A Top Ten Music Book Bestseller in The Independent (UK)
“Brings the era to vivid life. The mythic moments are all here. Magical Mystery Tours is a tour de force.” ---Entertainment Weekly
Growing up in a postwar Liverpool suburb, Tony Bramwell was boyhood friends with three of the Beatles long before they were famous. And by the time he caught up with George Harrison on the top of a bus to check out “The Beatles, direct from Hamburg”---one of which George turned out to be---Tony was well into a life story absolutely unlike any other.
Tony carried George’s guitar that night, and he stayed with the band from the first Number 1 to the last. From overseeing the tours of Brian Epstein’s Merseybeat stars to producing shows for Jimi Hendrix, the Who, Cream, and Pink Floyd at Epstein's Savile Theatre; and from producing and directing Beatles videos to heading Apple Films, Tony's life really did encompass a who’s who of rock.
With an insider’s shrewd eye, Tony describes the rise and fall of the Apple empire, Brian Epstein’s frolics, Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters, Phil Spector’s eccentric behavior, and stories never before told about Yoko Ono. He uncovers new information about the Shea Stadium concert footage, John Lennon’s late-night “escapes,” and more. From the Cavern Club to the rooftop concert, and from scraps of song lyrics to the discovery of the famous Mr. Kite circus poster, Tony Bramwell really did see it all.
It’s a story in which every character is one of the musical 1960s most colorful. Conversational, direct, and honest, the ultimate Beatles insider finally shares his own version of the frantic and glorious ascent of four boys from Liverpool lads to rock and roll kings.
Praise for Magical Mystery Tours
“A must-read for anyone interested in the history of the Fab Four. Bramwell doesn’t hold back with his tales of the grand insanity that tailed The Beatles.”--The New York Post
“Energetically written…a vivid and intensely personal look at not only the Beatles but at a storybook trip from the docks of Liverpool to swinging London and the very epicenter of the British invasion.”--Publishers Weekly
“A sprawling, amiable account of life near the world’s most famous and most gifted pop group. A welcome addition to Beatles lore.”--The Globe and Mail (Canada)
Magical Mystery Tours: My Life with the Beatles Reviews:
Lay back, relax, and psych yourself up for some juicy tidbits... 
2009-04-27 - *bytheway, for fans of Yoko Ono, it'd probably be advisable to overlook this book. Or maybe not...your call =) *
*also, one may have to read other Beatles chronicles first...just to be a little bit more familiar.*
A lot of people who have written memoirs about their experience with the Beatles are almost always touted to be the "ones who were there"; the people "who knew what really happened behind the scenes." Since I've barely read more than a couple of books written by those supposedly belonging to the Beatles sphere, I find myself not quite ready to trust what I read--were they really "there" when a momentous Beatles event occurred--whether personal or public? Are their accounts the genuine article (read as "firsthand") that they can really be trusted? Sometimes it seems all too easy to believe that these "memoirs" are just another hodge-podge of widely-researched-and-collected gossips and tabloid articles, as well as a rehashing of secondhand accounts. Who knows...
So, in coming across Tony Bramwell's account, I really was not *that* expecting much in the way of stumbling across new info about the band. (I admit, I cannot remember Bramwell's [or "Tone's"] name being mentioned much in those books that I have read, and I'm much too lazy to go through those pages again. No offense to Tony's admirers.) Even so, the front cover splashing McCartney's vouchsafing for Bramwell's memory of the band was enough to make me go, "hmmm....let's see..."
Even from just the first chapter, Bramwell impresses on the reader that *his* account is definitely different. He exhibits no reluctance in saying, "look, what you have been reading about the Beatles with regards to what happened in this or that is a load of hogwash...'cos THIS is what really happened..." It's a bit "in-your-face" for me that I was taken aback.
Or maybe I really am green behind the ears regarding this band that what seemed to me as unheard-of accounts by Bramwell are actually old news to die-hard zealots, despite popular belief.
In any case, it didn't stop me from being titillated.
From setting to rights the real story behind John and Paul's first "meeting" on that auspicious day, the "fiasco" that was the Decca Auditions, what the band and the people from Apple really thought about Brian Epstein, the slew of girls that maniacally pitched themselves to the Beatles, to the circus that became Apple Corps., among others, Bramwell lays it all out.
