Ticket to Ride: Inside the Beatles' 1964 and 1965 Tours That Changed the World

by Larry Kane, Dick Clark (Foreword by)

Overview

An insider's look at the world's first major rock-and-roll tour, Ticket to Ride tells the Beatles? story like it's never been told before.
• Includes a CD featuring an hour of Kane's rare interviews with the Beatles
• Features a foreword by Dick Clark

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143034261
Publisher:	Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
Publication date:	09/28/2004
Edition description:	Book & CD
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	350,363
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.74(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

 Larry Kane has been a broadcast journalist for more than forty-five years, thirty-eight of them as an anchorman in Philadelphia. He is an Emmy Award winner and well known for his 1964 and 1965 historic tours with the Beatles.

Table of Contents

	Foreword	vi
	Acknowledgments	vii
	Prologue: If That Was Fab	x
Part 1	1964
Chapter 1	A Ticket to Ride	3
Chapter 2	A Stranger in the Bedroom	11
Chapter 3	Seventy-two Hours of Madness	17
Chapter 4	Fishing for Trouble	27
Chapter 5	A Hollywood Fantasy	39
Chapter 6	Beatle Frights and Beatle Nights	49
Chapter 7	A Juicy Piece of the Apple	55
Chapter 8	Surf and Sex at the Jersey Shore	61
Chapter 9	Rockin' at the Birthplace of Freedom	69
Chapter 10	High-Speed Beatlemania	75
Chapter 11	Guns, Palm Trees, and a Rock-and-Roll Hurricane	85
Chapter 12	North to Boston: Does Anyone Have a Compass?	101
Chapter 13	Memories from the Fans	105
Chapter 14	Catfight in Cleveland, Wild Horses in New Orleans	109
Chapter 15	Word War in Kansas City, Fear in Dallas	115
Chapter 16	A Rolling Stone on the Beatles' Doorstep	123
Part 2	Life on Tour
Chapter 17	A Plane Life	129
Chapter 18	Flirtatious Mothers and Candy Kisses	135
Chapter 19	What Were They Really Like?	141
Chapter 20	The Late Show: Free Love and Free Parking	151
Chapter 21	The Beatles' Inner Circle	155
Part 3	1965
Chapter 22	Help! In the Bahamas	165
Chapter 23	The Beatles Have Landed!	171
Chapter 24	Mugs and Drugs in Maple Leaf Country	185
Chapter 25	A Few Hours of Heaven	189
Chapter 26	Mayhem and Music in Texas	195
Chapter 27	Air Wars and the Beatles' Radio Daze	201
Chapter 28	Engine on Fire: John! Don't Jump!	207
Chapter 29	Back to Hollywood: Famous Faces in the Bedroom	213
Chapter 30	"We Are the Beatles, That's What We Are"	225
	Epilogue: Beyond the Tours	231
Appendix	Complete 1964 and 1965 Tour Schedules	241

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Over the years the market has been flooded with far too many second-rate books on aspects of the Beatles' history, but Larry Kane's Ticket to Ride stands out as an honest, informative, comprehensive, and entertaining account. (Tony Barrow, the Beatles' press officer, 1963û1968)

A breezy account of what it was like at the Boys' side as Beatlemania swept the nation. (Rolling Stone)

Terrific fly-on-the-wall stuff about a unique pop-cultural event. (Booklist)

Editorial Reviews

John Lennon once said that the Beatles on tour were as debauched as the ancient Romans in Fellini's Satyricon. Outside of a description of a "happy" Lennon urging his band mates to "take your pick" from a group of hookers provided by an Atlantic City concert promoter, this highly entertaining account by broadcast journalist Kane, who covered the tour at the time, is as discreet about the Fab Four's sexual adventures as they were, although Kane notes that "women came and went from the Beatles' floor in most hotels." But in all other respects, from fiery airplanes and rioting fans to encounters with Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Jayne Mansfield (the latter two seem to spend "quality" time with Lennon), this is a fantastic insider's look at the cultural explosion that was Beatlemania. It helps that Kane was only 21 at the time (the same age as Paul McCartney); unlike "dull-witted" reporters whom the Beatles came to disdain, Kane quickly noted "their indisputable naturalness and, to varying degrees, the depth of their humanity and their lack of phoniness." In turn, the Beatles rewarded Kane with many in-depth interviews through the tour (60 minutes of which are included on an accompanying CD), which Kane skillfully uses throughout provide the Beatles' own insightful view of the ongoing craziness surrounding them, as they travel from one chaotic hotel and concert scene to another. This is the most detailed description yet of the Beatles' American tours, and one of the few books on the band written in the past decade that can be considered indispensable. (Sept.) Forecast: Original Beatles fans may now be in their 50s, but the band's continuing popularity among them and their children, shown by the success of recent greatest hits compilations, should ensure a strong audience for this highly enjoyable look at the Fab Four's adventures. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Radio newsman Kane may have been the only journalist to travel with the Beatles on all the stops of their 1964-65 tour, but this recounting offers little more than a chronology of screams and adulation. Kane was 21 and a Florida radio reporter when he got the break to join the first Beatles tour of America, which he understands to have been "the greatest tour in rock-and-roll history . . . an event of great musical and social magnitude." He writes that he approached the task with a degree of cynicism, as well as with anxiety and frustration, but he soon stands agog at the arena crowds--"rows and rows of hyperactivity"--and at the desperate acts fans would commit to get near the Fab Four: crawling through hotel air ducts, charging police officers, hoping one of the jellybeans they hurled at the musicians would hit home and thus achieve a form of contact. At times, Kane tries to put the Beatles within some sociological context--"a simmering youthful unrest and defiance against the establishment"--but mostly recounted here are the performers’ daring and absurd escapes from the concert hall, the sexual liaisons after the shows ("Getting women into the hotels required somebody with the power to do so. The Beatles couldn’t just wait around in the lobby for someone to show up!"), and Kane’s amazement that these were just four regular guys: "Their casual everyman’s view of life, coupled with their soulful music, endeared them to a whole generation." What could have made all this hum--Kane’s unhindered access for interviews--instead provides much of its most inane material. "Kane: Hi, Ringo, how are you? Ringo: All right, Larry. How are you? Kane: Pretty good. A lot of magazines and portraits ofyou depict you as being very sad. You’re not a sad person, are you?" Heartfelt, yet so threadbare of fresh material that it hardly merits even article-length treatment. (Photographs, 60-minute CD of interviews) First printing of 75,000; $50,000 ad/promo. Agent: Alfred Geller

Kirkus Reviews