The Panther
Refugee
Happy New Year, everyone. One of my Xmas gifts (to myself) is a book: The Beatles: All These Years -- Tune In, by Mark Lewisohn, who is probably the planet's #1 Beatles' expert. He's previously written 6 reference books relating to The Beatles, been given unprecedented access to Abbey Road studio logs, the group members' school reports, Brian Epstein's management folders, etc., etc.
News of this book is all over the Internet if you're interested, but anyway it's been very well received. I'm currently on page 122, and it's an 803 page book in hardcover. (Incidentally, there is also a 'deluxe' edition available in the UK, which is twice as long.) Now get this -- the 803-page book ends on the last day of 1962, when The Beatles have recently had their first British single released. Two further volumes to complete the story are due in the future (assuming Lewisohn lives that long; it took him 10 years to research and write this one).
What's impressive about this book are: (a) the lack of agenda -- Lewisohn write mainly as a historian, simply presenting the facts as they occurred in sequence; (b) the amount of research and notation to support it -- after the 803 pages of text come 76 pages of detailed notes; (c) the clear, lucid, well written and edited prose style. If only all music-related biographies/histories were so well established and technically sound....
Anyway, this got me thinking about U2's past and future biographies/biographers. I think U2 are at the stage in music history / pop-culture now where their story really deserves and demands a similarly detailed and inspired telling, either now or in the near future. (I must confess I basically think of "U2" as a force of the past -- not that they aren't going to make good new music, but I personally feel their period of greatest inspiration and importance is past. Whether or not the band needs to cease existence before such a masterful bio can be written is another issue, I suppose.)
I've occasionally enjoyed some books/compendiums about U2, by people like Neil McCormick, Eamon Dunphy (Unforgettable Fire bio in '87), and Bill Flanagan. Dunphy's is significant as the first really comprehensive U2 biography, but that's way back at the release of The Joshua Tree, and has there been (not counting U2 by U2, obviously) a real U2 bio since then? That strikes me as odd.
Anyway, I think a good, detailed U2 biography is due (if not overdue). But who is most capable of writing it? It seems to me it would almost have to be an Irish writer, who could properly contextualize the individuals involved in 1960s/70s Dublin. And should such a large biography even be attempted when the band are still active?
I cannot imagine a history of U2 having 803 pages just to take the story up to 1979 (Chapter 9: 'Larry's part-time job as a glorified messenger boy'). Then again, while U2 are not as broadly popular or as important as The Beatles, their history as music-makers is now going on 35 years, while The Beatles' was only about 11 or 12. If The Beatles' full story is going to take 2400 pages to tell, would U2's not require as much?
News of this book is all over the Internet if you're interested, but anyway it's been very well received. I'm currently on page 122, and it's an 803 page book in hardcover. (Incidentally, there is also a 'deluxe' edition available in the UK, which is twice as long.) Now get this -- the 803-page book ends on the last day of 1962, when The Beatles have recently had their first British single released. Two further volumes to complete the story are due in the future (assuming Lewisohn lives that long; it took him 10 years to research and write this one).
What's impressive about this book are: (a) the lack of agenda -- Lewisohn write mainly as a historian, simply presenting the facts as they occurred in sequence; (b) the amount of research and notation to support it -- after the 803 pages of text come 76 pages of detailed notes; (c) the clear, lucid, well written and edited prose style. If only all music-related biographies/histories were so well established and technically sound....
Anyway, this got me thinking about U2's past and future biographies/biographers. I think U2 are at the stage in music history / pop-culture now where their story really deserves and demands a similarly detailed and inspired telling, either now or in the near future. (I must confess I basically think of "U2" as a force of the past -- not that they aren't going to make good new music, but I personally feel their period of greatest inspiration and importance is past. Whether or not the band needs to cease existence before such a masterful bio can be written is another issue, I suppose.)
I've occasionally enjoyed some books/compendiums about U2, by people like Neil McCormick, Eamon Dunphy (Unforgettable Fire bio in '87), and Bill Flanagan. Dunphy's is significant as the first really comprehensive U2 biography, but that's way back at the release of The Joshua Tree, and has there been (not counting U2 by U2, obviously) a real U2 bio since then? That strikes me as odd.
Anyway, I think a good, detailed U2 biography is due (if not overdue). But who is most capable of writing it? It seems to me it would almost have to be an Irish writer, who could properly contextualize the individuals involved in 1960s/70s Dublin. And should such a large biography even be attempted when the band are still active?
I cannot imagine a history of U2 having 803 pages just to take the story up to 1979 (Chapter 9: 'Larry's part-time job as a glorified messenger boy'). Then again, while U2 are not as broadly popular or as important as The Beatles, their history as music-makers is now going on 35 years, while The Beatles' was only about 11 or 12. If The Beatles' full story is going to take 2400 pages to tell, would U2's not require as much?
