You Never Give Me Your Money - The Battle For the Soul of the Beatles

Unique and original, this is the most important book about the Beatles since Ian MacDonald's Revolution in the Head.

Not so fab behind the scenes, this is the story of the famous four "from the heights of 1967, through the relentless decay of their final months, to the endless aftermath beyond". Doggett's obsession with the Beatles goes back to his childhood and their glory days. He presents a mass of detail about their music, individual characters, wives, lovers, friends, spiritual explorations, drug use and business dealings, in an engaging narrative. He treads carefully around thorny issues of love and money, yet paints a convincing picture of the relationship between Lennon and Yoko Ono and its impact on the financial and legal disputes which trailed success. His refrain is the contrast between the innocent ease of the songs, symbolic of an idealised "golden age", that trigger nostalgia even in the young, and the tortured history of their creators, marred by feuds and fear. Much of the story is the cost of such colossal fame and fortune. But his conclusion is simple: the music survives. Those songs, he says, "not even money could destroy".