The Beatles: Illustrated Lyrics

Rating:
Summary: Illustrated Beatles Lyrics? Great!
Review: "The Beatles: Illustrated Lyrics" is a must-have for Beatles fans everywhere. This book features the lyrics from most Beatles songs, each song paired with anadventurous illustration capturing the mood and theme/s of that particular song. Many of the illustrations are brilliant works of art, especially those for "Eleanor Rigby", "I Want You", "I Saw Her Standing There" and "Dear Prudence" and are great to look at when listening to the songs. I found the illustration for "She's Leaving Home" - a comic strip of the story told in the song to be ecceptionally neat. Some of the pictures are interesting to say the least: "Cry Baby Cry", "Blackbird" and "Tomorrow Never Knows", whereas others are just darned weird, such as "Dr. Robert", "Mean Mr. Mustard" and "Within You Without You" - but hey, even some of the weird illustrations are fun to look at. Also featured throughout the book is a selection of fan art - all of it pretty good.

In conclusion, if you are a die-hard Beatles fan, you shouldn't be without this book. Sure, it's not for everyone (some of the art may be a little too much for some people), but if you love the Beatles and if you love poetry, by all means grab a copy.

Rating:
Summary: I own the orignal, published in 69
Review: I have the oringnal book with the (it is a hard back)oringal paper cover the new one is not the same nor is it close, the paper cover over the hard back is in excellent shape, and the cover is very different, the darwings, the feel all is different, the one I have is a very limited print and is VERY hard to find my e-mail adress is [e-mail] 604-899-0828 so if you want the real thing let me know,,,,, see ya

Rating:
Summary: Groovy Book
Review: I love this book - I don't have the original copy but I'm not such a purist that it really matters.
The art is fantastic and it is great to flick through or read at length. Full of ideas for any budding artists it has also made me well into Alan Aldridge whose designs are mind-boggling.
Suggest also checking out Phantasia by Alan Aldridge - it is out of print but can be found in the usual places...

Rating:
Summary: Let It Be........and don't buy
Review: I've actually owned this book for years and was suprised to see it is still available. This is one of my favorites in my entire Beatles collection. It is filled with psychadelic paintings and artwork from well known artists such as Peter Max as well as quick Lennon sketches. It displays some nudity and is not for every Beatles fan, but captures the spirit of the era beautifully. It's colorful, fun, and filled with page after page of Beatles lyrics. How can you go wrong???

Rating:
Summary: An Explosion Of Art And Poetry
Review: I've actually owned this book for years and was suprised to see it is still available. This is one of my favorites in my entire Beatles collection. It is filled with psychadelic paintings and artwork from well known artists such as Peter Max as well as quick Lennon sketches. It displays some nudity and is not for every Beatles fan, but captures the spirit of the era beautifully. It's colorful, fun, and filled with page after page of Beatles lyrics. How can you go wrong???

Rating:
Summary: Let It Be........and don't buy
Review: Illistrated lyrics my a$*....Personally, I was a bit dissapointed with this book. Let me get one thing straight, I do love art, paintings, drawings etc, but this book is full of the most obscure pictures of random things that are totally irrelevent to the song, let alone depicting the lyrics.
Don't get me wrong, I am absolutly mad about the Beatles and there music, the lyrics and songs, and of course their handsomely good looks (hehe) , but this book just made it seem like someone took a whole bunch of meaningless doodles by un-notorious 'artists'and stuck them beside imagary, story telling lyrics. If you want to learn background about the beatles' songs, this book will take you nowhere . However, if you ARE looking for some unattractive illistrations and incorrect lyrics to beatles songs, you've found your match. So before you buy, think about it....LET IT BE for your own sake, and your wallet's

Rating:
Summary: And, in the end, the love you take...
Review: is proportional to the music that you make. (! ) One word: fabuloso. If you ever wondered what, say is behind "polythene pam" or had an urge to sing along with john on "i am the walrus" or "happiness is a warm gun", this'll be a fun collection. The art is great...Dr Roberts, por ehemplay, is indeed a sight. And who wouldn't be awaken by the scene in "Good Morning"? Be forwarned that most of these pics and scenarios were done in the 60's and they have that 60's pop-art flair to 'em... I easily can see someone doing the same kinda treatment for Elton John's or Pete Townsend's or TAFKAprince's catalog. One could only imagine the graphics for Tafkap's "billie jean b*" or "lady cab driver...."

Rating:
Summary: For the Beatlemaniac who has all their books...
Review: No reviews, no bios, just great lyrics and good art. This book was originally published during the late 60s, and so the art reflects the time. My only complaint: "Two of Us" is not about Paul and Linda (as the picture suggests), it's about the friendship of John and Paul (lines like "you and I have memories, longer than the road that stretches out ahead" make little sense in regard to Linda; Paul had only recently met her at the time of the song's writing, and he went on to spend the next 30 years with her). That aside, I say no Beatle library is complete without it.

Rating:
Summary: Handsome book, but why the snubbing of Harrison/Starr songs?
Review: Overall, this is a nice volume which augments the lyrics of the Beatles with striking and memorable illustrations, particularly from editor Aldridge, which very well capture the spirit of the Beatles' music. However, the book contains one serious shortcoming: its inexplicable (and unexplained) leaving out of almost all of the Beatle numbers not written by Lennon/McCartney. This means that such indispensible songs such as "Here Comes The Sun", "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", "Something", "Old Brown Shoe", and "Octopus's Garden" (among others) are conspicously absent from this collection. Why? Instead, we get at least a dozen Lennon/McCartney compositions that were never actually recorded by the Fab Four, as well as Lennon's three most famous songs from his early solo career.
Another drawback is that the lyrics are presented in a seemingly random, haphazard order as opposed to any kind of a chronological or even thematic one.
A wonderful concept well-executed, but must be docked points for incompleteness because of the missing Harrison and Starr songs.

Rating:
Summary: I may not know art - but I know what I like
Review: This book was a disappointment to me personally. I did not like most of the art. There is a lot of nudity and I find most of the illustrations have absolutley nothing to do with the songs. I don't see why "Strawberry Fields" needs to be illustrated by a photo of 2 completed naked children. The lyrics are in small type and seem trivial compared with the graphics. To me - it was more that the lyrics were an afterthought and the art work was most important. Also - there ware a lot of solo work by John Lennon included - but equal attention was not given to the other 3 Beatles for their solo efforts. If you are into freaky 60's art and completely gratuitous nudity - then you will probably like this book. But - it's not for every Beatle fan. Oh - and BTW - the person who wrote that "Two of Us" was about Paul's relationship with John and not about Paul & Linda - read Anthology or "Many Years From Now". That song IS about Paul & Linda.