English: The Beatles Yellow Submarine Logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yellow submarine replica (The Beatles Story) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve been meaning to blog for days, but with the constant demands of the Clams’ summer tour, working 40 hours a week, hosting out of town musicians and yardwork, I haven’t had a minute. I better keep up with this book review stuff- I read ’em faster than I can review ’em. Just started Peter Criss’s “Makeup to Breakup,” but that’s gonna have to wait.

Upon finishing “Inside the Yellow Submarine” by Dr. Robert Hieronimus I started “Up Periscope Yellow” by Al Brodax. It’s possible that Al wrote his book because he gets a bad rap in the former. Brodax is the guy who produced the cheesy Beatles cartoons- does anyone remember those?

The basic story of “Inside the Yellow Submarine” is that the Beatles had very little to do with the film- that the studio of animators who actually created the film are its unsung heroes, and that Brodax was a big shot American producer who didn’t care if the feature came out looking just like the cartoons. Maybe Al read this book and decided to write his own, sorta set the story straight?

The difference between the two books couldn’t be wider. “Inside” is obviously written by an obsessive fan, albeit a highly intelligent one, who not only tells the story of the film in the co-creators’ own words, but also goes into almost excruciating detail of every piece of Yellow Submarine merch. Evidently written a few years after the digitized re-release of the film, it also appears that the author spent almost 30 years obsessing over the movie and its memorabilia.

Brodax takes the high road and “Up Periscope Yellow” is a poetic memoir. He was keeping diaries at the time, and only fleshed them out slightly for this book, which makes some sections almost impenetrable, and yet highly enjoyable. The two books are based on the same facts, but many times it seems that they recount two different stories. Brodax says he and writer Erich Segal came up with the idea for the Blue Meanies, and Hieronimus quotes Heinz Edelmann taking the credit. Many differences like this point to Brodax writing his book in retaliation, but his is still more personal and original- after all, it was he who made the deal for “Yellow Submarine” to fulfill the Beatles’ 3 picture contract with United Artists.
Read both of these books for the full story, and again, WATCH THE MOVIE, the digitized re-release is out on dvd and it will knock your socks off.