Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World - Hardcover

From Dreaming the Beatles

John, Paul, George, and Ringo remain the world’s favorite thing. Yet every theory ever devised to explain why has failed. It wasn’t their timing. It wasn’t drugs. It wasn’t that they were the voice of a generation. The vast majority of Beatles fans today weren’t born when the records came out—yet the allure
of the music keeps on growing, nearly fifty years after the band split. The world keeps dreaming the Beatles, long after the Beatles themselves figured the dream was over. Our Beatles have outlasted theirs.

It is truly impossible to imagine a world without the Beatles. Yes, they are the biggest, most iconic rock band of all time. Their music continues to delight, define, and provide a soundtrack for fans all over the globe. It seems, however, that with each passing decade this band has become more popular, more influential, more ubiquitous, more beloved, just MORE, and in Dreaming the Beatles, the Rolling Stone columnist and bestselling author of Love Is a Mix Tape brings his singular voice to the most universal pop culture phenomenon in history, exploring what the Beatles mean today and why they still matter so intensely to a generation that has never known a world without them. This is not another biography of the band, or an exposé of how they broke up. It isn’t a history of their gigs or gear. It’s a fresh, unconventional look at the Beatles’ astounding story, from their early friendship to their Sixties creative explosion to their crazed solo years. And, as in his previous books like Talking to Girls About Duran Duran and On Bowie, Sheffield focuses on the emotional connections we make to music. Chronicling his lifelong obsession with the Beatles along with the rest of the world’s, Dreaming the Beatles is a passionate celebration of the band and their music, showing how John, Paul, George, and Ringo invented the future we’re living in today. It’s a book that is brilliant, fresh, and universal—kind of like the Beatles themselves.

Rob Sheffield is a columnist for Rolling Stone, where he has been writing about music, TV, and pop culture since 1997. He is the author of the national bestsellers Love Is a Mix Tape: Love and Loss, One Song at a Time and Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man’s Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut, as well as Turn Around Bright Eyes: A Karaoke Journey of Starting Over, Falling in Love, and Finding Your Voice and On Bowie.