Mark Lewisohn

une In by Mark Lewisohn, which is the first volume of his trilogy The Beatles: All These Years.

Clocking in at a lazy 946 pages (to be fair, that includes 102 pages of notes, credits and index), this covers The Beatles from birth (actually quite a lot of family history) to December 1962.

This came out in 2013 after 10 years’ research. Volume Two might be out in about 2023 and then there’s a third book yet to come.

I picked it up for a quick browse and was hooked. It’s actually really well show more written and cleverly structured. The first section is four separate stories that gradually overlap and combine in a very appealing way.

I’m sure it helps that I’m familiar not only with The Beatles’ work but also 90% of the music that influenced them individually and collectively. It seems pretty honest – teenaged John Lennon is not a nice person – and I’m certainly finding it immensely entertaining.

I’ve just finished the section covering 1959, which ended with the memorable line, “And when they all woke up the next day, it was the Sixties.”

This’ll keep me occupied for a bit.

And if I get antsy before Volume Two comes out, there’s always the Extended Special Edition of Volume One that runs to 1700 pages! show less

Context is everything. By the time I was born, four years after the Beatles had split, they were already on their way to becoming a pop cultural monolith. They were an integral part of my parents’ record collection, an indelible part of the culture I was born into. Like all the children of Beatles fans I knew to love them before I even considered my taste in music; in my case I fell in love with the existential hell of loneliness at the heart of Eleanor Rigby. Yeah, I was a strange kid… show more When I grew up and devoured albums and music writing everything I read about them told me how remarkable they were; how remarkable Revolver, Sgt Pepper and The White Album were in pushing what you could do with music whilst remaining the biggest band in the world. We celebrated the band at their peak, but much of that output failed to make it clear how equally remarkable they were to begin with. Their early work was overshadowed by records tamed by time and imitators and by the images of screaming girls.

The first volume of Mark Lewisohn’s insanely ambitious three part biography is an instant corrective to that. Lewisohn’s approach is a panoramic one; in seeking to tell the story of how ‘four lads shook the world’ he doesn’t concentrate merely on the four individuals but also on their family histories and the city that produced them. The result is that a book of over eight hundred pages of relatively small text contains only the details of their rise; by page 840 they’ve merely released Love Me Do and recorded the Please Please Me single. Effectively the book uses their story being so well known to its advantage. We know what comes next; this is all foreplay with the second book being an extended world-conquering climax (and the last volume probably being equivalent of a postcoital ciggie).

That’s not to say that this isn’t gratifying in its own right; it might well end up the most fascinating of the first three volumes as it’s the most mythologised portion of the band’s history. Lewisohn takes a historian’s approach to the period; if it a fact can’t be corroborated it’s clearly marked. But where he scores over a straight historical recounting of events and dates is in his clear effort to bring post-war Liverpool and early 60s Hamburg to vivid life. There’s plenty of well-chosen eyewitness testimony and an eye for telling detail – sights, sounds and smells which give the memories plenty of flavour. In doing so he brings to life the Liverpool I’m familiar with, a community of a city tinged with violence and poverty. The surface may have changed but the essence of the place hasn’t. The two cities in which the bulk of the narrative take place are characters as vivid as any human; to a certain extent this is a work of psychogeography and psychotemporality as much as biography. Lewisohn takes the trouble to paint a picture of the world and times the Beatles were kicking against. It’s a refreshing approach which makes the achievement of getting to write and record Love Me Do, these days the most straightforward of pop records, a fresh triumph. The band is trapped in a cultural backwater, trying something going completely against the prevailing orthodoxy of the recording industry of the day. It means that the book chooses to pause at a moment of victory; the first mountain scaled before the nonchalant stroll to the summit of Everest to come.

But while the arc of the story is familiar Lewisohn is unsparing of the details, which aren’t always to the credit of the protagonists. What’s abundantly clear is the naked ambition from John, Paul and George; the ‘X’ factor which drives them to dodge the standard life of working drudgery and gets them past abundant hurdles. Family objections, friends, promoters, managers, band members… all are ridden over with little concern for the feelings of hurt parties. And if the flame of ambition burns low in one or more of the three central band members then it’s revitalised by others. There’s clearly an alchemy of the three personalities at the heart of the volume (Ringo doesn’t join until nearly 700 pages in) that Lewisohn allows to be explained through events rather than imposing an unsatisfactory explanation. It helps account as to why Pete Best never feels like part of the band and why Stu Sutcliffe upsets the balance of personalities. Lewisohn, by stripping the mythology away and presenting the Beatles ‘warts and all’ makes the story all the more remarkable. It’s clear that the Beatles aren’t superstars in waiting but three insanely ambitious lads with a gift for music. Brian Epstein and Ringo, when their stories intersect, fit perfectly into the narrative.

