Mark Lewisohn - All These Years: Volume 1 Tune In

Well I have now completed reading the 800 odd pages of this wonderful work by Mark Lewisohn. Despite having read just about every other noteworthy book on the subject of The Beatles, I have still learned an awful lot from what must be the definitive word on the fab four. Yet this is not a scholarly lecture from the author, but a highly entertaining story of all of the characters involved in the lead up to what became known as Beatlemania.

Of course Volume One only takes the reader up to the final day of 1962, so The Beatles had literally only just reached the charts with their first single and were ending the year on what would be their fifth and final trip to Hamburg. Beatlemania and all that followed are still to be covered in what will be Volumes Two and Three. The downside is that we are going to have to wait several years for these to appear. How many of us original Beatle fans will still be around to see them I wonder?

Anyway this is what others have been saying about this book:

‘A game-changing study which raises the bar in the genre . . . Lewisohn, who was born in London in 1958 and whose life has been dedicated to chronicling the Beatles, has done an astonishing job . . . a meticulous piece of work . . . I can’t wait for volume two’ Independent
‘Mark Lewisohn manages to put flesh and blood on the story of the band as never before. He does so with imagination, energy and a gripping plotline . . . Lewisohn’s achievement lies not in mining a single 24-carat scoop, but in the extraordinary depth and scope of his research . . .The raw excitement of the Hamburg period, where the Beatles properly came into being, is conveyed in electrifying detail . . . This volume puts him (Lewisohn) in a different league’ Sunday Times & The Sunday Times Ireland, Mark Edmonds
‘It is the breadth and scope of Lewisohn’s endeavour that are unparalleled’ Observer, Kitty Empire
‘This is a book with a difference, one that ensures all previous rock tomes will gather dust on high, cob-webbed shelves. It’s a work of careful research that turns the legend of The Beatles into a woven history that reads like a work of fiction . . . Sets the benchmark in popular music history that he alone can match’ The Huffington Post
‘To call his biography of the Beatles a labour of love would be something of an understatement’ The Guardian
‘Fills in vital details that had been missing from the existing Beatles canon and corrects mistakes that have been reprinted for years’ Wall Street Journal
‘A remarkable piece of scholarship’ Choice magazine

 

 

Having reached the end, there is now something of a void in my life. One that I hope to fill in a little under two weeks when I shall receive my Kindle version of the super deluxe edition of the book. This is twice the length of the one I have finished so it should keep me busy until Christmas at least.

 

Happy days.