Reading list
The library
Session diaries, a multi-volume history, a song-by-song critical reading, and the group’s own oral history. Links go to Amazon.co.uk.
Mark Lewisohn · 2013
Tune In: The Beatles — All These Years, Volume 1
The first volume of Lewisohn's multi-part history, taking the story from family backgrounds to the last hours of 1962. Built on primary documents and new interviews, it is the standard account of Liverpool, Hamburg, Epstein's management, and the Parlophone signing.
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Mark Lewisohn · 1988
The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions
EMI's official diary of every Beatles session from 1962 to 1970, compiled from Abbey Road tape logs, documents, and interviews with engineers. Still the first reference for dates, takes, and who played what in the studio.
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The Beatles · 2000
The Beatles Anthology
The group's own account, edited from Anthology interviews with Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, and from John Lennon's archive, with more than a thousand photographs. It is the authorised oral history that accompanied the 1990s television and album project.
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Ian MacDonald · 1994
Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties
A song-by-song critical history, ordered by first recording date, combining session facts with musical and social commentary. Posthumous revisions (MacDonald died in 2003) incorporated Anthology tracks and corrections; it remains the most cited close reading of the catalogue.
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Barry Miles · 1997
Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now
An authorised McCartney biography, strongest on London in the 1960s, Indica Bookshop, and song-by-song claims of authorship. Miles was a friend and underground-press witness; the book is the main published source for McCartney's own version of the partnership with Lennon.
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Paul McCartney (edited by Paul Muldoon) · 2021
The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present
McCartney discusses 154 songs, from teenage sketches through The Beatles, Wings, and solo work, in conversation with poet Paul Muldoon. Illustrated from his photographic archive, it won Waterstones Book of the Year and is the nearest thing he has published to an autobiography.
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Geoff Emerick with Howard Massey · 2006
Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles
Memoir of the EMI engineer who, still a teenager, recorded Tomorrow Never Knows and went on to engineer Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, and Abbey Road. Technical detail on microphones, tape tricks, and studio politics is the book's lasting value, alongside a clearly personal view of the four.
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Rob Sheffield · 2017
Dreaming the Beatles
A critic's book about how The Beatles have been heard since 1970 — on the radio, in covers, in fandom, and in the solo years — rather than a linear biography. Sheffield writes as an American listener for whom the group arrived as a completed catalogue.
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Hunter Davies · 1968
The Beatles: The Authorised Biography
The only full biography written with the group's co-operation while they were still together, based on time spent with them in 1967–68. Later editions add afterwords; the original text remains a primary source for the Apple period and for family interviews that were not repeated.
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Mark Lewisohn · 1986
The Beatles Live!
Lewisohn's first major reference book: a chronology of live appearances with set lists, venues, and supporting documentation. It underpinned his later Chronicle and Tune In, and remains useful for concert dates that discographies omit.
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Walter Everett · 1999
The Beatles as Musicians
A two-volume musicological study (Quarry Men through Rubber Soul, 2001; Revolver through Anthology, 1999) analysing harmony, form, and studio practice with transcriptions. It is the standard academic account of how the records are put together, aimed at readers who can follow music notation.
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Kenneth Womack · 2019
Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of The Beatles
Womack's history of the Abbey Road album and the 1969 sessions, part of a wider run of books that also includes Maximum Volume and Sound Pictures on George Martin. It concentrates on the eight-track studio, the long medley, and the months in which the group finished its last recorded LP.
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The Beatles (introduction by Peter Jackson; editor John Harris) · 2021
The Beatles: Get Back
The official companion to Jackson's documentary: transcripts, photographs, and dialogue from the January 1969 sessions at Twickenham and Apple, including the rooftop concert. It is drawn from the same Nagra audio and 16 mm film as Let It Be, presented at book length.
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