Just take my money, OK?

Ted recommends these for your Beatles gift-giving and getting lists

As the Beatles once sang, “Christmastime is here again / ain’t been ‘round since you know when.” I know that’s code for: “Apple is going to reissue something for the fourth time just take my money right now thank you.”

Such was the case this year with the budget-blowing collection of nice clean monophonic editions of the group’s first five albums in their American iterations. Like millions of others, these records were where I first heard and began assimilating the Beatles into my DNA. I still cherish the well-worn copy of “The Early Beatles” my parents gave me for Christmas when I was eight years old.

But that, like the other original issues in my collection, show their age. The new box does not. I bought it. I love it.

The box ties in with this year’s Disney+ documentary (and it’s just fine with me if Disney+ wants to keep churning out these things), “Beatles ’64.” The Scorsese-directed piece isn’t as revelatory as Sir Peter Jackson’s “Get Back” series from two years ago, and I would’ve been happy to have been spared the trite observations from Scorsese’s author pals about Beatle impact interspersed among the genuinely fascinating footage from the group’s first visit to the United States. Ditto the horrible rendering of “All My Loving” at the beginning, which nearly caused me to shut it off and walk away.

I still recommend it, though, if only for (1) the reminder that the Beatles were a ferocious live act and Ringo an amazing drummer; (2) Lennon’s vocal on “This Boy” is one for the ages; (3) Smokey Robinson and the Miracles; and (4) the jaw-dropping moment when you realize John Lennon had “Strawberry Fields Forever” in his head in early 1964.

I’ve also had the joy to read, over the past two months, three exceptional and unique books within the Beatles’ orbit. Given the number of books about the Beatles, “unique” is no mean feat.

My culture advisor Paul Rapp pointed me to Beatles Blackouts: Trips Around the World in Search of Beatles Monuments by Jack Marriott. As much a conversational travelogue in the best tradition of, say, Paul Theroux, the book takes us to some of the most far-flung places around the globe in search of monuments to the Beatles. At times gripping, sometimes moving, and very nearly always hilarious, Beatles Blackouts illustrates plainly the cliché that the Beatles changed the world.

The book brought to mind a trip Angie and I took to Liverpool in 2014. The aforementioned Paul, working at the time with The Cavern Club (I know, right?), hooked us up with tickets for the Club’s authorized bus tour of Beatle sites around the city. I’m normally not one for guided tours but boarded the sold-out bus with glee. Other than the coach driver and tour guide, we may have been among the few on the bus for whom English is a primary language. But when we drove along Penny Lane, the whole of the bus broke into song with lyrical perfection. Ditto Strawberry Fields and a handful of others. The whole world on that bus spoke the universal language of the Beatles. Jack Marriott’s book does the same.

Seth Rogovoy is one of my favorite writers; along with his newspaper columns and regular Substack pieces, he penned a carefully-considered book on my other favorite, Bob Dylan (Prophet, Mystic, Poet). Having read a few dozen books on Dylan, I’m here to say it’s equally challenging for an author to write something unique about the guy. Seth did that.

He did so again, this time for George Harrison, in Within You Without You: Listening to George Harrison. Here, Seth paves right over accrued decades of regurgitated fluff on the retold history of the band to take the reader/listener back to basics: objectively and genuinely listening to George Harrison’s role in the Beatles and to the songs he wrote within and without the band. He deftly takes the songs out from underneath history’s death grip, rejuvenating the listening experience with fresh perspective. Bravo.

I sent a copy to my Beatlephile pal Tom, who proclaimed it something akin to “this is exactly the kind of Beatles book I want to read.” Tom knows his Beatles and his books. Take his word for it, read Seth’s book, and – when you sit down for that Disney+ documentary, marvel at your newfound appreciation for George Harrison.

Then there’s Elliot Mintz’s We All Shine On: John, Yoko & Me. A selfless, generous, imminently readable, and intensely interesting front row view to the life of the Lennons in the 1970s. It’s filled with detail and insight to stories heretofore relegated to unreliable gossip in Random Notes and Page Six hypotheses.

Mr. Mintz narrates his own story from an omniscient perspective where he’s genuinely amazed as his life unfold beneath while he seemingly observes from his house on the hill. He comments more than once on how he doesn’t quite understand how it all happened – becoming John and Yoko’s collective and individual best friend and most trusted confidant through thick and thin.

Perhaps his lot is his own Instant Karma: he played Yoko’s new album on his radio show and approached it, and her, as an artist rather than “John Lennon’s Wife.” This, at the time, was rare. Surely the Lennons recognized someone with the intellect, curiosity, and sense of risk-taking they applied to their own lives. A fellow traveler.

It's a fascinating book, and I loved it. Every bit as humble and human as his Facebook page would suggest. Highly, highly recommended.