DREAMING THE BEATLES - Rob Sheffield


I read a lot of books about The Beatles and it just never ceases to amaze me how much their legacy endures that people are still writing and reading about them. It seems that anyone who's ever listened to their music and felt as though their lives were affected by the band, has something to say.

Rob Sheffield, the author of Dreaming the Beatles, is a columnist for Rolling Stone and comes to this as someone whose life revolves around the music scene. And yet is one of the most confounding of the books I've read about The Beatles.  It is not strictly a history book, though there is a fair amount of history here and the book generally approaches the subject chronologically. It is not strictly a biography of the band or its individual members, but there's a fair amount of biographical information here as well. And this book is not strictly a memoir of the author and the impact and influence the band has had on him.  Though here, too, there is some of this within. The subtitle for the book gives us hint - "The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World" - but even here we both have Sheffield's love story, and we don't. There's just not enough of it to be considered the purpose for the book.

I don't think I learned anything new here, but I enjoyed Sheffield's writing, which made the reading easy and pleasant. However, throughout the reading I was constantly wondering - what's the purpose of this?  This didn't feel like someone who had something to get off their chest about The Beatles the way Patricia Gallo-Stenman did in Diary of a Beatlemaniac nor did it provide some new insight, the way Beatleness by Candy Leonard did. Really this felt more like someone jumping on the bandwagon, realizing that there is a market for Beatles books and decided to have a go.

Looking for a good book? Rob Sheffield writes well but offers nothing new or worth reading about in Dreaming the Beatles.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

3 stars

* * * * * *

Dreaming the Beatles

author: Rob Sheffield

publisher: Dey Street Books

ISBN: 9780062207654 

hardcover, 350 pages

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