Featuring archive photos from the Daily Mail, "Fifty Years with the Beatles" is one of several recent picture-books capitalizing on the half-century anniversary of the Beatles' worldwide breakthrough year: 1964.
The cover blurb promises "750 classic, rare and unseen photographs telling the complete story, and that's pretty much what you get."
Along with that, though, are plenty of images most Beatles fans have seen many times before.
The text is by Tim Hill, who has penned at least a half-dozen Beatles picture books in the past, including "The Unseen Archives," which is a deeper dive than into newspaper library photos than this current collection. The text is solid and accurate, but not terribly insightful or lively. It's there mainly to accompany and give context to all the images.
Featuring an introduction by Beatles photographer Robert Whitaker, it's not a bad book, just not a terribly necessary one. It would make a nice gift for someone with a mild nostalgic interest in the Beatles, or for someone new to the band who hasn't seen and read a zillion Beatles books, yet.
But as a picture collection, there are others with more substantial text, and more pictures. For collections of newspaper images, which are of great historical interest to serious fans and researchers, I'd suggest Hill's "Unseen Archives" and/or "The Beatles Files," an examination of the Daily Mirror's Beatles image archive compiled by Andy Davis.
The cover blurb promises "750 classic, rare and unseen photographs telling the complete story, and that's pretty much what you get."
Nicely laid out and presented in both color and black-and-white, many of these pictures haven't been seen much since the 1960s. They're nice, because they capture the Beatles, for the most part, candidly, going about the things they did back in their prime. There are many pictures of Beatles attending movie premieres and other public events with assorted girlfriends and wives. In fact, this book probably has more images of the women in the Beatles' lives than any other book I remember.
The text is by Tim Hill, who has penned at least a half-dozen Beatles picture books in the past, including "The Unseen Archives," which is a deeper dive than into newspaper library photos than this current collection. The text is solid and accurate, but not terribly insightful or lively. It's there mainly to accompany and give context to all the images.
Featuring an introduction by Beatles photographer Robert Whitaker, it's not a bad book, just not a terribly necessary one. It would make a nice gift for someone with a mild nostalgic interest in the Beatles, or for someone new to the band who hasn't seen and read a zillion Beatles books, yet.
But as a picture collection, there are others with more substantial text, and more pictures. For collections of newspaper images, which are of great historical interest to serious fans and researchers, I'd suggest Hill's "Unseen Archives" and/or "The Beatles Files," an examination of the Daily Mirror's Beatles image archive compiled by Andy Davis.
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