Beatlemania

Horatio Alger times four for the baby boomers. Just what the world needs—another Beatles biography. Mark Lewisohn's hefty (932 pages) new book The Beatles: All These Years, Volume 1, Tune In is quite possibly the only book on The Beatles career prior to 1963 that one might ever need to read- unless it would be the expanded version of 1700 pages (also available). The first part of a planned trilogy and probably the most interesting part of a story that never fails to intrigue. Lewisohn paints a detailed portrait of the people and places which shaped the formation of the most successful musical act of all time.

Mark also authored The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions,  which is another monument of minutiæ. More of interest to specialists, it really shows how much work went into creating the groups' classic recordings.

The third book shown above contains the notated music of all the Beatles' recorded songs (excepting a few in the Anthology series). Of interest to fledgling guitarists is the inclusion of tablature, handy for figuring out exactly how they voiced their instruments. I've been consulting it for years and I've never found an error in the transcriptions by Tetsuya Fujita, Yuji Hagino, Hajime Kubo, and Goro Sato. 1138 pages, just the thing for your orphan guitar!