New Illustrated Book "It Was 50 Years Ago Today: THE BEATLES Invade America and Hollywood" by Harvey Kubernik Coming In February 2014

January 15, 2014 (PRLEAP.COM) Entertainment News
Author and music historian Harvey Kubernik's new book "It Was 50 Years Ago Today THE BEATLES Invade America and Hollywood" ISBN 978-0-9898936-8-8, $22.95, 9' x 6" trade paperback published by Otherworld Cottage Industries is due for release on 1 February, 2014. From February to April 2014, the Foothill Records store at 1110-A, West Magnolia Blvd, Burbank, California, Phone: (818) 415-5012, will serve as the exclusive brick and mortar outlet for the book. For out-of-area customers, Otherworld Cottage Industries will start accepting pre-orders on January 20th at www.cdtdigital.com/otherworldcottageindustries/index.php. Online customers will be notified when orders ship, on or about 1 February 2014. Allow up to ten days for orders shipped media mail to arrive.

Music historian and author Harvey Kubernik first thought of the concept for this book at George Harrison's 1974 Beverly Wilshire Hotel press conference on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, where 10 years earlier he had seen, just down the same street, the February 1964 live Beatles, Beach Boys and Lesley Gore concert in a closed-circuit theatrical movie-house showing at the Fox Wilshire Theater.

During his ensuing 40 years of published musical journalism, Harvey would, on occasion, ask his interview subjects — songwriters, recording and mastering engineers, poets, musicians, graphic artists, philosophers, record producers, disc jockeys, authors, filmmakers, pen pals, photographers, record collectors and friends — about the Beatles timeless catalog and the influence of their rarely chronicled-at-length history with Southern California and Hollywood.

"My goal was to bring something new to the table and the fable, especially the Beatles relationship to Hollywood and Los Angeles that helped introduce their sound domestically in the first place," offers Kubernik. "I talked with all four individual Beatles as well as Mal Evans, Derek Taylor and many of the engineers and producers that were in the recording studio with them."

During the fall of 2013, while preparing for the publication of a few large format hardcover books for 2014, including "Turn Up the Radio! Rock, Pop and Roll Music in Los Angeles 1956-1972," due for release in mid-April from Santa Monica Press, Harvey realized that the 50th anniversary of the Beatles coming to America would be more than a forum for celebration to be rolled out in February 2014, but a major media event. It was time for this book.

So Harvey called on his many record industry contacts and celebrated musicians he knew to have been part of the Beatles history, to share their memories and insights in fresh 2013 interviews, and began pulling together all the memorabilia, photos, press releases, emails, letters, recorded interviews, radio broadcaster's remarks and snippets he'd captured live at media events up to the present day – and then he started writing and creating.

"For the book I involved the voices of East L.A. and West L.A. , the San Fernando Valley, downtown L.A. and the beach community — all of us who first heard the Beatles in 1964. In addition, I incorporated heralded rock 'n' roll band members hailing from New York, New Jersey and Canada and wove their voices into my manuscript while also collaborating with Gary Strobl, curating and scanning the rare and unseen visual images and artifacts I unearthed that are displayed within the pages."

Harvey invited James Cushing to write the Foreword, then dedicated the volume to Derek Taylor.

S. Ti Muntarbhorn along with MsMusic Productions in association with Harvey Kubernik and Otherworld Cottage Industries made this book a retail reality.

And in the process, Harvey Kubernik became a "Paperback Writer."

An alphabetical list of contributors is posted at www.travisedwardpike.com. For additional information or to request a review copy, email travpike@morningstone.com.