The truly fab thing about this book is how close Mark Lewisohn makes you feel to the Beatles, not as a musical legacy or cultural institution, but human beings you get to know better than just about anyone you will ever meet.
Yet it keeps reminding me of that old maxim: never meet your heroes.
To put it plainly, these guys played rough pushing their way to “the toppermost of the poppermost.” Most people picking this book up will know the sad tale of Pete Best, but many others were used and discarded for much less cause. “The Beatles weren’t sentimental types,” Lewisohn writes, in his typically understated way.
