In the early days of the Beatles, back in Liverpool, Mona Best was sort of a den mother to the boys, who used the Best home as kind of a headquarters. In fact, Neil Aspinall - then the band's roadie, later the head of Apple Corps - not only lived in the Best house, but kept time of a different sort with the drummer's mum. In 1962, Mona Best, then in her forties, gave birth to a son by Neil Aspinall. The Beatles still fired Pete Best a few weeks later.
This tidbit comes to you courtesy of Bob Spitz' anvil-like tome The Beatles, which I have started reading. It is just chock-full of little stories like that, and you can expect me to be blogging about them for the next few weeks. Much of this book is new to me, which means it crosses the threshold for inclusion in this blog.
Basically, I assume that all of my readers know everything that I know. Therefore, for the most part, I don't post anything here that I've known for a long time, because I figure you guys know that too, whatever it is. There's no point in telling you that the Beatles made a few movies - even a cartoon! - because you already know that. Conversely, whenever I learn something knew, I assume that you the reader don't know it, and that's when I reach for my blog.
And I expect there to be plenty of stuff in this book that I don't know. Strap yourself in for a torrent of Beatlefacts.
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2 comments:
Tom, if you don't have it, you should really pick up Billboard's Book of Number 1 Hits (by Fred Bronson)--unbelievably dense with lots of excellent pop-music trivia.
And enjoy the Spitz--it's lots of fun, especially on the (relatively) underdocumented Liverpool years.
I used the Bronson book when I was working on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Singles of All Time - it's prety fantastic.
I think I got it from the library, though, since I don't seem to have a copy around here.
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