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    Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World
    Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World
    Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World
    Audiobook9 hours

    Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World

    Written by Rob Sheffield

    Narrated by Rob Sheffield

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Rob Sheffield, the Rolling Stone columnist and bestselling author of Love Is a Mix Tape offers an entertaining, unconventional look at the most popular band in history, the Beatles, exploring what they mean today and why they still matter so intensely to a generation that has never known a world without them.

    Dreaming the Beatles is not another biography of the Beatles, or a song-by-song analysis of the best of John and Paul. It isn’t another exposé about how they broke up. It isn’t a history of their gigs or their gear. It is a collection of essays telling the story of what this ubiquitous band means to a generation who grew up with the Beatles music on their parents’ stereos and their faces on T-shirts. What do the Beatles mean today? Why are they more famous and beloved now than ever? And why do they still matter so much to us, nearly fifty years after they broke up?

    As he did in his previous books, Love is a Mix Tape, Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, and Turn Around Bright Eyes, Sheffield focuses on the emotional connections we make to music. This time, he focuses on the biggest pop culture phenomenon of all time—The Beatles. In his singular voice, he explores what the Beatles mean today, to fans who have learned to love them on their own terms and not just for the sake of nostalgia.

    Dreaming the Beatles tells the story of how four lads from Liverpool became the world’s biggest pop group, then broke up—but then somehow just kept getting bigger. At this point, their music doesn’t belong to the past—it belongs to right now. This book is a celebration of that music, showing why the Beatles remain the world’s favorite thing—and how they invented the future we’re all living in today.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateApr 25, 2017
    ISBN9780062472038
    Author

    Rob Sheffield

    Rob Sheffield is a columnist for Rolling Stone, where he has been writing about music, TV, and pop culture since 1997. He is the author of the national bestsellers Love Is a Mix Tape: Love and Loss, One Song at a Time; Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man’s Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut; Turn Around Bright Eyes: A Karaoke Journey of Starting Over, Falling in Love, and Finding Your Voice, On Bowie and Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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    Reviews for Dreaming the Beatles

    4/5

    63 ratings7 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Brilliantly written with heart! Provides appreciation for all four core members that captures the mystifying continual rebirth of the Fab Four.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      This was such a wonderful listen, an absolute treat for a Beatles fan.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Subtitled “The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World” I was expecting this to provide insights into the Fab Four’s cross-cultural international appeal.It isn’t that. In fact it’s the exact opposite in that it’s a personal reflection of one individual’s relationship with The Beatles and their music. Rolling Stone writer and music critic Rob Sheffield uses Beatle songs, albums, and Beatles moments as springboards for a series of stream of conciseness essays that come together to provide a loose history of the band and its ongoing legacy. As a personal account Sheffield makes several remarks that you may not agree with (he clearly does not like Paul), as well as some insightful observations that will get you nodding your head.The style is very conversational and flows well. It was almost a single sitting read for me (my flight home needed to be just 30 minutes longer). Perhaps the best summary of this book comes it’s final chapter “The Beatles story keeps taking new turns on the personal level as well as the public one.”
    • 5/5
      This was a lovely surprise to me. I learned more about the Beatles than I ever knew, and learned about songs that I may have heard but never thought about. It deepened my love fr the Beatles though I was never a screamer. I understood more about the impact their music and they themselves had on all pop and rock music and the culture.
    • 4/5
      Even the author wonders what anyone could possibly say about the Beatles. Sheffield's approach is to look at the Beatles story through the lens of how they've remained beloved icons to this day appealing to people who discover them long after they broke up (the author and myself included).  Sheffield has a funny way of retelling famous Beatles stories as well as poking holes in a lot of accepted wisdom.  One essay on the song "Dear Prudence" contains a lot of the factors in Sheffield's approach.  First he notes that Paul plays the drums because it was recorded at a time when Ringo quit the band and ponders what they may have been thinking or feeling not knowing if Ringo would ever return.  Second, he talks about a common theme he sees in many Beatles song lyrics, that while they are putatively written addressing a girl, that they were often a means in which the Beatles could talk to one another.  Finally,  the actual subject of the song, Prudence Farrow, is famous for needing to be "rescued" from meditating too long in her tent, but Sheffield points out that she was just fine and didn't need rescuing by a bunch of bored rock stars. Sheffield writes with a lot of humor and joy as he attempts to unravel the continuing appeal of the Beatles.
    • 3/5
      Not really a biography of the Beatles but more a bunch of anecdotes/smaller stories about the Beatles arranged in chronological order. Lots of interesting stories (Ringo quit and hung out on Peter Sellers' yacht for two weeks! They tried to get Kubrick to make a LOTR movie starring them!) and lots of stories/opinion from the author (Ringo invented acid house!). Not the best overview of the band but a fun collection of stories for those seeking to learn more about the music. This format might have worked better as a longer blog or some sort of webpage with embedded videos because there are a lot of music videos and songs I looked up and watched.
    • 3/5
      Dreaming the Beatles from Rob Sheffield is a major disappointment. Not because I expect quality or insightful observations from Sheffield, far from it, he delivered the self-absorbed nonsense I expected, but because it is always disappointing to read sophomoric drivel about artists who have inspired so much quality writing and thought. But, lets not forget, Sheffield represents the direction Rolling Stone took when they quit even trying to be serious and went fully fluff in the late 90s.Parts of the book are okay, nothing new in the way of facts and Beatles stories but it is always fun for a fan to read about those they admire. Even Sheffield's writing is passable when he is just regurgitating what he has read and heard elsewhere. The outline of the book had great potential and would have made for an interesting book in the hands of a quality thinker and writer. Alas, Sheffield falls far far below that standard.Part of the rest of the title of the book is The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World. Oh if only the book had tried to even remotely resemble that part of the title. It is more about Sheffield's alleged love of the group. There are more asinine comments about his failures and weaknesses as a youngster and young adult and from those he tries to make broad universal conclusions. Simplifications can certainly work if they are grounded in something actual but Sheffield apparently subscribes to the idea his thoughts and how he grouped his miserable lot of friends is indeed how the "whole world" is grouped and thinks.His asides and, I am guessing, attempts at analogies are simply pointless. They fall apart if looked at through any lens other than his. I don't mean his generation's but his personal lens. He has the Trumpian sense of being at the center of the world when he is so far out that he doesn't make sense. And frankly, I don't care about his (alleged) girlfriends and how he related the songs to them. If this was his memoir then it might have meant something but otherwise, who cares?There are some people I would recommend this to, even a few who aren't enemies. After all, it is about (mostly) the Beatles. On the whole, I can't recommend this to most readers. If you still think Rolling Stone is cutting edge and insightful in their music and popular culture coverage, then you may very well like this. If you prefer some thought slightly above juvenile in making broad generalizations about types of people and who likes who, find any of the many better books about either the group or the fans through the years.Reviewed from a copy made available through Goodreads' First Reads.