Of course, the reader still gets the feeling that Bramwell is a little bit more prudent regarding some other topics. Either these subjects are really touchy or long-held secrets that he is bound to keep quiet despite wanting to thrill the reader, or his memories are scanty that he makes only a passing remark. In fact, he rarely expounds on the momentous events surrounding Beatlemania...and this is one of the things I was dissatisfied with, including not having written more about the John-Paul-George-Ringo dynamics (hence the 4 stars)--there really were very very few narrations on the more personal relations among the members (the times he has mentioned poor Ringo can even be counted).
But, boy, on those topics that he's probably waiting to spill the beans on...he definitely makes no bones in keeping back.
And one of those is Yoko Ono.
In fact, his biting tongue (which is actually funny most of the times) comes to the fore whenever Yoko is mentioned. The reader is left with no doubt regarding his feelings for her. Which really surprised me, since this is the first written work I've come across that does not hesitate to be acerbic on the Ono-Beatles phenomenon, and with him being close friends with the band and all.
This is one of his first references to her (and arguably the most polite, at that): "We weren't aware of it at the time--no one was--but she should have come with a warning stuck to her, like a cigarette packet, because gradually, inch by inch, she intruded into our lives."
Granted, he came out with these writings more than a decade after John died...so I am a bit on the fence...is Bramwell a guy who's got balls...or not? But then again, Yoko is still around...
On the whole, Bramwell's accounts on his life around the Beatles were extremely fascinating to read. Although, I would advise others to read the more comprehensive accounts and trivia on the band before this. Bramwell's stories take for granted that the reader has already a passing familiarity with at least the more popular 411 regarding the FabFour. His stories about meeting the other heavyweights in RockNRoll, Pop, and Hard Rock are added perks. (But really, I *was* salivating still for more insights on the Beatles [Bramwell, ironically, can still be such a stint regarding them]...so forgive me for not waxing poetic on how he met Jim Morrison, James Taylor, and others).
Still...definitely worth the read! I enjoyed soaking up another person's insights on the wonder that was the Beatles...
Breezy and entertaining, but is it trustworthy? 
2009-01-22 - Tony Bramwell, his co-author and his publishers make great play of the idea that he was part of the Beatles' "inner circle". He'd grown up in the same area as them, so he knew them a bit, which is presumably why they tolerated him hanging around as a fan. Because he was such a dedicated fan, Brian Epstein hired him as a personal assistant, so he got to be part of the band's organisation from early on.
This book tells a lot of stories that I, for one, hadn't heard before. Bramwell claims that the Beatles were smoking pot long before the famous occasion when Bob Dylan supposedly gave them their first taste of the stuff. There is no other evidence for this.
More importantly, at least for those who are interested in matters of the Beatles' sexuality, he breezily dismisses the notion that John Lennon ever had any kind of homosexual experience whatever with Brian Epstein during the Spanish holiday that the two took together.
Bramwell says that Lennon said that he had 'allowed Epstein to make love to him "to get it out of the way".' Bramwell comments: "Those who knew John well, who had known him for years, don't believe it for a moment." This is, on the face of it, an extraordinary remark, because if Lennon was as "aggressively heterosexual" as Bramwell says he is, why would he ever have told anyone that he had let Epstein 'make love to him'? Surely he would never have admitted to such a thing. Bramwell is prepared to dismiss Lennon's own remarks on the grounds that they do not fit his idea of what Lennon was like. This says more about Bramwell than it says about Lennon.
Moreover, Bramwell's assertion that nobody else believed Lennon is simply untrue. Pete Shotton, who had been a close friend of Lennon for a lot longer than Bramwell ever was, recounts in his book 'In My Life: John Lennon' that Lennon told him how he had allowed Epstein to give him what I can only describe as manual stimulation (this is a family site, after all). Shotton's version of the story is considerably more detailed than Bramwell's, and his relationship with Lennon was far closer. Shotton is therefore a more credible witness than Bramwell, who was on friendly terms with the band but certainly not a confidant of Lennon himself.
It seems far more likely that Lennon, knowing Epstein to be in love with him, liking Epstein as a friend, and feeling sorry for him, would allow him a brief episode of intimacy and then tell a few close friends about it, than that he would turn Epstein down but then go around telling people that he'd done something after all. Bramwell's Lennon, a rampant hetero stud who was all about the ladies and who wouldn't ever fool around with another man, would simply not have made up such a story. Shotton's Lennon is more complex, more interesting, more vulnerable and more in keeping with what we know about Lennon. And it's not at all inconsistent that Lennon should take pity on Epstein, fool around with him, tell Shotton about it with a tone of rueful amazement, and then react with shocking violence when Liverpool DJ Bob Wooler teased him about the rumour. Lennon was a complex guy. Bramwell's Lennon is not: he's a cynical, rude, sarcastic bully and not much else.
