Writer has announced he is about to publish his 99th and 100th books – including an updated edition of his authorised biography of The Beatles.
Hunter Davies has announced with self-acclaim that he is about to publish his 99th and 100th books – to become a truly grand old man of letters, one long ago famed for the only authorised biography of The Beatles, selling untold millions globally.
Now his saga of the Liverpool rock band that changed popular music in the Swinging Sixties has appeared in an updated edition to mark the book’s 50th anniversary.
And it just happens to be but one of five of Hunter’s tomes still in print, notably among them The Glory Game, his story of his favourite football team, Spurs, whose Premium Division matches he still attends.
It was in September, 1966, while writing the Atticus column on the Sunday Times, that he approached Paul McCartney for an interview seeking to discover where the poetry of his lyrics came from.He returned later to ask Paul to write the theme music for his Mulberry Bush movie. “He didn’t, but while I was with him I suggested there should be a proper book about the Beatles who were then the biggest group in the world, household names.
“I said to Paul that if there was a serious hardback book, which covered their music properly, it might stop people asking them the same dopey old questions.”
The task took two years to complete after he finally obtained the permission of the Beatles’ manager, Epstein.
“They seemed to be into new things, new sounds, new ideas all the time,” Hunter points out, fearing that by the time the biog was published it would be out of date.
Hence subsequent updates and visits still to McCartney’s home in St John’s Wood, not far from the Abbey Road zebra crossing that led to the Beatles’ recording studio. And he still visits him nowadays.
“He invites me to parties and I have met his new wife,” says Hunter. “And I still play the Beatles music at home. It’s the only music I play. I haven’t moved on. I love them all. At Margaret’s funeral I played And I Love Her.”
source:islingtontribune