'Jonathan Gould's Can't Buy Me Love is, hands down, the best Beatles book since Ian MacDonald's Revolution in the Head. The subject is pretty much inexhaustible if the writer is good enough, and Gould is very good. He covers the group's cultural significance (pulling out a plum of a 1963 Eric Hobsbawm quote: "In 20 years' time, nothing of them will survive") as well as their music. Using the minor White Album track Yer Blues, Gould succinctly explains how the Beatles operated on a different level to every other British Sixties band. Want the explanation? Get the book for Christmas.' The Times 'Scrupulous, witty, and at times, appropriately sceptical . . . [Gould] lets you hear with keener ears the way a great novelist lets you feel with keener emotions.' New York Times Book Review 'Excels by providing what's been missing from many biographies: context.' USA Today 'Essential . . . his narrative literally sings itself off the pages.' Boston Globe 'Gould, a former musician, has written an engrossing book, both fluid and economical. Page after page, you can hear the music; Gould's deft hand makes the book sing. This is music writing at its best.' Publishers Weekly 'Can't Buy Me Love provides a thrilling account of how four nowhere kids from Liverpool translated their love of American rock and blues into a body of popular music unmatched in the nearly forty years since they ended their careers as Beatles. Writing with a scholar's attention to history and a musician's interest in songcraft, Gould meticulously charts the group's evolution from three-chord sprints like 'She Loves You' to multi-partite, symphonic masterpieces like 'A Day in the Life'. If you've ever wanted to know why the Beatles' music is great and how better to appreciate it, look no further than this brilliant book.' People magazine 'Excellent and engrossing . . . Gould has the two gifts essential to a critic - passionate expertise plus a bulletproof sense of humour - and his descriptions of the music are hilariously on target . . . Yet Gould also possesses that third essential gift: the capacity for awe.' James Marcus, The Los Angeles Times 'Gould's combination group biography, cultural history, and musical criticism artfully places the Beatles in their time and social context while examining with great skill how they became an international phenomenon comparable only to themselves . . . Setting Gould's book apart are his careful dissection of cultural history and his astute critical eye . . . Long on history, short on gossip, he gives nuanced assessments of the world's most admired rock band and of its era.' Booklist 'Volumes have been written on the Beatles . . . Now comes one of the best, Jonathan Gould's Can't Buy Me Love, a smashing group biography that doubles as a masterful cultural history.' Play-Taste 'Gould excels at depicting the complexities involved in creating songs destined to become classic . . . He juxtaposes their personal history, the genius, the outrageous statements, the women, the drugs, with the arc of world events then. If you loved the Beatles, you'll love this book.' Dayton Daily News 'Every so often - every rare once in a while - it is good and cleansing and necessary to have one compact volume that sums everything up, hitting the heights and depths and sticking with the facts all the way to the bitter end. Jonathan Gould's Beatles biography Can't Buy Me Love is that book - and, aware as it is of the fact that even titling the book Can't Buy Me Love is something so completely simple and banal, it tells the sprawling, complicated Beatles story in a refreshingly straight-forward manner . . . Gould succeeds in not only expertly telling that tale, but infusing it with a voice that's all his own.' Santa Barbara News-Press 'It's been said that not only did the world want the Beatles in the 1960s, it needed them. Gould, for the first time, really explains why . . . Gould has written a book that both fans and rock historians will enjoy.' DailyVault.com 'What separates writer and musician Gould's first book from the multitudinous others is his threefold focus; Gould deftly mixes biography with social commentary and musical and lyrical analysis, illustrating how the band crafted its groundbreaking songs and how its achievements impacted, and were impacted by, the tumultuous 1960s. Highly recommended for all academic, public, and music libraries.' Library Journal
