I'm not completely sure the world needs another Beatles book. A Mongolian peasant in a one-yak town five hundred miles from the nearest flushing lavatory could tell you how John met Paul at the Woolton Village fète in 1957, and will have an opinion on the relative merits of Revolver and Sgt Pepper's. There have been dozens, perhaps hundreds, of group biographies—several each for the individual Beatles, at least one for every associate and hanger-on from George Martin to Ringo's driver—and, surely, every angle has been covered. I have a 192-page hardback concerning a single song ("Yesterday", obviously). So, what is the USP of Jonathan Gould's Can't Buy Me Love?

Gould has apparently spent twenty years writing this book—clearly a labor of love. His purpose is to locate the Fabs firmly in the big picture and evaluate their true cultural significance. This calls for extensive digressions through the state of the civilized world (Britain and America, with Europe getting an unavoidable look in) in the immediate post-war years. We do Elvis and the other avatars of rock and roll, and the north-south divide in the Britain of 1960, and mods and rockers (Gould makes an interesting case for The Beatles as, essentially, a mod band or, at least, one arising from a mod sensibility), and the demise of censorship and deference, and this is generally very entertaining. The ambition is naked; I take a sentence at random:

Now, I happen to know that Max Weber was without shame, but you get the idea: Gould is painting on a biggish canvas. And he thinks The Beatles belong right there in the middle. This is to make some pretty big claims about a pop group. Confession time: I agree with him. I can just about imagine the history of rock and pop without Elvis, or Dylan, yes, even Kylie, but I cannot subtract The Beatles and still see the picture. For the first half of the book, Gould constructs an ambitious flux of cultural influence on the young Beatles and the spectacular use they made of it. More than previous writers, he wants to write the sociology of the group and, indeed, he makes a pretty good fist of it. By the end of the story, though, he has become transfixed by The Beatles and their music to the exclusion of his original agenda. And this does no harm to the book. In the end, it is The Beatles' music which holds our fascination, and gives them immortality.

All Beatles books have at least one pet agenda. Quite often, it is to improve the standing of one or other of The Fab Four or, sometimes, George Martin. In his magisterial Revolution in the Head, for example, Ian MacDonald persuasively argued for Ringo's reputation as drummer. Gould is a musician, and wishes to burnish the reputation of George Harrison (with a side order of Don't Knock Brian Epstein). Ever since William Mann enthused, in The Times, about The Beatles' use of Aeolian cadences and pandiatonic clusters, there's been a strain of academic musicological exegesis, which sometimes seems intended to exclude those without technical expertise. Do not be cowed by this. One can appreciate the brilliance of the flattened voice in the last chord of "She Loves You" without knowing that it's called a subdominant sixth. As most musicologists listening to The Beatles, Gould is too easily distracted from the central truth that the alpha and omega of pop music is how good it sounds. When all is said and done, the story of The Beatles is the story of Lennon and McCartney. That said, Gould's detailed discussion of the music is generally sound and, like any decent Beatles book, sends one back to listen to those couple of hundred tracks over again.

Gould has other virtues. He's extremely readable, and well on top of his subject. He's also very good on the relationships between the various Beatles—and by 'good', I mean plausible. One of the ingredients of their greatness was the band's ability to give millions of people the sense that they truly knew them and that they belonged to us all. John Lennon, in particular, had this gift extravagantly. This is the quality which beatified him before and after his death, leaving aside his genius for making pop music. Paul McCartney's colossal musical gifts were unquestionably greater, but Lennon gave the impression that he'd somehow singled out each of us for intimate insight. So, Gould's account of the last year of The Beatles, with the Let It Be film and Abbey Road as largely the outcome of McCartney's efforts to draw Lennon back into some sort of writing partnership, plays rather well. Of course, Paul himself might read this book and not recognize any of the characters, but Gould's analysis makes coherent sense of the indisputable facts in the public domain. He's also admirably clear on the business dealings which, among other things, resulted in The Beatles losing control of their own songs.

It's always tempting to take potshots, but the book is remarkably free of howlers; "Private Eye" was always fortnightly, never a satirical weekly; and Albert Finney was born in Salford, not 'Salton'. These aren't egregious errors.

There can be real pleasure in being told stories we already know. Especially when they're engagingly put forth. Conclusion: there isn't a need for another Beatles book, but if there were, this would be it. A book for Mongolian peasants everywhere.

Incidentally, I was planning to review Eric Clapton's autobiography, here, as well. Now, I wouldn't imply for a moment that the prose style is dull, but I fell asleep on page two and I haven't come 'round yet.

Ercan Üçer was born in the Republic of Turkey and lives there still. He is a graphic designer, stop motion animator, cook, and musician. Ercan has been a staff illustrator for TBA since April 2007.