BOOK: Beatles Gear - All The Fab Four's
Instruments From Stage To Studio (Revised)
By Andy Babiuk. Backbeat Books, large paperback, 254 pages.
Reviewed by DJ Johnson

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I was very lucky indeed to obtain this book the same week I purchased The Beatles Anthology DVD set. As that series is loaded with archival footage, and is in more or less chronological order, my eyes were often drawn to the instruments leaning against amps in the background, and I knew what they were, who bought them, for how much and why. Too much information? For the lay person, probably so. For a Beatles fanatic, probably not. For a Beatles fanatic who is also a musician, absolutely not. Beatles Gear is a book anyone from those last two groups can easily get lost in. There are 256 pages, but the amount of time one spends reading it depends on just how much daydreaming is done while looking at the pictures, and believe me, there are pictures on just about every page. Top quality pictures, in most cases.

Written by Andy Babiuk (who happens to be the bassist of the legendary garage band, The Chesterfield Kings), Beatles Gear is more than just a coffee table book picturing Hofners, Rickenbackers, Ludwigs and psychedelic Strats. Babiuk uses the equipment to tell The Beatles' story from an angle it hasn't been told from before. Let's face it, with the exception of Anthology, we've seen the same documentary and read the same book with four dozen titles over the years. Here, we don't just read the story of how a song came to be for the umpteenth time, we learn how the purchase of a particular instrument led to a sound that led to an idea that played into the story. Something we didn't know before. Assuming Babiuk is correct, a few myths are exploded, including ones that are believed by the surviving Beatles to be true. For instance, it's long been held as fact that John's aunt Mimi bought him a guitar for 17 pounds at a crucial moment in the evolution of the band. Paul says it in Anthology, George had been quoted saying it in various books. Babiuk produces a photocopy of a receipt for a Hofner Club 40 electric guitar. Aunt Mimi definitely did co-sign, and she did put down 17 pounds, but it was a down payment on the 30 pounds price (about $560 today) that John paid off with gig money. One myth out the window, more to come. Babiuk's a hell of a detective.

I wonder if he missed anything in the 6 years he researched for this book? It's hard to imagine, since it even includes pictures of the primitive skiffle equipment used by The Quarry Men. It has everything you can and can't imagine, from a tea-chest bass to George's Moog synthesizer (an early model), and as this is a revised edition of something I missed a few years back, it would seem that many of these photographs were not only absent from the previous edition but have never been made public before. I had to go through this faster than I wanted to in order to review it, but now I'm going to go back and take my time. Some of these pages may take half an hour to turn.


[WARNING: If you use the link and go to Amazon.com to buy this book, be aware it may bring up all four versions of the book, including the original. This review pertains to the revised edition, which is clearly the one to covet.]

© 2003 - DJ Johnson