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List Price: $34.95 | | Publisher: Backbeat Books
Salesrank: 337725
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| Our Price: $21.00 |
| Used Price: $19.49 |
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| Media: Paperback |
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Editorial Review:
The Unreleased Beatles details the incredible breadth of music The Beatles recorded but did not release, as well as film footage of the group that hasn't been made commercially available. Beatles expert Richie Unterberger examines a huge array of material, including unreleased studio outtakes, BBC radio recordings from 1962-1965, live concert performances, home demo recordings, fan club Christmas recordings, and other informal demos done outside of EMI studios. The staggering wealth of unreleased gems encompasses The Beatles' entire career, from a recording the Quarrymen made on July 6, 1957 (aka "the day John met Paul"), right up to outtakes from the final sessions of Let It Be in 1970. Also includes a general overview of Beatles bootlegs, their songs recorded by other artists in the 1960s, never-recorded material, and more than 100 photos.
The Unreleased Beatles: Music and Film Reviews:
Best book on the subject 
2008-09-20 - Richie Unterberger is an expert on pop culture and music. He is a prolific writer of album reviews for the All Music Guide as well as magazines like Rolling Stone, Mojo, and Record Collector. His style is descriptive, creative, and at times, humorous.
If you have ever wondered what kind of goodies were left in the Beatle vaults, this book is for you. Unterberger, who must have a vast personal collection of Beatles bootlegs, goes through great pangs to bring the reader a detailed description of what those tapes contain. This is what separates The Unreleased Beatles from so many other books on the subject of unreleased recordings...reading this book is the next best thing to hearing them yourself. It is not just a discography but rather a journey through the world of these important collections.
There are many things to like about this book. First, its girth: When you hold this book you know that you are holding onto something substantial. It is heavy with a wonderful laminated stock, and inside is a treasure trove of glossy pictures. On top of that, Unterberger adds many "asides" in which he discusses various subjects that are of interest to the Beatles collector (Hamburg Tapes, Touring, the Decca Audition, and others.) These alone make this book worth owning.
But more than just for the information it holds, the appeal of this book comes from the author's voice. Here is an obvious Beatles nut, but one who does not distort things through rose-colored glasses. He is just as willing to point out the sow's ears as he is the purses. When something is great, he fawns, and when something is closer to an audio train-wreck, he lets you know.
There are sections on television recordings, studio recordings, concerts...you name it.
As a collector of rare recordings myself, I can honestly say that (as of its publication date) Unterberger leaves no stone unturned and covers every recording known to man or woman. His book gives perspective to my own collection and gives me an idea of where to focus my future collecting. For this reason, I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the Beatles' recording history.
A Bootleg Collector's Dream
2007-09-28 - The Unreleased Beatles is worth the money and then some.
I've been collecting Beatles Bootlegs for a long time. I've recently acquired a large amount of boots and have embarked upon a project to organize all the good stuff into chronological order, but most often there is little to no information or suspect information on the boots.
The Beatles Recording Sessions. The Official Abbey Road Studio Session Notes 1962-1970 by Mark Lewisohn has been a great help, but it has it's limitations. The Unreleased Beatles fills in all those gaps and more, especially when dealing with The Get Back Sessions.
This book is for the rabid Beatles fan who is very interested in how the Beatles recorded. It is of special interest to those who can actually listen to the song to which Unterberger refers.
This substantial book is dense and filled with an incredible amount of information in chronological order, yet it is very easy to read and formatted in an accessible way.
Thank You Mr. Unterberger. For me, this book is a dream come true.
has alot but also missing alot 
2007-09-02 - while this book does contain much information on songs unreleased and alternate takes of songs it does miss alot of detail on songs.the author fails to mention many things about songs like the song glass onion had a organ solo which was cut out as you know from the final version.he only mentions the anthology version of glass onion like thats the only alternate version the beatles made of this song.also the newly found shea stadium soundboard tapes are not mentioned but that was found in 2007 and this book was made in 2006 so he has an excuse for that one.but a little more research on songs and he could have listed all the different versions out there on bootlegs.still overall this is a great effort.not easy to tackle all of the beatles unreleased work.
