Never has there been a book on the Beatles quite like Some Fun Tonight! The Backstage Story of How the Beatles Rock America: The Historic Tours of 1964-1966. Covering the group's three North American tours (1964-1966) in astonishing detail, author Chuck Gunderson’s comprehensive two-volume boxed set gives readers a city-by-city synopsis of the Beatles' activities as they traveled the United States and Canada for their groundbreaking series of concerts. So authoritative is Gunderson’s work that Ron Howard is using it as source material for his Beatles documentary, The Beatles: Eight Days a Week.
Produced in a slick, glossy, full-color format, and housed in an attractive slipcase, these truly essential books for any Beatles library retail for $99 and available on this site.
From San Francisco's Cow Palace show on August 19, 1964, through their last-ever live performance at that same city's Candlestick Park on August 29, 1966, Some Fun Tonight! covers the music and the madness that characterized the Beatles’ North American tours. Supported by hundreds of rarely seen photographs and images of vintage memorabilia from his personal collection, Gunderson has created the definitive reference for what is arguably the most important period in the Beatles' long and winding career.
“Had the Beatles toured in the social media age, there would have been hundreds of thousands of photos to choose from,” Gunderson explained. “For this book, I had to scour, over an eight-year period, newspaper archives, local photographers, university and college archives, and state, county and local city archives. Sadly, many photos taken of the group during the North American touring years have either been stolen or lost over the 50 years, but I'm proud to say these books have the largest sampling of unpublished photos ever assembled.”
Some Fun Tonight! includes the behind-the-scenes negotiations, the mayhem at the airports and hotels, the cheeky quotes delivered at the press conferences (Question: “How long do you think you’ll last?” John: “Longer than you anyway.”), the opening acts, the concerts, and the stories behind the shows through the eyes of the Beatles, their entourage, the promoters, the emcees and the fans.
Those who saw the Beatles in America in August 1966 had no way of knowing they were witnessing a sight never to be seen again. Some Fun Tonight! recaptures the magic of that era and shows every Beatles fan – young or old -- what it was like to be swept up and carried away by the phenomena of the greatest musical act of all time.