Philip Norman

Even though he said that, Paul was like, yeah, that's fine.

The one thing where he got a little bit bristly was that the only book about the Beatles that Tony had was Philip Norman's Shout, which, as you may know, Paul and Linda refer to as Shite.

And so he brought that book along and said, Paul, will you sign this book? And Paul said, I'd rather not.

Thanks.

Did he say it? If so, when and where? The earliest printed example of the quote dates to 1981.

Philip Norman seems to be the first to attribute the quote to Tynan in his influential Beatles biography, Shout!, published in March 1981.

I emailed Philip to see if he had a note of his source and got a prompt, not unfriendly, but also not very helpful reply.

As he did the research for that book nearly 50 years ago, he said he couldn't recall the source.

For several other quotes, Dowding cited The Times 30th of May 1987.

When I brought up a copy of that issue of The Times, it was immediately obvious what the source was.

For the 20th anniversary of Pepper, The Times commissioned Philip Norman to write an article about the album titled When Love Was All You Need.

Sure enough, there was the supposed Tynan quote, but this was 1987, six years after Norman already published the quote in Shout!.

To capitalize on all the free press publicity and the success of their records, Brian persuaded Capitol Records to spend $50,000 on what they called a, quote, crash publicity program.

By the time Philip Norman's Shout came out in 1981, the story had changed so that Brian met and convinced an executive in New York with the unusual name Brown Megs.

Megs was, at the time, the director of Eastern operations, aka the New York office, for Capitol Records.

Megs has gone down in history as the man at Capitol who signed the Beatles.

It's a thankless, terrible position to be in.

But if the rock press isn't doing it, even John's body is barely cold when Philip Norman's going on TV saying John was 75% of the Beatles.

Oh, Philip Norman.

Who will not quit.

He

like

come on guys that's almost as bad as philip norman's the reluctant beetle book like it's it's that same level

that book because that's like the only book i i saw in like waterstones that was a george book and it would just make me roll my eyes i'm like who who are you and i've heard that book is really bad as well so don't read it

it's um