Beatles Biography by Mark Lewisohn

I'll be dead by the time he gets to pepper.

 

Horrible book. Cheap and tawdry, just a rewrite of a buncha tabloid papers. I was really, really disappointed.

Still no firm release date that I know of, and no listing on Amazon U.S. at all yet. Bummer. But 800 pages just to cover the Fabs from 1940-1962... yikes! I wish he'd sell Volume 2 first!

 

Mark has been working VERY hard on this project, but it's getting increasingly unlikely that the first volume will see print in the next twelve months. I'll ask him next time I see him (no plans, though I bump into him fairly often), but he is pretty much working flat out.

 

Please tell him ==
Your book appears to be detailed and to many volumes ==
You should be Updating the Recording Sessions NOT Another Biography.
This is where you fail.
Good Luck

 

I ordered a copy on March2,2010. I hope they will honor this pre-order
and not cancel just before publication so they can up the price.

So far, it is still considered a pre-order.....

 

What is a good Beatles bio that is written with a novelist's eye and ear, giving you a sense of who the Beatles were as people and what it was like being there, and going easy on the obsessive details?

 

No Way!
I know how much research he's been doing for this and I'm really looking forward to it. There are many stories in this that have never been told before.

 

Philip Norman's SHOUT is very good. I'm re-reading it now and am finding it hard to put down.

 

I couldnt agree more...fantastic read...my 'bible'. Please make my year and tell me there are plans for another volume......

 

Both of Philip Norman's books are excellent. Some don't like them. His recent Lennon bio is the best Beatles-related book I've ever read.

I am excited for the Lewisohn book though. I don't really know how he operates as a writer as opposed to a vault of information, but the early years of the Beatles up to '62-'63 are where the various biographies are most interesting to me -- once 'Mania kicks, it's still fun, but so much less revealing; even the Anthology deals less with the Beatles' own world during that time than how the culture was impacted -- so I'd be delighted to read this much about them.

 

Shout is pretty widely acknowledged to be biased against McCartney. In his recent Lennon biography, Norman denies this but does admit that Shout is generally seen as 'anti-Paul.'

Anyway, I think Spitz's book is by far the best Beatles biography, much better than Shout IMO. And I believe that Spitz does manage to make it feel almost like a novel. You could almost call it a docudrama. I know some people feel that that approach requires an author to take too many liberties in talking about what people were thinking, feeling etc but I think it makes for a better read than the 'and then and then and then' approach that some writers use. And, because Spitz did his homework, when he does 'dramatize' it seems to ring true.

 

Eh, big deal. Still a better-written book than most others I've picked up.

 

When the first volume comes out, I hope people will give it a chance. It hasn't even come out yet, man.

 

As much as I like Shout, the anti-Paul bits drag it down.

 

It's been years since I've read SHOUT, admittedly, but what were the anti-Paul bits? I do remember that the book essentially argues that Lennon was the titular head of the band, and I guess I could see that as being anti-Paul, but the fact is that it was John's band before Paul signed on, and he did essentially have the alpha personality among the four. IIRC, the whole book was fairly caustic about them all, really. Far more so than Norman's recent Lennon bio, which really surprised me in how agreeable the tone was overall.

In fact, the most anti-Paul thing I can think of in either book was in the Lennon book, when he described the way Paul would boss George and Ringo around on what to play in his songs while John would let them do their own thing. But it ain't bashing if it's true.

 

Maybe Mark Lewisohn should release his Beatles-Bio not as 3 Volumes. It would be better to release it as 9 books:

The Beatles Story - Part I - 1940 to 1960
The Beatles Story - Part II - 1961 to 1962
The Beatles Story - Part III - 1963
The Beatles Story - Part IV - 1964
The Beatles Story - Part V - 1965
The Beatles Story - Part VI - 1966
The Beatles Story - Part VII - 1967
The Beatles Story - Part VIII - 1968
The Beatles Story - Part IX - 1969 to 1970

Every book with up to 500 pages or so. He could release a book per year ...

 

Not a bad idea, but that first one might be a hard sell for many who are itching to get on with it.

 

That's a very ambitious schedule unless you're producing phone books.

 

From Steve Marinucci's site:

I wonder what surprises await us on this book and if we're gonna get it in this lifetime.

 

I love Mark! I'm sure it'll be gorgeous. But I wish I could get all volumes before I'm a grandpa. P.S My son is only 12.

 

I chatted with Mark a couple of weeks ago; 2011 is still possible, but from what he said, I won't be surprised if it doesn't appear until 2012.

JcS

 

800 pages just for volume 1. Due out in September, advance orders on Amazon UK:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beatles-Bio...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1295317455&sr=1-1

Given that he got 800 pages just out of 1940-1960, this would seem to go way over the bounds of "in depth"...

 

20 year period, 40 pages per, covering four different stories, not so bad. I do know from what he told me that Mark is going before 1940 for some of the story.

JcS

 

Yeah, I don't doubt Lewisohn can get some mileage out of all the Fabs' ancestors.

Normally, I'd say that would probably be boring, but after reading Keith Richards' recent autobio, it might well be interesting.

2.5 million pages will be a helluva bio, when the whole thing is done. I just hope it's entertaining and well-written.