TICKET TO RIDE

For a 21-year-old journalist in 1964, a chance to follow the Beatles on their ground-breaking first American tour was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Larry Kane was that journalist, and TICKET TO RIDE is his fascinating memoir of that tour, and the subsequent one in 1965. Read with an air of bemusement that befits Kane's current reputation as Philadelphia's most well-known TV news anchor, the book, while hardly a gossip-fest, nevertheless contains many titillating behind-the-scenes anecdotes that only somebody privy to the backstage antics of the Fab Four could report. Kane tells of a much more innocent time when the whole notion of rock-star decadence was in its infancy, not to mention the commercial aspects that were coming into being, mostly due to the Beatles' innovations. J.S.H. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine [Published: FEBRUARY 2009]