As a young scuffer on the Isle Of Wight off the coast of England, Philip Norman played in a skiffle group called the Rave-Ons - named in honor of one of Buddy Holly's greatest songs, "Rave On," an energetic ode to lust that all but defines the essence of rock & roll. Ever since, Norman's career has loosely orbited around the sainted Texas rocker. Throughout the 60's and 70's, Norman distinguished himself as a music journalist for The Times of London. He established himself worldwide, however, when he wrote the definitive biography of the Beatles, whose name was a clever tribute to Holly's band, the Crickets, and who owed a huge artistic debt to Holly's tight rhythms and inventive songwriting. Later, Norman wrote about Holly himself, and when he published an autobiographical novel about his halcyon days on "the Island," Norman set the story on the very night in 1958 that the Lubbock native's plane went down - in the words of Don McLean, "the day the music died."

Luckily for Norman and the rest of us, McLean's lyric was literary hyperbole - rock and roll survived a few fallow years and exploded in a flurry of creativity following the Beatles' invasion of America. Philip Norman chronicled that explosion at The Times, establishing himself as a unique voice and collecting the rich headful of experiences that would populate his writing - both fictional and biographic - for the rest of his career. Along the way, he met and wrote about several generations of rockers - from pioneers like Bill Haley and Fats Domino to new wavers like Debbie Harry and the Police.

To the average Joe or Jane rock reader, though, Philip Norman is and will always be the Beatles' biographer. His Shout! The Beatles In Their Own Generation was a best-seller and has been in-print all-but-continuously since; as of this writing, it is about to be revised and republished yet again. This success, inarguably, has as much to do with the Beatles' enduring popularity as with Norman's sensitive, scholarly treatment of his subject. Still, the quality of Norman's research and writing should not be underestimated, and much of what is now considered common knowledge about the Fab Four first appeared on the pages of Shout!

With a name like "Philip Norman," our current subject is easily confused with other authors and celebrities, and, outside of his celebrated Beatle book, is not terribly well-known this side of "the pond" - meaning not much has been written about him. Hence, he may (or may not) have written a number of other books in addition to the ones I review below. He (almost) certainly wrote the following, uniformly out-of-print works of fiction - each of which incorporates elements of the author's rock & roll upbringing.

• Everyone's Gone To The Moon (1995)
• The Skater's Waltz (1979)
• Wild Thing (1972)

Shout! The Beatles In Their Generation
by Philip Norman (1981)
In my introduction (above), I call Shout! the definitive biography of the Beatles. Well, that's old news, and I have stated the obvious in an unoriginal fashion - simply adding my voice to a huge chorus of huzzahs. The typical Beatle freak owns every edition of Norman's universally acclaimed tome, and most have read each volume more than once. The story of the Beatles' rise and the evidence of their huge impact on Western culture are well-known to all nearly anyone who has lived in the last half-century. Philip Norman's Shout! is still worth a careful read for two distinct reasons - he tells the story better than anyone, and his detailed chronology will provide details to surprise even the best-read Beatlemaniac. While Norman has a clear affection for the group, his is a clear-eyed, bare-knuckled telling, and, as one writer put it, he constructs a "rigorous analysis of the pretensions and affectations of hippie culture" in the process. [top of page]

The Road Goes on Forever
by Philip Norman (1982)
Here's a book that wouldn't exist had it not been for the book reviewed above. The author's Shout! was the best yet - and some say best ever - Beatle bio, and it sold a boatload of copies (especially given the then-ill-defined market for rock books). That sudden success led to the publication of The Road Goes On Forever, an anthology of Norman's earlier music writing for The Times of London. In a certain way, he resembles a less zany Nik Cohn; they both emerged from Britain's post-war baby boom brimming with rock 'n' roll energy, and they both write with verve and wit about the music that captured their imaginations at an early age. Unlike, Cohn, Norman focuses on almost exclusively on his subjects - not himself - and he rarely threatens to disintegrate into nonsense (which, with Cohn, is half the fun). Representing nearly twenty years of writing, The Road Goes On Forever is a functional history of rock and an excellent read - proof that Shout! wasn't built in a day. [top of page]

The Stones
by Philip Norman (1984, revised 1993)
After the success of Shout!, his popular and praised Beatles biography, Philip Norman must have figured that if lightning struck once, twice would be a cinch. In some ways, he was right. The Stones is every bit as good of a book as Shout! but - for reasons beyond his control - his follow-up failed to capture the imagination of the public. Why? Well, by the time Shout! was published, the Beatles were long defunct and permanently enshrined in rock's pantheon. In 1984, when The Stones hit the shelves, the Mick and the boys had just released Undercover Of The Night - you figure it out. Still, the book is a beauty - one of the best in a crowded field - and the Stones still had some good (if not great) albums ahead of them. Recommended along with similar books by Robert Palmer, Stephen Davis, and Stanley Booth. (Originally published as Symphony For the Devil, retitled The Life And Good Times Of The Rolling Stones in 1989 before its current incarnation as, simply, The Stones.) [top of page]

Sir Elton: The Definitive Biography
by Philip Norman (1992, revised 2000)
To many, for Philip Norman to take on Elton John as a topic following his examinations of the Beatles and the Stones is akin to challenging the Scranton 'Pop Warner' runner-ups after battling the 1974 Pittsburgh Steelers. As a unregenerate child of the Seventies, I would argue the contrary. Elton John, like the Beatles, captured the imagination of a generation with his effervescent, inventive pop, and, like the Stones, had the poor fortune to survive well past his prime and long after the last vestiges of his musical relevance had fallen away like poorly-applied rhinestones. A handful of his albums, though (including Honky Chateau and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road) are inarguable highlights of the post-Beatles, pre-punk period of rock history, and Elton - along with his crack 70's band - was a riveting, flamboyant performer worthy of Little Richard. But, that was a long time ago. Elton's diehard fans actually complain that Philip Norman gives short shrift to the last 20 years - during which the singer descended into mediocrity and received a knighthood. If Sir Elton (well-researched and written, as always) has a fault, it's that Norman should have skipped the last 20 years altogether, focusing in the alternative on the cultural and psychological forces that gave rise to the pop juggernaut known as "Captain Fantastic." Instead, he examines the man as much as the music, and both come up lacking - infuriating the faithful while frustrating those who see the emperor's recent wardrobe for the threadbare farce it is. (Originally published less ostentatiously as Elton John.) [top of page]

Rave On: The Biography Of Buddy Holly
by Philip Norman (1996)
As I describe in my preface (above), this is a book that Philip Norman was destined to write. Buddy Holly has followed Norman around like a bespectacled talisman, drawing a relatively straight line from Norman's childhood to his later, autobiographical fiction. Despite being the subject of a movie, a play, and at least one other serious biography, Buddy Holly is frequently omitted from discussions of seminal rockers. Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Gene Vincent, and, of course, Elvis Presley are usually mentioned long before the name of Buddy Holly is dropped into conversations about the pioneers of rock 'n' roll. Too bad, because, in his own way, Buddy was more original than all of them; Mick Jagger called him "the only truly original white rock 'n' roll musician," and the English have always had a keener appreciation of Holly's art than his own countrymen. For his part, Philip Norman lends an uncharacteristically personal perspective to Buddy, a biography as well-researched and insightful as any he has written. His undertaking of the book, he has said, was "motivated by three decades of love, fascination and gratitude" for Holly's music. Far from detracting from Norman's usual scholarship, though, his passion and honesty help explain why, without Buddy Holly, rock as we know it might never had come to exist. (Originally published as Buddy: The Biography.) [top of page]