Book Review – 'With a Little Help From Their Friends: The Beatles Changed the World. But Who Changed Theirs?'
BBC Radio 6 DJ Stuart Maconie delves into the people who contributed, influenced and guided four lads from Liverpool to the world stage
Among the hundreds of narratives that delve into The Beatles, many try to be ‘it.’ The absolute, canonical all-in-one treatise. And frankly, it’s impossible. You can’t get every interaction precise. Every true emotion. Every song pared down in historical terms. Yet what Stuart Maconie has done is bring a biographical appreciation to With A Little Help From Their Friends and considering Maconie’s own rich journalistic background — he’s currently a DJ at BBC Radio 6 — it’s one of the tonal treasures you’ll find unapologetically nostalgic from a today point of view.
Maconie’s gift here is the ability to tell a story via the people who not only created the beads that first strung them together (the prologue is a synopsis focused on Ivan Vaughan, John and Paul’s mutual friend who brought them together in 1957) but the allies, advocates, and associates that shaped their destiny. And while destiny is a pretty big concept to grasp, in simple terms: if any one of the individuals noted had not touched a Beatle life, the entire history of popular music as we know it, would literally have never happened.
John Lennon School Friends Including Ivan Vaughan/© Brightmoon Liverpool/YouTube
Vaughan’s serendipitous friendship is the beginning tale of what Maconie has brought together in individual chapters. By introducing now familiar names within the immediate Beatles family — Aunt Mimi, Jim McCartney, Harry Graves — Maconie summarizes where they place in the timeline of building The Beatles.
What makes this trip a fascinating treatise are the fringe individuals who while having been made mention in Beatle lore, get a bit more light here. Alan Durband, who was McCartney’s English instructor at the ‘Innie’ (the Liverpool Institute, now the Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts or LIPA) had a profound influence on the young student, even if formal education was a thorn in the side of his music career.
Maconie frames each entry from a summary perspective, mixed with personal recollections and numerous Beatle media sources, including a short wrap-up per entry. If that sounds obituary-style (and granted there are many who are long gone), it’s no doubt due to the decades-long ripple effect a singular personality had on the foursome. Poet Royston Ellis and his trash bag ensemble inspired “Polythene Pam”; the rambunctious theatricality and harshness of Alan Williams and the omnipresent figure of Stuart Sutcliffe are memories that all of them recalled over the years, and noted in these pages. Perhaps most haunting is Astrid Kirchherr (who passed in 2020), one of the earliest and by my estimation one of the most influential in the look and creative ‘feel’ for the wannabe mob of Liverpool Teddy Boys. Relegated to the background after they broke through — and refusing to earn rightful royalties for her Beatle images for decades — her work is timeless and poetic and still considered one of the crucial interactions (along with Klaus Voormann and Jürgen Vollmer) the Beatles fostered during that growing-up stage in Hamburg.
The names fall trippingly off the tongue, so many that were either blips on the radar (Raymond Jones, Ivor Arbiter) or lifetime members of the band’s inner circle (Neil Aspinall, George Martin). What this book does deliver on are the backstories for so many that need to be highlighted if not for their eclectic personalities (PR man Tony Barrow) or quiet love (Maureen ‘Mo’ Starkey).
Perhaps the pieces that ring a personal bell for Maconie — by my Beatles standard —should have been given more real estate. His hysterical recall of an incident with Derek Taylor is all too brief and his warm remembrance of Victor Spinetti is spot-on to any Beatle fan. As Taylor is among the many colorful entities carousing through Beatles history, Maconie leans into British media that helpfully illustrate an environment that gave them that outlier edge when they landed in the U.S., including The Beatles Christmas Show mastermind Peter Yolland and the BBC’s Saturday Club host Brian Matthew.
Green With Black Shutters (Live At The BBC / 1965)/℗© 2013 BBC, under exclusive licence to Calderstone Productions Limited (a division of Universal Music Group)/YouTube
It’s difficult to laundry list all the people that Maconie describes but worth noting that many (as of this writing) are still alive, whether known (Jane Asher, Peter Blake) or unknown (Tariq Ali, Beatles roadie Kevin Harrington). If there are any errors, they are few: Maconie cites McCartney’s Memory Almost Full in a personal pilgrimage to Forthlin Road (Chaos and Creation in the Backyard) and the misspelling of ‘Shay’ Stadium was to me, highly amusing.
If you’re inclined to add another tome to your Beatle bookcase of literature, with one that gives a slightly more personal and slightly more British slant or perhaps looking to begin a freshman oversight into Beatle people, With A Little Help From Their Friends will satisfy your indulgence.
With A Little Help From Their Friends: The Beatles Changed the World. But Who Changed Theirs? by Stuart Maconie publishes June 5 and is available in the UK from HarperCollins Publishers.
A great review. Thank you.