Post by christine~ on Jan 29, 2008 21:04:49 GMT -5
The following was a Playboy Magazine review of A Cellarful Of Noise when it first came out.
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1965 January
Playboy After Hours - Books
p36-37 - As adults began to discover with the release of that antic film A Hard Day's Night, the Beatles are more than just another mechanical product of the pop-music industry... Yet... no one has convincingly explored their nature and the reasons for their typhoonlike impact.
In his autobiography, A Cellarful Of Noise (Doubleday), the Beatles' discoverer and manager has also tried to plumb the Beatles. He too has failed, but his slight book is interesting in other ways... Epstein failed early and often as he grew up... He was unable to fulfill either of his earliest ambitions - to become a dress designer and then an actor... He opened a record department in the [family] store, heard about the Beatles, and was soon prospering wildly...
Still lonely and still colorless himself, Epstein obviously draws much emotional sustenance from his contact with these vivid youngsters [including his other acts]... He is too cautious to be candid about disc jockeys and recording executives... He writes... "My terms with the artists are well known - friendship and 25 percent..."
A Cellarful Of Noise is an odd document - a tale of a "dead soul" guiding his very alive charges through the shrieks of teenage idolators who also have an emptiness which they look to others to fill... Epstein reveals... that he cannot conceive of ever disassociating himself from the Beatles. This is convincing - for they are his lifeline.
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Eppylover Says:
"Colorless?" Our dear Mr. Epstein was forced by society and the times to hide, to disguise, to repress the vivid, vibrant rainbow colors of his personalities (he had many).
Some of us intuitively sensed the storm beneath the calm ... or, in proper context of this review, the raging rainbow beneath the colorless exterior.
Any comments?
---
1965 January
Playboy After Hours - Books
p36-37 - As adults began to discover with the release of that antic film A Hard Day's Night, the Beatles are more than just another mechanical product of the pop-music industry... Yet... no one has convincingly explored their nature and the reasons for their typhoonlike impact.
In his autobiography, A Cellarful Of Noise (Doubleday), the Beatles' discoverer and manager has also tried to plumb the Beatles. He too has failed, but his slight book is interesting in other ways... Epstein failed early and often as he grew up... He was unable to fulfill either of his earliest ambitions - to become a dress designer and then an actor... He opened a record department in the [family] store, heard about the Beatles, and was soon prospering wildly...
Still lonely and still colorless himself, Epstein obviously draws much emotional sustenance from his contact with these vivid youngsters [including his other acts]... He is too cautious to be candid about disc jockeys and recording executives... He writes... "My terms with the artists are well known - friendship and 25 percent..."
A Cellarful Of Noise is an odd document - a tale of a "dead soul" guiding his very alive charges through the shrieks of teenage idolators who also have an emptiness which they look to others to fill... Epstein reveals... that he cannot conceive of ever disassociating himself from the Beatles. This is convincing - for they are his lifeline.
---
Eppylover Says:
"Colorless?" Our dear Mr. Epstein was forced by society and the times to hide, to disguise, to repress the vivid, vibrant rainbow colors of his personalities (he had many).
Some of us intuitively sensed the storm beneath the calm ... or, in proper context of this review, the raging rainbow beneath the colorless exterior.
Any comments?
Make of it what you will!