Tony Hanley comments ‘I had been nagging my dad for ages, to write his story about his time with The Beatles, and many others. To his credit, it took a while, but he got it done, however his health took a turn for the worse, so I promised him that I would complete the project and see his book in print. I simply had absolutely no idea what I had let myself in for!
Toby Hartwell and I had countless meetings reviewing Tommys images, and ‘popcorned’ ideas as to what the book might look like. Having never put a book together, the concept of appointing a book designer never occured to me. Four years on, and to share a small secret, thank God i did, but this it, I am not doing another!
Hundreds of Beatles books are now out there, many are biased, sensationalised, bland or boring. I didn’t want that, it was important to me to make sure that this was Tommy’s legacy story, showcasing over 300 of his images, sharing his experiences, relationships and conversations, not just with The Beatles, but many other people that he had the good fortune to meet over time.
I needed this book to stand out from the crowd. It’s presentation, design, paper, design, print finishing, the whole shebang, right down to the book stitching, and red marker ribbon. It just had to ooze nothing but first class quality. What struck me from the first moment we met Emily Benton, was that straight off the bat, she ‘got it’ and compromise wasn’t part of her vocabulary.
To evidence what a complete luddite I was in this field, in a meeting, Emily asked me ‘what paper were you thinking about?’ I replied ‘well, white of course!’ I wasn’t sure why at the time, she was laughing, and in no time, samples from Fedrigoni, an Italian fine art paper manufacturer were dropping through my letter box. as well as more samples for the book cover and slip case from Ratchford, a specialist fabric manufacturers established in 1889. Now we’re talking!