If anything, the reputation most burnished by the book is Brian Epstein. His fondness for rough trade is compassionately detailed, but his dedication to the band and ability to actually get them a hearing by the record industry shines through. The book stops at comparing him to contemporaries such as Larry Parnes and Don Arden but even now his pathological extension of a fair deal to his charges makes him stand out against standard industry conduct. Some might think of it as naivety but his determination and dedication is touching, particularly given it often seems a case of beating at brick walls with bare fists. While it’s clear chance played a large role in the rise of the Beatles (both in terms of how Liverpool bands began Hamburg residencies and internal EMI politics) Epstein’s relentless pushing of the band well beyond the point most managers would simply have given up in frustration is touching and admirable.
This then is the story of the world the Beatles changed. Of provincial poverty and violence; of the politics of the local music scene; of how the band sucked up influences like particularly voracious sponges; of how three residencies on the Reeperbahn forged them into the most experienced live band in the world; of how the Londoncentric recording industry could be persuaded to take note of a local phenomenon. It’s the Beatles on the toilet circuit, in Hamburg and the Cavern, paying their dues. The naissance of a new generation that the older ones didn’t expect and can’t quite understand. Divining the future is a hazardous business at the best of times; divining it when there’s a rogue element as powerful as the Beatles present makes it nearly impossible. Lewisohn restores that sense of their complete unexpectedness whilst making their triumph in taking advantage of their good fortune almost entirely logical. On this evidence the full biography will do for the band themselves what ‘Revolution in the Head’ did for their songs. show less

My interest in The Beatles was reignited by Craig Brown's One Two Three Four and now I'm halfway through watching the Anthology DVDs. Mark Lewisohn's tome - and this is only volume one! - lacks the pep of the first and the personal touch of the second. Lewisohn is the chief anorak of Beatles' knowledge but this is just far too in-depth. When I got into the swing of the chapters, I quickly learned what to skim (chart timelines) and later skip (George Martin - not interested, thanks - and show more lengthy quotes from teenage fans called Margaret and Beryl and the like).

I will admit to primarily wanting to read about Ringo, but of course - with this volume ending in 1962 - I had to suffer through Pete Best to get there (‘We never liked you all the years we’ve known you. You were never raelly [sic] one of us you know, soft head.’) It's a testament to the 'Fab Four' that I only just realised how Ringo was joining a tight trio of friends and had to earn both their trust and his place in the band in very short order. I did feel sorry for poor Stu, though. And I think I learned more about Brian Epstein from one chapter of this book than the whole of Ray Coleman's homophobic hack job of a biography! 'I was determined to go through the horror of this world. I feel deeply, for I have always felt deeply, for the persecuted, for the Jews, the coloured people, for the old, and society’s misfits. When I made money I planned to devote and give what I could to these people.'

Recommended as a reference book, but reading from cover to cover - or 1% to 60% on KIndle (the rest being notes and the index) - is only for the truly dedicated. show less

Pretty amazing, detailed scholarship on the earliest Beatles years here; The Quarrymen to Hamburg to Brian Epstein to the initial Capitol singles, etc. This goes int deep detail, almost a Beatles dairy of those years from where and when individual chords were learned to each and every verifiable gig. The author does a good job of keeping this a story with rich context, not merely minutiae. I heard the audiobook, but wonder if the printed book has pictures. Several pics are described in show more detail as to provenance and off-frame activity, etc. This pretty much nails Pete Best as insufficiently skilled and out of touch with the rest of the band, hence his needed replacement. Epstein's dangerous liaisons are covered as well as Lennon's frequent and unfortunate on-stage antics imitating the disabled. I really enjoyed this deep dive into Beatles history and look forward to #2, but I can wait several months or a couple of years for such immersion again. show less