It's a milestone. At least for me. It weighs like a pretty heavy stone too. I finished it: the first volume of Mark Lewisohn's history of the Beatles, "Tune In."
803 pages, plus notes. It is a weighty tome for sure. Stuffed with facts. If you think you know everything you want to know about the Beatles, well, if you haven't read this book, you don't know everything! And you don't know what you don't want to know! I am the kind of person who really does want to know what guitars John and George used, what kind of amps they played through, how many microphones were used to record their first single "Love Me Do."
The book starts with a little profile of Liverpool starting in the year 1845... and ends in December 1962, just before the Beatles record their Long Player, "Please, Please Me."
And really, the Liverpool and Hamburg years, which are covered extensively, some might think exhaustively in Vol. 1 really is such a great and absorbing part of the story. When the Beatles burst upon the International scene they seemed "fully formed," complete, and their "instant success" was mind-blowing. Of course, the making of the Beatles was not "instant" at all.
In multiple Hamburg engagements alone the Beatles played approximately 1,110 hours in 38 weeks, the "equivalent of three hours every night for a full year." They learned hundreds of songs. They were a tough, tight and supremely confident unit. This was before they conquered the world.
As Lewisohn says, things went really right for this little group. Right manager, right Producer, right everything. Everything went really, really right! And even when things went wrong, it seemed to work out just right. That was/is extraordinary.
Anyway, I finished it, took a breath, and then... I'm waiting, waiting for the next volume. Hope it's not a long wait. Here's Lennon talking about those early years:
"We were the best fucking group in the goddamn world... and believing that is what made us what we were. Whether you call it 'the best rock & roll group or 'the best pop group,' whatever - as far as I was concerned, we were the best. We thought we were the best in Hamburg and Liverpool - it was just a matter of time before everybody else caught on." - John Lennon (1980)