more about the Beatles' own music during this period, but that's been covered exhaustively in other sources. This has the scoop on the interesting Apple phases in the careers of James Taylor, Hopkin, Badfinger, Troy, Preston, and odd one-offs that never or barely released material on Apple (Brute Force, the Black Dyke Mills Band, Mortimer, Trash, and Bill Elliot & Elastic Oz Band), as well as weirdoes like "Magic Alex" Mardas, who ran Apple's ill-fated electronics department. And there are a good deal of cool, under-traveled stories about the Beatles (who come off as founders not prepared to fully follow through with their ideas and artists they mentored), particularly regarding their business machinations with Allen Klein. Brief final chapters update readers on Apple's Beatles-related activities from the mid-1970s to the early 2000s, and there's a complete discography.
Jimi Hendrix and the Making of Are You Experienced, by Sean Egan (A Cappella). As part of the "Vinyl Frontier" series examining the construction of classic albums, this details the recording of Jimi Hendrix's first and, to many ears, best album, 1967's Are You Experienced. There's been a great deal written about Hendrix, and some expert readers' first inclinations might be to wonder whether there's much more to be said about the beginning of his career. As it turns out, there's plenty, due to author Egan's diligence in tracking down numerous people involved with Hendrix in his early days for first-hand interviews. Jimi Hendrix Experience bassist Noel Redding is the most important of those. But there are also numerous others, not all of them often interviewed about Hendrix, who cast light upon his emergence into solo stardom, such as girlfriends Linda Keith and Kathy Etchingham, Chris Stamp of Track Records, tape operator George Chkiantz, Vic Briggs of the Animals, Andrew Loog Oldham, engineer Mike Ross-Trevor, Marshall amp manufacturer Jim Marshall, and guitar gadgetry specialist Roger Mayer. The result is a wealth of information not just about the patchwork sessions that comprised Are You Experienced, but also about Hendrix's general phoenix-like rise to iconic stature from mid-1966, when he was a struggling New York guitarist, to mid-1967, when he was an international superstar. The sessions and rehearsals for the Are You Experienced album turn out to have been surprisingly seat-of-the-pants and on-the-fly, but there's a wealth of fascinating details about the Experience's recording methods, Hendrix's songwriting, and the pioneering studio techniques and electronics needed to pull it off. Add a bunch of stories thrown about regarding the interpersonal dynamics of the Experience, Hendrix's management, and the group's early live gigs, and there's a lot for even the dedicated Hendrix fan to chew on here. Egan also adds insightful track-by-track critical commentary, and is not afraid to go against established notions of what was great about Hendrix, which might infuriate some rabid fans, but is refreshing in its refusal to go along with the usual party lines. It's too bad that he wasn't able to interview some long-dead key players, such as Hendrix himself (of course) and his early producer/co-manager Chas Chandler, as well as key survivors (most notably Mitch Mitchell and engineer Eddie Kramer). But overall it's an exemplary job.
Just Walkin' in the Rain, by Jay Warner (Renaissance Books). A biography of the Prisonaires, the convict vocal R&B group most famous for the original version of "Just Walkin' in the Rain," might seem to be a slim pretext upon which to build a full-length book. But even though the Prisonaires didn't release many records, their story was among the most unusual of any groups that contributed to the development of rock'n'roll, simply by virtue of their having been formed behind bars, and remained behind bars even while they were putting out singles. This volume does a good job of tracing their offbeat story, singling out their most notable member, Johnny Bragg (principal author of "Just Walkin' in the Rain"), as the story's central figure and the source of much of the information. It's the tale of not just the long and winding route they took to a record contract, but also a reflection of the hard-luck circumstances that could get poor Southern blacks sentenced to unjust prison terms in the middle of the twentieth century; the liberal Tennessee governor who paved the way for the Prisonaires to gain a recording contract by having the group entertain at his mansion; Braggs's subsequent interaction with celebrities like Lyndon Johnson and Elvis Presley; and his own difficulties in gaining parole and keeping out of trouble after he was finally released from jail. The Prisonaires' own music and Sun Records sessions aren't neglected either. The author did a lot of homework considering that some of the principals are dead and some of the facts foggy, including talking with Braggs himself, though it's noted that Braggs's stories aren't necessarily gospel either. Though 250 pages it's a quick read, and while not among the more significant stories of early R&B and rock'n'roll, it's certainly not a standard one.
Revolution: The Making of the Beatles' White Album, by David Quantick (A Cappella). As one of the first two installments in A Cappella's "Vinyl Frontier" series (the other being Jimi Hendrix and the Making of Are You Experienced), this documents the creation of the Beatles' The White Album. Unlike Sean Egan's book on Hendrix's first album, this benefits from no first-hand interviews with musicians, producers, engineers, and other friends and associates involved with the recording's genesis. That means it leans heavily on critical analysis, which doesn't have to be a bad thing, but does mean it's not so revealing, particularly when you're discussing an extremely famous album bound to be familiar to many millions of listeners. What's more problematic is Quantick's smarmy tone, jammed with self-consciously clever and witty asides without being funny or particularly insightful. The bulk of the text is devoted to a track-by-track critique of the record, which many will find iconoclastic; he praises "Revolution 9" very highly, for example, while ragging on "Rocky Raccoon" and "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill." Sometimes the ragging gets annoying, as if a point's being overstated for effect, as when "Wild Honey Pie" is proclaimed as duplicating "almost exactly the experience of spending nearly a whole minute in Hades." Other sections contextualize, and perhaps over-contextualize, the record with a good deal of background information on the sociopolitical climate of 1968; the background of individual Beatles and simmering tensions within the group; the other rock and pop music of 1968 (in which Quantick hammers on the point of other groups innovating fields in which the Beatles did not compete with undue sensitivity); and a surprisingly long chapter on the album's influence on Charles Manson. Quantick does know his stuff, and supports his opinions with detailed description and reasoning. But it's hard to see how many fans, regardless of their tastes, are going to find the information and criticism that valuable or revelatory, and there are infrequent but noticeable factual mistakes that should have been caught.
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