There’s never any context for Paul’s bad behavior. By contrast, Lewisohn never romanticizes Paul’s faults. John’s behavior is excused and romanticized.

In Tune In, John’s rage and abusive treatment of friends and women are given context, and rationalized in a way that almost excuses the behavior. Devin: Your review describes Paul as “self-centered” but wasn’t John supremely self-centered, too? Why are these negative appellations attached to Paul with no elaboration. And the only thing that bothers me - and also bothers me about Devin’s review - is how Lewisohn romanticizes John’s faults. I’m enjoying and kind of awed by Lewisohn’s book. And it was Jurgen who gave John and Paul their “Beatles” haircuts in Paris. Astrid got the idea for the cut from Jurgen. According to Lewisohn, it was Jurgen Vollmer who first had the haircut, and who first brought it back from France. That’s one of the long-standing factual errors that Lewisohn corrects in this book. The Beatles haircut DID NOT begin with Klaus. If JPG&R had appeared in America with Frankie Avalon hair, would there have been such an uproar in the traditional press? And if there had been no Beatles, would the whole 1960s long hair hippie thing have happened anyway? Was it the same in the U.K.? That’s why I’m fascinated to see this Cliff Richard film from the ’50s, with British guys sporting Beatle haircuts before there was a Beatles. Looking back, from the year 2013, I understand that musically they weren’t playing anything that hadn’t been heard from the 1950s rockers (aside from J&P’s remarkable songwriting talents) but it was their hair that all the early U.S. All the articles about the Beatles made them sound like freaks, because of their hair. “Their faces covered by manes of wild hair” …reportage like that. All the journalists were amazed at the weird hair. Ten years later, as an obsessed teenager in the 1970s, I used to haunt our public library and read old magazines from 1963/63… Time, Look, Life as well as newspapers. I remember teachers and classmates insisting they wore wigs. I was in elementary school when the Beatles hit America. I remember after the Ed Sullivan appearance, people couldn’t stop talking about their hair, as if it was the weirdest, sickest thing, heretofore unheard of. it was like a gang of transvestites had invaded show business (if you read accounts in the New York Times.

This is probably a minor part of the larger Beatles legend, but I’ve always been fascinated by their “look” because when they arrived in the U.S. He looks like he’s right out of the Hard Day’s Night film, but this movie is from 1958/1959. Check out the dude in this clip from “Serious Charge” … he appears at approximately 2:07 minutes.

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