It Was Fifty Years Ago Today THE BEATLES Invade America and Hollywood Harvey Kubernik Otherworld Cottage Industries (2014)  Ray Trakin, in HITS Daily Double News of Saturday, May 14, 2014 wrote, “For my 29 years as a New York transplant in Hollywood, venerable L.A. cheerleader and pop culture historian Kubernik has served as my soulful guide to all things SoCal. This compendium of his four decades as a tireless pop chronicler is kind of like his version of Springsteen’s High Hopes, a |
compilation of outtakes and previously unreleased excerpts that serve as a veritable oral history of the Fab Four’s various connections to Hollywood, along with some nifty reproductions of artifacts of the time . . . The Beatles’ 50th anniversary celebration may have long since turned into media overkill, but Kubernik’s focused, tirelessly completist approach to the Fab Four’s Hollywood connection offers firm proof how important this town was to their eventual world conquest.” In Jim Kaplan’s review of the same book, the cover story of the May-June issue of Record Collector News, he writes “Los Angeles native and Pop and Rock music historian Harvey Kubernik has been an active journalist for over 40 years, published six books, penned thousands of articles and has been acknowledged in over 150 books… Harvey’s book is a very important look at the Beatles and the band’s previously unexamined relationship to the musical heritage of Los Angeles and Hollywood from the late-1950s to mid-‘70s.” Brian Greene, in Shindig! magazine (Issue #38), review wrote of It Was 50 Years Ago Today THE BEATLES Invade America and Hollywood, “There’s a lot of charm to this book, even for those of us who have an ‘enough already!’ stance on the coverage of the 50th anniversary of the Fabs’ first appearance on Ed Sullivan… But in the end, it always comes back around to the crux of the life-changing effect the Beatles had on American youths in 1964. It might be a tried and true notion but it’s still astounding to read all of these influential people comment on what the Sullivan appearances, the early US concerts and the first Beatles singles heard on the radio here meant to all of them.” |
