With a Little Help from Their Friends: The Beatles and the People Who Made Them

Music critic Maconie (The Nanny State Made Me) adds to the overflowing shelf of books on the Beatles with this earnest if stale ode to friends, promoters, supporters, industry connections, and odd characters in the Fab Four’s orbit. He profiles Astrid Kirchherr, the photographer who helped influence the Beatles’ style with her early monochrome portraits; drummer Pete Best, whose unceremonious 1962 firing “is the Kennedy assassination of the Beatles’ story,” according to the author; and lesser-known figures like Meta Davies, a traffic cop who supposedly gave Paul McCartney a parking ticket (though Maconie denies that she inspired “Lovely Rita,” which had already been recorded). Though the author wears his fandom proudly, he doesn’t gloss over less savory aspects of the Beatles’ history, including Lennon’s domestic violence allegations. Still, there’s little that’s revelatory, and the writing can feel like filler (see the entry for Sean O’Mahoney, the publisher of the magazine The Beatles Book, “an invaluable resource and more, a way for Beatles obsessives from Accra to Zagreb, Accrington to Zaragoza to share their passion and feel connected and nurtured by it”). This one’s strictly for Beatles completists. (Apr.)