Early days: George Harrison and John Lennon on stage with Tony Sheridan (far right) in Hamburg, circa 1960. Photograph: Ellen Piel/ K & K/ RedfernsWhether or not the Beatles were bigger than Jesus remains a moot point. But that hasn't stopped seasoned Beatles writer Mark Lewisohn penning what is shaping up to be the bible of all things Fab – a three-volume definitive history.
Lewisohn is an all-knowing figure; the subject's foremost authority, a super-fan with skills beyond hyperventilation. Tune In, the first volume, has all the heft of the Old Testament, with greater forensic rigour. It is a hugely old-fashioned brick of a book, written (and priced) for a baby boomer generation who – like babies, perhaps – quite enjoy being told the same story for the umpteenth time. Beginning well before the beginning, this edition of Tune In runs to 946 pages of social, local and personal histories, interspersed with exhaustive explications of the wider forces and happenstance surrounding the Beatles' genesis. There is a whole page on the British money system, pre-1971; equally, Lewisohn often points up the casual sexism of the age, in which even the doe-eyed nice boy Paul McCartney indulged. His girlfriend Dot Rhone describes how she and Cynthia Powell, girlfriend of John Lennon, were forbidden to talk about music in company. Poor Elvis got called up, but the Beatles escaped national service by a whisker, a fact that is well-known, but whose significance is huge.
The sins of all their forefathers are covered in detail going back a couple of generations. We probably all knew the acerbic John Lennon could be a bastard, as cruel as he was witty, but Lewisohn uncovers interesting levels of illegitimacy in many of these often part-Irish Catholic families. In fact, they're not even called the Beatles until 300 pages in; Ringo doesn't actually join until around page 700. This is the story of the Beatles as schoolboys, of Lennon and McCartney "sagging off" to write in secret at Aunt Mimi's, of the latest rock'n'roll and R&B cuts, and of lost virginities, of Stu Sutcliffe and Pete Best and Hamburg, of the "Piedels" – the German mispronunciation of Beatles, the Penises – on "prellies" (Preludin, the upper guzzled by many in the cellar clubs), ripping it up on the Reeperbahn. Sometimes, these famous men really seem like motherless children – both McCartney and Lennon lose their mothers in their teens and this huge, shared loss is given sensitive and apposite emphasis. Deaths, desertions and departures are key to the story.
Lewisohn's analysis of early rock'n'roll here lacks, perhaps, the hipster swing of a Greil Marcus. This is a textbook; but that is no barrier to enjoyment. There are academic-style endnotes, in which virtually every statement is substantiated by a primary or secondary source, and footnotes on minutiae – such as how many different ways Mersey Beat, the local scene's paper, misspelled "McCartney" in 1961. The detail extends to Jim McCartney asking his son Paul whether his bowels have moved on the day he sets off for Hamburg.
It is, in short, a work of scholarship that borders on the obsessive; a work made slightly easier, you imagine, by Lewisohn's previous Beatles publication, The Beatles: 25 Years in the Life (1987), in which the author practically stalked the Fabs in real time, figuring out exactly where they all were, and what they were doing, on any given day. There is the temptation, too, to imagine that All These Years is the Gospel according to Paul, even though a song on McCartney's latest album, Early Days, rolls its eyes at pop historiographers. "Now everybody seems to have their own opinion/ Of who did this and who did that," he warbles, "but as for me I don't see how they can remember/ When they weren't where it was at."
Although Lewisohn maintains that his is not an authorised biography, he has been working from within the tent, so to speak, for years. He has been employed by EMI and Apple Corps and written liner notes for McCartney albums. That said, there are no new interviews with either McCartney or Ringo Starr; Tune In relies on every other imaginable source, not least Neil Aspinall, the band's roadie-turned-manager. And McCartney's own frailties do not go unexamined. For all their musical heroics, every Beatle ends up having plenty of clay on his feet.
In the publicity materials for Tune In, Lewisohn asks us to "scrub what we know, and start again", implying that his is a fresh take on the Beatles, illuminated by deep research, over-turning received opinions, digging out unexamined truths. Ultimately, that is not quite what he achieves. The people and milieux that spring from these pages remain, largely, as we previously knew them: the core of Lennon, McCartney and Harrison, sharing in-jokes and a taste for hard-to-find vinyl and black leather; George Martin, a fellow comedy aficionado with the studio skills to bottle their magic and the courage to give this unruly, untried band their heads. It is the breadth and scope of Lewisohn's endeavour that are unparalleled, the knowledge that the young Lennon and McCartney take two buses to some guy's house who is rumoured to know a B7 chord. According to an interview with Danny Baker, Lewisohn anticipates the next tome will be along in five or six years – just enough time, at a push, to digest this momentous first volume.
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