It’s often wearing to be the Beatles’ biographer. Such is the enduring fascination of the Fab Four – not least with people who weren’t even born when they broke up in 1971 – that at parties, rather like a doctor, I try to keep my occupation secret.
As doctors have to listen to gruesome descriptions of ailments, so I’m likely to be cornered by some Beatlemaniac (invariably male)* eager to discuss whether Paul’s Blackbird really was a protest against racism or recall exactly where he was and what he was doing when he heard about John’s assassination.
*in contrast to readers of Read Me Do, who all are sensible, logical Beatles connoisseurs.
Being the biographer not only of the Beatles as a band but John, Paul and George individually, I’ve had to get used to my often revelatory material being ‘borrowed’ – to put it no stronger – by film - and documentary-makers. One can’t copyright non-fiction in the same way as fiction, so there’s nothing I can do.
It was therefore with resignation that I learned of Sam Mendes’s four Beatle biopics, one devoted to each of them, to be released simultaneously in 2028.
Knight of the realm Mendes is an Oscar-winning director, rightly praised for two Bond films and 1917. Unfortunately, there’s something that happens to even the greatest directors when they choose the Beatles as a subject.
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