Tune in - by Mark Lewisohn (Paperback)

About the Book

Originally published: New York: Crown Archetype, c2013.

Book Synopsis

Now in paperback, Tune In is the New York Times bestseller by the world's leading Beatles authority - the first volume in a groundbreaking trilogy about the band that revolutionized music.

The Beatles have been in our lives for half a century and surely always will be. Still, somehow, their music excites, their influence resonates, their fame sustains. New generations find and love them, and while many other great artists come and go, the Beatles are beyond eclipse.

So . . . who really were these people, and just how did it all happen?

'The Beatles story' is everywhere. Told wrong from early on, rehashed in every possible way and routinely robbed of its context, this is a phenomenon in urgent need of a bright new approach. In his series All These Years, Mark Lewisohn - the world-recognized Beatles historian - presses the Refresh button to relate the entire story as it's never been told or known before. Here is a full and accurate biography at last. It is certain to become the lasting word.

Tune In is book one of three, exploring and explaining a period that is by very definition lesser-known: the formative pre-fame years, the teenage years, the Liverpool and Hamburg years - in many ways the most absorbing and incredible period of them all. The Beatles come together here in all their originality, attitude, style, speed, charisma, appeal, daring and honesty, the tools with which they're about to reshape the world. It's the Beatles in their own time, an amazing story of the ultimate rock band, a focused and colorful telling that builds and builds to leave four sharp lads from Liverpool on the very brink of a whole new kind of fame.

Using impeccable research and resources, Tune In is a magisterial work, an independent biography that combines energy, clarity, objectivity, authority and insight. The text is anti-myth, tight and commanding - just like the Beatles themselves.

Here is the Beatles story as it really was. Throw away what you think you know and start afresh.

Review Quotes

"An epic unprecedented in rock 'n' roll biography, and a great read . . . there's a surprise on every page." --Mojo

"Beyond essential . . . a wildly evocative portrait . . . The saga is clearer and richer here than it's ever been. Lewisohn writes in novelistic detail and with the obvious conviction that none of the previous Beatles biographies have ever been good enough."--Entertainment Weekly

"A radical event and a joy to read . . . Lewisohn's work stands as a monumental triumph, a challenge not merely to other Beatles biographers but to the discipline of biography itself. If only all important subjects had their Lewisohn." --Washington Post

"The biggest, deepest Beatles book ever."--Rolling Stone

"The widest possible angle on an extensive and engrossing group biography built on a well-raked mountain of exacting new research . . . expertly controlled and propelling."--New York Times

"Lewisohn manages to fill in blanks that no one knew were empty."--The New Yorker

"A triumph. Not only an enthralling account of the Beatles group's origins, far superior to anything that has gone before, but also an essential piece of social history . . . Lewisohn has set out to do the Beatles justice and write the definitive history. I think he is succeeding." --The Times (UK)

"A book with a difference, one that ensures all previous rock tomes will gather dust on high cobwebbed shelves . . . Lewisohn has set the benchmark in popular music history that he alone can match." --Huffington Post

"Every single page brings the Beatles back into focus and moves them away from legend. Common myths fall apart under Mr. Lewisohn's research." --New York Journal of Books

"In its close focus and historical ambition, the trilogy may be compared to Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson or John Richardson's A Life of Picasso; it is unlikely to be surpassed." --Daily Telegraph (UK)

"A game-changing study which raises the bar in a genre characterized by pap or pretension. A meticulous piece of work - I can't wait for volume two." --The Independent (UK)

"I can think of no greater praise for Tune In than to say that it gives the Beatles the beginnings of the biography they deserve. It is hard to imagine the subsequent volumes, covering more familiar ground, matching the gripping quality of this constantly surprising work." --Financial Times

"This is the story told in Proustian detail, told so definitively that, after this, that really should be it." --The Guardian (UK)

"With imagination, energy and a gripping plotline, Lewisohn manages to put flesh and blood on the story as never before." --The Sunday Times (UK)

"Packed with revelations and demystifications." --The Economist

"A major event in music publishing . . . the definitive account of the Beatles." --GQ

"Lewisohn treats his subjects seriously, as historical, if ultimately remarkable, figures, and eschews the myriad myths that have grown up around the band in favor of the sorts of details and minutiae, wrapped in a serious but breezy narrative, that give us the fullest picture of who John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and, eventually, Ringo Starr were." --Esquire

"A fast-moving page-turner overflowing with warm humor, passion, and (of course) music. Likely to become a principle text in 20th-century studies, a sort of Complete Shakespeare with a much better soundtrack." --VH1.com

"As a Beatles scholar, Mark Lewisohn has no serious rivals. [This is] nothing less than a lifetime's work embracing the cultural and personal history of the Fab Four, a multi-volume epic written on a scale unprecedented in its genre." --Irish Times

"Tune In is brilliant in describing the addictive power of rock and roll when there was no imaginable alternative in a doomed town. [Tune In] turns up the colors in a world that has faded to grey." --Herald Scotland

"Unearths searing new facts that change our historical perspective of what we've always been told, setting history on its ear."--Examiner.com

"A definitive history of the band."--The Wall Street Journal

"Written with passion, authority and vitality, this is an absorbing book."--Edinburgh Evening News

"Epic in its scope, forensic in its detail, Tune In is like reading the Beatles' story for the very first time."--R2/Rock 'n' Reel

"Lewisohn has a knack for underscoring the moment, the precise moment, when things change."--Slate.com

"A clear-eyed appraisal of rock's most beloved band."--CNN.com

About the Author

MARK LEWISOHN is the acknowledged world authority on the Beatles. Before embarking on The Beatles: All These Years his books included the bestselling and influential The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions and The Complete Beatles Chronicle. He was a consultant and researcher on all aspects--TV, DVDs, CDs and book--of the Beatles own Anthology and has been involved in numerous additional projects for them. Married with two children, he lives in England.