Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast, and
remember to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five. Scenes is an
iheartsmedia presentation. Work has appeared in Vanity Fair, New York Times, and
New York Magazine. He's got a new unvarnished biography of the Beatles called the
Beatles in their own Words, All You Need Is Love, unpublished, unvarnished
and told by the Beatles and their inner circle. Greetings. Good to have
you along with us. Stephen Gaines, good morning, It's great to be
here. Thanks for asking me. Now your co author, Peter Brown.
This all started when he was composing a biography back in nineteen eighty, right
when Peter asked me, you know I've been after Peter Brown. Peters from
Liverpool. He was Brian Epstein's assistant. He was best man at Johnny Oaka's
wedding. He introduced Paul to Linda. He was a real inside to work
for Apple and Beatles and co. For a long time, and I begged
him to. We wrote a book called The Love You Make, which was
the giant bestseller, sold over five hundred thousand copies, but we had the
tapes. We had two hundred one thousand words on tape, maybe one hundred
hours, and we blocked them in a bank fault and they were there for
forty years, and finally Peter and I decided that we were going to have
them transcribed and published them as a book. So you hear the actual words
of Paul of Yoko, of George of Ringo. You hear them saying it's
not there's no other texts. It's just interviews of everybody, their wives,
ex wives, you know, Patty Boyd, Cynthia Lennon, you name it.
It's all in this book. And it's interesting because the English publishers have
said titled this book the End of the Beatles, and because it was all
recorded in nineteen eighty ten years after they ended, so you got to hear
a lot of raw, interesting, unknown material on these tapes. The Beatles
definitely changed music, not just in Britain, not just in the United States,
but worldwide. And I contend that they were responsible for making a very
drastic change in music in a very short period of time. When you look
at pop music between say nineteen fifty nine and nineteen sixty nine, but then
you go nineteen seventy nine to nineteen eighty nine. I mean, you don't
see nearly the shift you saw in the earlier years. Did the Beatles in
all of their adventures? Were they self aware enough to know they were changing
things? I asked them these questions. It's really interesting. I think they
did know, and I think they did change music. I think they established
a new arena for accomplishment in music. But I think they were also amazingly
talented, wrote beautiful, gorgeous songs. And the way the songs will put
together, and the way they produced and the fact that most of the songs
were only done on four track, you know, is really a concredible thing.
So yes, I think that they did, and I think that they
affected a lot of things. They affected the culture. I never thought about
feminism before the anti war movement here in the United States, where we had
five thousand guys in Vietnam, was really mostly about hippies, peace fowers and
LSD. In England, it was a very very different thing, and they
brought a lot of subjects to life and really educated the world, not just
in music, but in a lot of different facets of I touched George Harrison
George, I grew my mustache because you grew your mustache. That's how much
the sim will effect. And he said to me, that's the dumbest thing
I ever heard. Me. Go ahead, well, say Stephen Gaines,
co author of All You Need Is Love the Beatles in their own works.
It's unpublished, unvarnished, and told by the Beatles in their inner circle.
And you talk about the music, and you talk about the writing, and
what marvels me is, Okay, I go and I study Beethoven. I
go and I study Chopin or any of the classics, and then I look
at a score of Blackbird, and I say to myself, it's there's Blackbird
written by someone who had no formal musical training. Is as much of an
aria as anything that came out of Mozart. You're right, You're right.
They listen. These guys were so you know, when you see the Peter
Jackson movie and you see them in the studio and then John Strum's just a
couple of notes and it gave me chills because they said, oh my god,
that song's going to turn out to be. I forget what it is
right now, but they just they wrote together it was truly amazing. They
didn't read music, you know, they just to see each other rot these
gorgeous songs. That's brilliance that doesn't exist anymore, and that was that was
a gift that we all have their music. And it's just incredible how they
did it and how they changed the culture's and they were kind of aware of
it. Although George thought it was stupid that I grew mustache, but I
didn't put long hair mustaches and dressed a certain way. We all wanted to
be like the Beatles in a certain way. Peter Brown and Stephen Gaines,
the best selling authors of The Love You Make All You Need Is Love the
Beatles and their own Words, Unpublished, Unvarnished and told by the Beatles,
and They're Inner Circle. They basically went back to all the tapes and are
now revealing more in this volume. The personalities that later clashed in the Beatles
I gather Paul was the workaholic, always wanting to be in the studio.
George, it seems to me that Ringo was just along for the ride,
and it was John who seemed to start going in other directions other than the
Beatles as a group. For a long time before the group broke up,
John said, I don't want to be John Beatle anymore. I want to
be John something else. I want to do other things. And Paul just
wanted to stay on that road, and John he wanted something else, and
he was lonely John and he couldn't find the right companionship until he met Yoko.
And then he used Yoko. He weaponized Yoko. He used Yoko as
a wedge between himself and the rest of the Beatles. So yes, John
wanted out more than anybody, and he got out in a very kind of
nasty way. Oh yeah, yeah, I know it did get nasty.
Do you get into that aspect of their career. Well, it's not nasty,
but you hear what they're saying. I mean, you hear what Paul
is saying about it. Look, Paul talked about how he longed for John's
friendship to return. It was really fascinating. George worried about what did John
read eye me mind the Pfiti road. They all cared so much about each
other, not necessarily musically, but they all really missed each other. It
was a very special thing. Nobody had gone through what they went through before
there weren't rock stars that day. Do you know the Beatles traveled on commercial
airliners. They weren't all these private jets that you could hire. They had
a very very unusual experience. And I think more than even the first book,
this new book, All You Need Is Love is more revealing just to
hear them talking about it, and their wives and x wives and lawyers and
all these all these different people that were involved in their life. So I
think that hearing the transcripts from their own mouths give is chilling, and it
will chill you. Peter Brown and Steven Gaines. Stephen Gaines is with us,
best selling all authors of All You The Love You Make, I have
now created All you Need Is Love the Beatles in their own words, unpublished,
unvarnished and told by their Beatles and their inner circle. I could talk
all day, as you can tell. I'm a fan, so I'm going
to be devouring this this summer. But Stephen Gaines, thank you for joining
us, mon pusre, thank you for having me. Thanks for listening to
Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to
The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to seven and iHeartMedia Presentation