Book Review: With a Little Help From Their Friends

In his introduction to With a Little Help From Their Friends, author Stuart Maconie raises a not-so-rhetorical question: Does the world need another book about the Beatles? To paraphrase his self-effacing answer, “Well, maybe not, but I still think my idea is a pretty solid one.” And he’s right. The idea of devoting an entire book to vignettes of somewhat ephemeral yet key characters in the Beatles’ story is a worthy endeavor.

And Maconie seems the right person for the job. An unabashed Beatles fan with (shall we say) extremely strongly-held opinions on certain related subjects, he’s also a keen observer and a sharp, concise and compelling writer. His choices of whom-to-cover are almost beyond question. Serious Beatles fans will recognize names like Pete Shotton, Alex Mardas, Freda Kelly, Alan “Dusty” Durband and Raymond Jones. The hardest of hardcore Beatlemaniacs will know – if only in a vague sense – how characters like David Ormsby-Gore fit into the story. Yet some names – like Buddy Dresner – are sure to be unfamiliar. Maconie offers sketches of all of them. Sometimes the chapters are exceedingly brief: just over a page in some cases. But then that may well be all the space needed to place these figures into the Beatles’ firmament.

Maconie writes with style, and is resolutely unafraid to inject his own personal perspective. It’s worth noting that he doesn’t seem to have done any firsthand research for this book; all of the information is drawn from the myriad books already written on the Beatles’ story, and he owns up to this fact. Thankfully, he doesn’t draw from the dodgiest of sources (Albert Goldman, Geoffrey Giuliano et. al.), instead basing his work on familiar and authoritative sources the likes of Mark Lewisohn, the Anthology text, Rolling Stone interviews, select websites and such. And when he draws from a source that may raise the eyebrows of some fans – the occasionally wrongheaded Philip Norman, for example – he inserts caveats. Maconie doesn’t simply regurgitate info we’ve seen before; he weaves data points together to paint more detailed portraits.

At least most of the time, that is. It is difficult, however, to come away from time spent with the book and not feel that the weight of Maconie’s opinions has pushed the narrative in certain specific directions. Maconie’s assessment of the four Beatles as people – as flesh-and-blood human beings – is certainly made plain.

Distilled to their essence, he seems to see them this way: John Lennon was lazy and often disinterested. And he’s overrated as an artist. George was astoundingly surly and had a generally unpleasant demeanor. Ringo was a nonentity. And Paul is perhaps the greatest artist the world has ever known*. This may read here as hyperbole, but I assure readers that it’s not very wide of the mark in describing the undertone that inevitably informs Maconie’s writing.

None of that, however, takes away in significant measure from the enjoyment of With a Little Help From Their Friends. Maconie has in fact done Beatles fans a great service in putting this book together. It’s an inspired angle for a book, and does succeed on the score of bringing something new to the world of Beatles scholarship. From my own perspective, I would have liked to have seen a chapter – rather than a mere brief mention – covering Ken Brown, but then that’s letting my own biases color my writing. And I trust I’ve made clear how I feel about writers doing that!

* To be fair, there is evidence to back up this specific assertion.