The Beatles: All These Years by Mark Lewisohn | Page 18 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

I’ve signed a non-disclosure agreement so can’t really mention anything about the contents of the book, but I have a copy and it’s as good as I’d dared to hope. You won’t be disappointed.

I’ve got the standard edition; I’m not being sent the deluxe one, so can’t compare the two versions until November.

.@thebeatlesbook is here and it's AMAZING! And that's just about all I'm allowed to say right now. More to follow… pic.twitter.com/YBVcCJBgOe

— The Beatles Bible 🍏 (@beatlesbible) September 18, 2013

Yeah, I know it’s unfair. But equally, if you were sent a copy you’d want to tell everyone, wouldn’t you?

The embargo lifts in a week. I’ll try to write a review in the interim, but I’ve only read 60 pages so far and have a long way to go. I’ll keep soldiering on, for everyone’s sakes…

One thing to keep an eye on is marklewisohn.net. Nothing’s there yet, but it’s mentioned in the back of the book so I assume it’ll be going live soon.

I think there will be spoilers in the review, yes, but don’t worry. A while ago I read/heard an interview with ML where he said “I’ve given the manuscript to friends who say every single page has revelations on it.” So if I mention a few of them, there are probably several hundred others to discover. I started reading it from the start but then began dipping in and out randomly, and there’s a hell of a lot in there.

Personally I’d rather have a single thread. Once the book’s out, if you’re thinking of buying it but don’t want to know what’s in it, why would you be browsing a discussion about it? Perhaps for the first week or two people can use spoiler tags but thereafter I think anything should be OK.

As for the deluxe, I don’t know why they can’t release them at the same time. It’s frustrating having to wait (yeah, I know, the irony).

OK, fine. We’ll have separate threads for each book (though no need for the other two just yet), and people can avoid those should they wish.

guitarman said
Joe, from what you’ve read so far, is the ‘wow’ factor high? I know you are bound by the agreement, but if you could give us an idea of how astonished we’ll be, that would be great!

I can’t really predict how astonished you’ll be. Don’t forget, The Beatles’ story is already incredibly well known. There are few surprises in the narrative – they were born, they went to school, John’s mother and Paul’s mother died, the boys wrote songs and formed the band, got famous and so on. This book has to follow the same path – there’s no getting away from the established facts.

What it does is present the story in widescreen. Or, a better comparison, if you’ve ever bought a box set of a film, with various extra discs providing behind the scenes info, director’s commentary, artwork etc, you get the story beyond the story – how, why and when it was made, in exceptional detail. Or, perhaps, you could buy the text of Lord Of The Rings, or alternatively you could get an expanded edition containing Tolkien’s diaries, maps, linguistic notes, appendices and working drafts. You get the picture – you can have the basic story (Philip Norman etc), or you can have much more detail (Mark Lewisohn). Heaven knows what’s in the two-book version, because there’s so much information in this standard edition alone.

What Lewisohn’s done is go beyond the official story (Anthology etc) and dig out the tales that have never been told before. Here’s an example, which is a bit of a spoiler but not really (and hopefully minor enough not to get me into trouble). Whereas Hunter Davies or Norman would write something like “Although the boys had been entranced by Elvis, hearing Little Richard’s raw vocals on Long Tall Sally was something else entirely”, Lewisohn has tracked down and interviewed the person who bought the Long Tall Sally single overseas and brought it back to Liverpool, and is able to describe Lennon’s reaction to hearing it for the first time. I can’t really say more than that for obvious reasons but you hopefully get the idea.

Plenty of Beatles fans really don’t need to know the name of the person who brought Long Tall Sally to Woolton, but it’s here, along with thousands of other facts and details. The scope and scale is why this is the definitive biography, and why it most likely cannot be bettered in the future.

No. The EMI contract thing really is unexpected (and hugely convoluted, but I’ll not go into it now), but most of the time the new revelations are more “I never knew that, that’s interesting”, rather than “Bloody hell, I can’t believe it!”

It’s about the level of detail that he provides. There aren’t wow moments on every page, but you will learn something new with each one. That said, I’m still only 75 pages in (though I have flicked ahead a few times, which is how I know the EMI story) so I’m sure there are plenty more surprises.