REVIEWS OF CAN’T BUY ME LOVE: The Beatles, Britain & America
“In Can't Buy Me Love, freelance writer Jonathan Gould has produced the best book ever written about the Beatles. An elegant and economical stylist, Gould is a brilliant narrative historian, with an archaeologist's ability to re-create the world inhabited by his subjects. Can't Buy Me Love is a magical mystery tour that must not be missed.”
—Glenn Altschuler, Baltimore Sun
“Gould has written a scrupulous, witty and, at times, appropriately skeptical study… As a clever person once said, ‘Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.’ Gould, it turns out, is an astute and sensitive choreographer... At his best, he lets you hear with keener ears the way a great novelist lets you feel with keener emotions.
—Bruce Handy, New York Times Book Review
“Excellent and engrossing… Gould has the two gifts essential to a critic––passionate expertise plus a bulletproof sense of humor––and his descriptions of the music are hilariously on target… Yet Gould also possesses that third essential gift: the capacity for awe.”
—James Marcus, The Los Angeles Times
“Not just another biography of the Fab Four, Gould’s ambitious, decades-in-the-making volume tells their larger-than-life story and uses it as a lens through which to look at the cultural and historical forces that shaped the band—and its ongoing significance.”
––Rolling Stone, Best Rock Books of 2008
“With a scholar's attention to history and a musician's interest in songcraft, Gould provides a thrilling account of how four nowhere kids from Liverpool translated their love of American rock and blues into a body of popular music unmatched in the nearly forty years since they ended their careers as Beatles. If you've ever wanted to know why the Beatles' music is great, look no further than this brilliant book.”
––People Magazine
"A fascinating, witty, and highly original take on the Beatles’ music and mystique... Gould delivers a multifaceted gem of a book that should delight and surprise even the most oversaturated fan."
—Christian Science Monitor
"Gould's combination group biography, cultural history, and musical criticism artfully places the Beatles in their time and social context while examining with great skill how they became an international phenomenon comparable only to themselves... Setting Gould's book apart are his careful dissection of cultural history and his astute critical eye... Long on history, short on gossip, he gives nuanced assessments of the world's most admired rock band and of its era."
—Booklist
The most brainy and insightful Beatles history to date…Can’t Buy Me Love is an involving, wildly intelligent book that allows us to experience anew the band’s great moment in all its glorious, world-shaking glory.”
––Los Angeles City Beat
“In Can’t Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain and America, author Jonathan Gould presents perhaps the most comprehensive, enjoyable read concerning the Fab Four ever written. More importantly, Gould’s book illustrates how events influence our thought processes, and how we turn to idols to make sense of it all. This isn’t just a good book–it should be required reading for anybody interested in the influence of the sixties, and how we perceive ourselves now.”
—Ray Ellis, Culture Salad Online
“If what follows in this book review reeks of juvenile gushing, I won’t even attempt to apologize for it... Gould has created in this, his first publication, what can only fairly be described as the ultimate musician’s guide to songwriting and producing... I’m about to re-read and re-savor this writer’s work, this time in an effort to shake-off self-doubt, and siphon off some of that determination and talent.”
—Antimusic
REVIEWS OF OTIS REDDING: An Unfinished Life
“Magisterial… With meticulous scholarship, lively prose, and a tale that uses a singular musician as a springboard into interrogating America’s political and popular cultures, Gould has created a vital book that helps contextualize one of the most important figures in pop music.”
—Maura Johnston, Boston Globe
“An absorbing and ambitious book…[that] succeeds in making [Redding] seem a good deal more remarkable by taking the measure of the historical circumstances he emerged from…. Among the great pleasures…are [Gould’s] very considered assessments of each of Otis’s albums, track by track.”
—Geoffrey O’Brien, The New York Review of Books
“[An] impressive biography…. Access to Redding’s surviving family members helps Gould flesh out his upbringing and offstage personality…. Music historians like Peter Guralnick, Rob Bowman and Robert Gordon have all done essential work on the history of Stax, but Gould takes a contrary and provocative position on the label’s relationship to its greatest star…. [He] makes a convincing case that, while Redding’s recordings are never less than compelling thanks to his remarkable voice, [Stax co-founder Jim Stewart’s] shortcomings…held Redding back as a songwriter and repeatedly stymied his popular momentum.”
—Alan Light, New York Times Book Review
“I frankly find most musician biographies more useful than compelling, but Jonathan Gould's account of Otis Redding's tragically short life is gripping because Gould gets at what made Redding both a fascinating individual and an emblem. This is a Southern story of desegregation and enduring white supremacy and of country values encountering city opportunities; it's a story of hope, conveyed within Redding's electric performances, and disaster… Gould's book is a crucial contribution to our understanding of a time that's too often obscured by mere nostalgia.”
––Ann Powers, NPR Best Books of 2017
“Some of the best parts of Gould’s book are his incisive descriptions of Redding’s live performances and recording sessions.... But even more than his vivid re-creations of Redding’s composing and recording work, it’s Gould’s insightful portrayal of the segregated South’s racial climate that makes Otis Redding: An Unfinished Life so compelling … [Gould] doesn’t so much practice revisionist history as simply get a complex story right, capturing the too-short life and career of the immortal Otis Redding with unerring perceptiveness, precision and cultural context. In short, Gould delivers the first biography to do Redding justice.
—Steve Nathans-Kelly, Paste Magazine, Best Non-Fiction Books of 2017
“[Gould] sets sky-high aspirations for his book, attempting not to merely chronicle Redding’s meteoric life, but to use him as the backdrop for a larger story about race in America, the history of soul music, and the rise of Memphis’s small but powerful Stax Records. He does that gracefully.”
—Thor Christensen, Dallas News
“An excellent and definitive biography… A master storyteller, Gould tackles Redding’s life by planting his flag firmly at the crossroads of individual genius and social and cultural context… [His] fabulous portrait…provides Redding with the “Respect” he richly deserves. Highly recommended.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
"Gould vividly brings to life the man Stax Records boss Jim Stewart called 'a walking inspiration'.... From his supreme triumphs to his one last heart-breaking phone-call to Zelma, devotees and soul scholars alike could not wish for a more thorough and sensitive portrait."
—Kris Needs, Mojo
“Jonathan Gould’s much-heralded biography… builds beautifully, more like a great soul ballad than the dance hall hit so many music biographies aim at becoming. One feels the time that’s gone into the book’s organization, its exegesis, its every insightful and often quite-funny sentences.”
—Paul Smart, Hudson Valley One