One of the most talked-about musical acts of 2021 had an album reach number 5 on the Billboard 200 and some singles on the charts as well. Not bad for a band that broke up half a century earlier.
The Beatles generated those headlines and sales thanks to Peter Jackson’s “Get Back” documentary, a photo-heavy book about the making of the film and the release of the remixed “Let It Be.” They’re also the subject of the tome, “The Beatles 100: One Hundred Pivotal Moments in Beatles History,” published by Rare Bird Books.
The author John M. Borack is Southern Californian through and through: Raised in Hacienda Heights and educated at Cal State Fullerton, he now lives in Fountain Valley and, in addition to his career as a music journalist, has a day job in Whittier as manager of communications and community engagement for The Whole Child, a non-profit organization that assists vulnerable families.
His Beatle bona fides are equally impeccable, and not just because he wore a Beatles shirt for the video interview surrounded by CDs and Beatles paraphernalia, or because he plays drums in a Beatles cover band and has seen Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr perform multiple times. (He even saw Starr join McCartney on stage at Dodger Stadium in 2019.)
No, Borack started early, getting sent to the principal’s office at Dibble Elementary School for bringing Wings’ suggestive “Hi, Hi, Hi” to the fifth-grade dance, recording “Get Back” with his band, Solar Reflection, at age 12, and irritating his English teacher at Glen A. Wilson High School by forgoing the likes of Steinbeck and Shakespeare to do a book report on a Beatles biography. Oh, and he’s also the author of three previous books including “John Lennon: Life is What Happens.”
Some of Borack’s rankings — more than half of which take place after the band’s 1970 breakup — are hard to argue with: No. 1 is John Lennon meeting McCartney and No. 3 is Starr replacing Pete Best. But plenty are sure to spark debate: George Martin signing on as producer is ranked only 17th below the release of “A Hard Days’ Night” and the fractious recording of “The White Album.” Borack, however, is happy to discuss and quick to admit that arguments can be made regarding the list.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q. Growing up, where did you go to buy your Beatles records?
When I was seven or eight, I went to the local Kmart with my parents and got my first Beatles solo 45, John Lennon’s “Instant Karma,” with the picture sleeve. It was sixty-three cents and I still have that with the sticker on it.
My parents were in the swap meet business and every Sunday they’d go to the Mission Drive-in in Pomona, which was converted for the meet on weekends. There was a gentleman who sold Billboard’s Top 100 songs on 45 every week and he’d have all the singles laid out in order from 1-100 and when I was in middle school that’s where I really started feeding my music obsession, Beatles and otherwise. I only really moved into albums as I moved into high school and college as I started listening a little more seriously.
Q. Where did you see your first concerts?
I didn’t start going to concerts much until I got into college and then it was the New Wave acts. I recall seeing the Go-Go’s at the Hollywood Bowl in the early ’80s and Missing Persons at Perkins Palace in Pasadena. I also saw the Ramones several times, most notably at the Hollywood Palladium.
I also attended the X-Fest at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego in 1983, which had the Ramones, Stray Cats, Bow Wow Wow, the Flirts, Modern English…and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. I recall no one really liking Modern English’s set except for “I Melt With You”…so they played it twice.
I didn’t really begin going to clubs until the ’90s when I began writing about the then-burgeoning power pop scene and groups like Jellyfish and the Posies.
I didn’t see a Beatle for the first time until I saw Ringo’s first tour with his All-Star Band in 1989 at the Pacific Amphitheatre at the Orange County fairgrounds. Then I saw McCartney at Anaheim Stadium in 1990.
Q. Most items in your list feature little details or quotes that even hardcore fans might not know, like Starr using tom-toms so much on Abbey Road because he had just gotten a new set. Did you have all this in your brain or do a lot of research?
It was a little of both. Ringo’s quote about “tom-tom madness” was stuck in my head but a lot came through research. I wanted quotes that weren’t the same ones that get used over and over.
Q. You don’t spend much time explaining how you chose each ranking. Why not?
I didn’t want to get too bogged down in justifying the ranking in each chapter. It’s just one person’s opinion. It’s all subjective and it’s all in the name of fun. I’m not saying this is the final word on the subject. I might rank things higher or lower if I were to make the list again right now.
Q. How did you make your decisions?
I looked at the overall vibe from when it happened and the event’s overall place in history as well — how did this affect their career, the way people looked at them, how the media reacted. [Lennon’s] “Some Time in New York City” [ranked 84th] is not a good album by any stretch of the imagination, but it sparked a lot of controversy and made a lot of people talk.
Q. Looking back, do you think Brian Epstein meeting and signing the Beatles (number 8) and George Martin becoming their producer (number 17) should have been higher, given how much those two shaped the Beatles’ career and their music?
Certainly. Epstein should probably be up number 5 or 6 and the release of “A Hard Day’s Night” may not be a Top 10 moment now that I look at it again. As I mentioned, if I were to do it over, I’d probably do it differently
Q. In the last two decades, McCartney has released some of the best work by any ex-Beatle, most notably “Chaos and Creation in the Backyard.” He also topped the charts at age 76 with “Egypt Station” yet none of his later work merits mention, with the bottom of your list instead featuring sections on Harrison’s 1974 tour fiasco, the release of the Beatles’ Christmas records and the Rutles parody. What went into that decision?
I put some things in that people maybe haven’t thought of in a while, like the Rutles or George’s 1974 tour, which from all accounts was pretty awful. And Paul has released way more solo albums than any of the other Beatles so I was trying to balance it out. But yes, “Chaos and Creation” is a great record and certainly could have been on the list.
Q. Having just watched “Get Back,” would you change how you ranked those sessions or what you wrote?
I might rank it differently. I would definitely write it differently. All of us thought it was a horrible time in Beatles history because the Beatles always said that in interviews. But you see them having fun, you see the camaraderie and the love there that wasn’t presented in the original film. That gives you a whole different look.
