All You Need Is Love
By Peter Brown and Steven Gaines
A Must of All Beatles Fans! All You Need Is Love is a fascinating look into The Beatles as told by their inner circle and The Beatles that uncovers lots of previously unpublished interviews. It’s quite astonishing and an incredibly interesting read as it is interviews and not an oral history. Find out more in the blurb and my thoughts below. Then discover more about the authors of All You Need Is Love. Their own bios have a tale or two to tell about how intimate they were with The Beatles.
Blurb
All You Need is Love is a ground-breaking oral history of the Beatles and how it all came to an end.
Based on never-before-published or heard interviews with Paul McCartney,
Yoko Ono, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and their families, friends, and business
associates, this is a landmark book, containing stunning new revelations, about the
biggest band the world has ever seen.
In 1980-1981 former COO of Apple Corp, Peter Brown and author Steven Gaines
interviewed everyone in the Beatles’ inner circle and included a small portion of the
transcripts in their international bestselling book The Love You Make, which spent four months on the New York Times bestseller list. But left in their archives was a treasure trove of unique and candid interviews that they chose not to publish, until now.
A powerful work assembled through honest, intimate, sometimes contradictory and always fascinating testimony, All You Need is Love is a one-of-a-kind insight into the final days, weeks, months and years of the Beatles phenomenon.
Review
I wasn’t born when The Beatles were at the height of their fame, nor was I when they split, but everyone knows who The Beatles are/were, even at primary school a major song to learn was Yellow Submarine and everyone knows the Christmas songs too, even today in the decade of the mid-2020’s. Two are dead and yet their long lasting reach into public consciousness goes on with popstars coming after them still influenced by their music and even into film culture where All You Need Is Love features in a major scene in that great film, Love Actually.
As for the book, All You Need Is Love has sparkling never published before interviews that are bound to set tongues wagging as conversations start.
I know, there’s been a few of these dotted around, but these interviews are highly significant. There are revelations about the band and in a midst of ever speculation about how it all ended, this feels like it gets to the roots of everything. It’s particularly special because it isn’t second hand information.
Some of the book is, however, bittersweet as there are interviews by John Lennon not long before he was murdered.
Once started, it becomes intensely fascinating in a way I hadn’t quite expected. The presentation of the interviews feel so free-flow and so candid, in a way that you feel like you’re in rooms with everyone being interviewed, much like youre sitting in an audience.
The book feels so natural, like nothing is stilted nor concealed, even contradictory statements. A picture emerges of the building of tensions and you get a feel of what that time of The Beatles coming to an end may have been like for all concerned.
It’s great that the interviews see the light of day from previously being hidden in the depths of archives. It got me thinking that in a way, what with both fans who perhaps saw The Beatles and the remaining Beatles and Yoko Ono getting naturally older, it feels fitting that this book is published. It got me wondering if this would be the last one with previously hidden facts. I guess we will have to wait and see. For now, this is quite some emergence of interviews with The Beatles and people who they were associated with like family, colleagues alike, some who are now dead, but their names also live on in the music industry and beyond. This makes it special and quite unique.
Whether a Beatles fan or a music fan in general, this is a totally fascinating read and one that may well get you thinking of the band all over again and in a new light.
About the Authors
STEVEN GAINES is the New York Times bestselling author of Philistines at the Hedgerow: Passion and Property in the Hamptons and The Love You Make: An Insiders Story of the Beatles (with Peter Brown).
His journalism has appeared in Vanity Fair, the New York Times, and New York magazine, where he was a contributing editor for 12 years.
Mr. Gaines is the co-founder and a past vice-chairman of the Hamptons International Film Festival. He has lived in Wainscott, a small hamlet on the East End of Long Island, for 40 years.
PETER BROWN is the former COO of Apple Corp, the Beatles’ financial empire. He’s been a Beatles intimate since their earliest days in Liverpool.
Their passports were locked in his desk drawer. He was best man at John and Yoko’s wedding, he introduced Paul to Linda Eastman, and perhaps the most charming of his credentials is that he’s the only real person ever mentioned in a Beatles song, “Peter Brown called to say, you can make it okay, you can marry in Gibraltar near Spain,” from the “Ballad of John and Yoko.”
Mr. Brown is now chairman of the international public relations firm of Brown Lloyd James LTD.
I am delighted to be closing the Random T. Tours blog tour with a review of chef Sat Bain’s new cookbook – Eat To Your Heart’s Content.
Sat Bains worked out, always maintained a reasonable weight and considered himself fit and healthy, so it was a shock when, in March 2021, he had a massive heart attack and underwent an emergency triple heart bypass operation.
It was a resounding success in my family. It uses various seeds, nuts and panko crumbs all mixed together with harissa and cooked in the air fryer. The crunch was amazing and it felt and tasted healthy. The nutritional notes were interesting. The time was in the preparation, perhaps because I couldn’t buy everything pre-crushed, but but so easy to do myself.
It was so lovely to find a tasty alternative to just the plain broccoli I would normally have. I couldn’t get tenderstem broccoli, but the purple sprouting variety proved a good alternative. I was amazed at what just a small bit of the mixed seasoning, that takes seconds to make, did when broccoli was tossed in the mix. A little bit truly went a long way.
It had a lovely lemony spiciness to it, but not too overpowering. It says about alternative fish options. I definitely plan to try it out with salmon some time. I served it with the broccoli side dish again as this is the dish it suggests to serve it with, and I added carrots as I had to use them up. Still works beautifully well.
This makes handling butternut squash easy as it suggests keeping the skin on. It cooked well and there’s a pork dish it suggests to serve with, that I didn’t try on this occasion. I added a bit less parmesan cheese, just for my tastes though.
The interviewer, Geoffrey Wansell, is a great friend of David Suchet’s, and you can tell on-stage, which is really lovely. He’s a well-informed person, not only about David Suchet, but about the history of the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh. How excited they got when it is revealed that it used to be an Empire theatre. There’s a reason for this, but you’ll have to see the talk to find out more…
As everyone walked out at the end with the Poirot theme tune, aptly playing in the background, there was a buzz of positivity and cheerfulness around.
to talk to David Suchet, on what was a very cold January night. He was very kind, indeed and I felt very privileged to meet him, something I hadn’t ever thought I’d get a chance to do.
Bookmarks and Stages by Lou 