For hardcore Beatle fans
2007-06-01 - Even though I haven't finished the book, I strongly recomend it because it clears a lot of myths, it's well documented, refers to its sources when needed and can be used as a list of Beatle songs that we Beatles fans must find. However, I must say that the book is for hardcore Beatlemaniacs. I'm enjoying a lot!
Important Encyclopedia for Beatlephiles
2007-05-18 - This book is unbelievably long. It is so heavy it made my arms ache,which is why it reminds me of an encyclopedia. Don't let this fool you into thinking that the book is boring though because it is very interesting and filled with info. that I had never heard and was very pleased to add to my growing knowledge of the band. Divided into sections, this tome covers everything they ever did on record and film,but for some reason was not made available. Everything from great live shows from their touring years to weird home recordings and even a recording of them asking for directions on some road trip. They must have just left a tape recorder on in the car. Tapes like this are actually available on bootleg and people buy it! There's even one, of them reading from a bible! Ok enough of the stupid stuff. I will now concentrate on the wonderful things that I found in this book. Numerous cds exist of their many concerts and Richie describes each in detail. This is the nice thing about this book. Richie makes it an interesting read by describing what is going on in each recording,tv appearance etc. Forgetting lines,malfunctioning mics.,dirty looks,giggling,and a lot of unusual things. He constantly digresses about what he thinks might have been happening while these things were going on. It made me want to go out and buy as much as I could find of these rare gems. Because of this book I have a handful of dvds which feature some of the things he talks about. Namely the Ed Sullivan Presents dvds which I consider a treasure. I almost didn't buy this book because I thought, why would I want to read a book that talks about all the things I can't have because they are too hard to find? I'd rather not know about any of it if I can't have it. But you can find some of this stuff. I decided to buy when I read an online interview with Unterberger and his talk about the band was so interesting that I broke down. It's a pleasure to read a book by a fellow Beatles enthusiast. Actually I would call him a hardcore fan. In the preface he talks about when he first became a Beatles fan at the age of eight,in 1970. I was struck by the similarities between his story and mine, and we are both about the same age. I loved the section on the early years and touring years both in film and cd because they contained the material that I would want to have in my collection. I did not enjoy the section on the studio years. This part of the book was almost painful to read and I kept putting the book down. How many RM4s and RM7s and monitor mixes can you read about? I wouldn't want to have any of this stuff. It sounds boring and it was boring to read about. Even Ritchie makes it clear that only the most hardcore fan would want to own this stuff because it is redundant. He claims that he did not enjoy having to sift through this mess. Especially the Get Back sessions. Very repeatative. This is also the part of the book that he seems to have the least stories about, i.e who seemed mad, who seemed enthusiastic ( mostly Paul of course) who was bored, and what was Yoko doing? The Get Back, and White Album sessions are interesting for these little digressions, especially some eye opening, caught on tape, myth breaking, info. about what Yoko really thought of Paul and how he really felt about her. Proves how fuzzy memories can be until you hear a tape or see a film. Also some observations of Richie's concerning John and Paul also prove that people's accounts can differ about the things they see. During one of the Sullivan shows Paul makes that dumb "Sophie Tucker" joke again as he's announcing a song, and according to Richie, the audience doesn't laugh, "leaving Lennon to pick up the slack with forced machine gun like outbusts of 'ha,ha,ha'". Then he goes on to ponder whether this was a sarcastic jibe at the lameness of Paul's joke. After watching the same footage, I think it's obvious that it was staged. It also looks as if Lennon is laughing with Paul not at him, and Paul seems to be in on the lameness of his joke as well. And the audience doesn't have time to laugh because they go into the song so fast. And...they don't seem to expect or care whether the audience laughs either. One last thing... John's ha ha ha-ing is hardly machine gun like. It's barely audible, almost an inside joke meant for Paul's ears only. The one thing these videos and audio do seem to show is how well the boys got along for most of their career. Without exception it is documented for posterity how much they obviously loved each other, and how close they were. You see it in the body language,secret looks,giggling at inside jokes, and the amount of touching that they did. Anyway you will enjoy this book if you are interested in getting to know the Beatles better and you want to look beyond the Anthology for the many rare treasures that are out there.
