WELCOME TO READ ME DO
As I join Substack, I hope it won’t count against me that I’ve come to blogging even later than I did to PCs, emails and smartphones. I’m here thanks to my daughter, the playwright Jessica Norman, who’s convinced me I have the material for a substantial debut: the story behind my Beatles biography, Shout!
Every book has a parallel book about the toil and trouble that went into writing it and Shout! had more than most, for when I began it in the late 1970s everyone told me I was mad, that everything about the Beatles was already known and I could add nothing to the millions – perhaps billions – of words already written and broadcast about them.
Well, I ignored the sceptics and when Shout! was published in 1981, it became an international bestseller, went on to be translated into some 50 languages, has remained continuously in print ever since and is regarded as the definitive history of the most beloved band of all time. Waterstones bookshops recently placed it among the 20th century’s top 100 biographies in any genre.
In the weeks to come, I’ll be opening the files of a book that, maybe, changed the nature of ‘rock biography’ and changed my life both for the better and worse; the journeys on which it took me; the friends (and sometimes foes) I made en route; the blind alleys and slammed doors that made this seem no job for a grown-up; the implausible strokes of luck that validated it. And at the end, the unforeseeable, unthinkable tragedy demanding an Epilogue I wept to write.
Become a paid subscriber, do.
It’s taken me 40 years build up my data-banks on The Beatles, as I went on to write biographies of John Lennon (with Yoko’s help), Paul McCartney (with McCartney’s tacit approval) and George Harrison (with the revelatory input of his first wife Pattie Boyd), so I hope I’ll be forgiven for passing the hat around.
For as little as £4.60 a month you’ll get access to exclusive posts, and Q&As with me, where I will personally answer all your burning Beatles questions. There will be more besides, shaped by you.
If in doubt, think of it as helping me not to have to write a biography of Ringo Starr.
And if you really, really don’t want me to write that Ringo biography...
Please support me by becoming a founding member. Your generosity will be hugely appreciated and I’ll do my very best to deserve it.
As one founding member kindly puts it: "I support Philip Norman's work, because there is no greater authority in the world on popular music, nor a finer raconteur on most other topics of interest to me"
You can also help me by sharing this with all The Beatles fanatics in your life. Or, even better, giving them a gift subscription.
Read me do, and you’ll know I love you.
