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May 31, 2016 Web Exclusive By Frank Valish

Candy Leonard is a first generation Beatles fan, having grown up with the band when they were at the height of their culture-changing stardom. She is also a sociologist with a background in qualitative research, child development, popular culture, and media studies. Which makes Beatleness: How the Beatles and their Fans Remade the Word, her biography of the band from a fan perspective, all the more interesting.

With Beatleness, Leonard attempts to tell the Beatles’ story as through the eyes of their fans, those who, like the author, were affected by the band’s popularity and influence in the mid- to late-‘60s. Making use of her qualitative research background, Leonard liberally quotes from fans who were there at the time, listing with the quotes the fans’ gender and birth year for context.

Many of those interviewed were children when the Beatles played The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964s. And Beatleness explores how the band inexorably changed the lives of these kids, forever altering the schema with which they viewed the world, so different it was becoming from the world of their parents.

Leonard notes interestingly how the Beatles matured artistically at a rate that vastly outpaced that of the 5-10 year olds who watched them on Ed Sullivan. How in a matter of years from that seminal performance, the Beatles were exploring ideas and ideals that were not yet in the frame of reference for the children who grew up wanting to hold their hands.

As such, Beatleness provides a unique context, especially for those, like this reviewer, who were too young to experience the Beatles in real time. For those for whom the Beatles were already catalog artists when they came to their musical understanding, this context provides new perspective.

If there is a gripe to be had about Leonard’s book, it’s that there is not enough of this qualitative examination. Necessarily, the author has to couch her fans’-eye view in the context of something of a traditional Beatles biography, with dates and events and album discussion, etc. However, this is also where the book’s shortcomings lie. Not to the author’s fault but there is nothing new in this biographical information. It’s impossible for Leonard to add anything in this regard. What she does add, however, is the as-it-happened perspective from those whom the Beatles affected at the time they exploded into cultural relevance, how those children grew with the band, how the band taught them and helped them grow, how it helped them find themselves and what they felt was important, how the band accentuated the generation gap between them and their parents, and how the Beatles helped them think for themselves. It was a cultural experience that Leonard puts into context brilliantly. (www.arcadepub.com)

Author rating: 6/10