Other reviewers have noted Bramwell's somewhat neanderthal attitude towards women, and his loathing of Yoko Ono, so I won't repeat what they've said except to confirm their assessments.
As time goes by, and the mountain of Beatle books grows ever higher, it becomes ever more clear that the quality of a Beatle book depends not so much on the degree of access the writer had to the band, but the level of insight, sympathy and literary ability they bring to the task. Tony Bramwell spent years with the Beatles, but his book will tell you nothing about them that you didn't already know. American journalist Michael Braun spent a few weeks with them, but his book "Love Me Do!" is one of the first and best books ever written about them. More recently, Jonathan Gould's "Can't Buy Me Love" is by someone who presumably has never met them at all, and yet it is by a long way one of the finest books ever written about popular music in general and this band in particular.
If the Beatle Bible ever gets assembled by some future Beatle Church, this one is destined to be an apocryphal gospel. It just isn't good enough.
among the best
2008-01-30 - Tony Bramwell has given us a lucid insider's view into the Beatles' tight circle. Some of this is hilarious stuff and it is actually refreshing to read Bramwell's shots at the now-ultra-untouchable-PC John'n'Yoko myth.
He is almost contemptous of Lennon and disdainful of Yoko and her machinations. Lennon comes across as a drug-addled loser with his best years behind him-Yoko is an evil Queen of the Castle,an almost Satanic figure bent on destroying the Beatles and what's left of Lennon's ego.
Actually,"disdainful" is putting it mildly. I am surprised Bramwell has survived the curses Yoko must've hurled at him while she was mixing her potions and gazing into her crystal ball.
If the reader wants a refreshing tome that punctures the Beatle myth and the lenono myth-this book is it.
It's among the best Beatle books.
The Beatles, by one who knew them 
2007-12-16 - This is not so much an analysis of the Beatles' unbelievable career or their music as it is a rather breezy, first-person account of the segment of their lives that Tony Bramwell shared. He knew John, Paul and George growing up in Liverpool (he didn't meet Ringo until they were both adults), and he gives us many insights about the three founding Beatles and of how they grew into rock's greatest band. Bramwell also worked for the Beatles all during the years of their greatest popularity.
True, many of the details have been published earlier, elsewhere. But Bramwell gives them a new, "I was there" interpretation and what might be termed a specifically "Liverpudlian" perspective. Some of the direct quotes from John, Paul, George and Ringo have the sound of true speech, from one who actually heard them, and also show speech patterns peculiar to Liverpool.
I have noted in an earlier review of another book about the Beatles that the author of that one seemed to have a pro-John, anti-Paul bias. In all fairness, I would have to say that while Bramwell appears to have liked all the Beatles personally, Paul seems to have been the best friend to him, the one he considered "most normal," so to speak. But nevertheless, the picture he gives of the four is honest and candid, while still maintaining the fondness he held for all four of these extraordinary men.
Warning: If you were favorably impressed by John's and Yoko Ono's various "pro-peace" stunts and other somewhat bizarre activities in the late 1960s and early 1970s, don't expect Bramwell to share your enthusiasm in this book. He makes it clear that he held Ono in low regard, and thought John's fascination with and marriage to her a bizarre mistake.
The final few chapters of the book do not make as interesting a read as the earlier ones, as Bramwell goes somewhat off topic to relate anecdotes about how he met, got drunk with, etc., seemingly every well-known but flakey celebrity in Hollywood. It detracts a little from the book -- but only a little.
If you're a Beatles fan -- or if you're a young person who has only heard of them and would like to learn a lot more -- you'll find this book well worth your time.
Curious 
2007-11-18 - This book is required reading for any Beatles enthusiast; however, although Bramwell seemingly has the credentials--knowing Paul and George since childhood--to write such a book, including blow-by-blow dialogue with the lads no less, I found it curious that Bramwell is only mentioned once in the index of McCartney's 654 page (auto)biographical tome, MANY YEARS FROM NOW. Seems Bramwell didn't loom too large as far as McCartney was concerned. What gives, Tony?
