Recording The Beatles Book

Mark Lewisohn (born 16 June 1958) is an English historian and biographer. Since the 1980s, he has written many reference books about the Beatles and has worked for EMI, MPL Communications and Apple Corps.^[1] He has been referred to as the world's leading authority on the band^[2] due to his meticulous research and integrity.^[1] His works include The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (1988), a history of the group's session dates, and The Beatles: All These Years (2013–present), a three-volume series intended as the group's most comprehensive biography.

1. Feb 17, 2021 Recording The Beatles book - Curvebender publishing.Condition is near brand new. I opened it and thumbed thru it briefly maybe twice back when it first came out. All stickers and extra goodies are complete in their original plastic sleeve and taped to the outside of the hard shell case as shown. I’ve left this alone since the mid 2000’s when these originally came out.
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The Beatles and related subjects[edit]

Early books[edit]

Lewisohn has been writing about the Beatles since 1977. When he began researching the band, he 'found that it was a deep and rewarding history that was, for the most part, not very well researched by anybody else, so I just found a career by becoming a Beatles expert, I suppose you would say. Writing books and consulting on TV series, and ended up working for them. It's ridiculous. One thing just led to the next.'^[3]

This set is a must-have for any Beatles fan or recording engineer. Hardcover, 11' x 11', 540 pages, over 500 photos and illustrations, color and black and white, includes slipcase and bonus items. From reader reviews: Vanesa Thomas: Throughout other case, little folks like to read book Recording the Beatles: The Studio Equipment and Techniques.

His 1986 book The Beatles Live! featured a complete history of all the Beatles' live performances, in a format which Lewisohn would follow for his subsequent books. After being invited by EMI to listen to all of the Beatles' original session tapes, Lewisohn wrote The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (1988). The book was in the form of a diary, listing chronologically every recording session the Beatles had at Abbey Road Studios. It included details such as who played on each track and how many takes were recorded in each session. The book featured an introductory interview by Paul McCartney.^[4]

The Beatles: 25 Years in the Life (1988) included information on what each individual member of the band was doing on any particular day between 1962 and 1987. This book was republished as The Beatles Day by Day in 1990. The Complete Beatles Chronicle was published in 1992 and went one step further, detailing the band's entire career in the studio, on stage, and on radio, television, film and video.^[5] Lewisohn's next book was The Beatles London, which he co-authored with Piet Schreuders and Adam Smith, published in 1994. This is essentially a guide book to all the Beatles-related locations in London, including Abbey Road and the London Palladium, featuring maps and photographs of the band at the locations mentioned. A revised version of the book was published in early 2008.^[6]

Other contributions[edit]

As well as writing his own books, Lewisohn has written forewords to such books as Recording The Beatles by Brian Kehew and Kevin Ryan, Beatles Gear by Andy Babiuk and the German book Komm, gib mir deine Hand by Thorsten Knublauch and Axel Korinth. He has also contributed to In My Life: Lennon Remembered, a book to accompany the 10-part BBC radio series about John Lennon, and edited McCartney's book Wingspan, after working for a long time as editor and writer for McCartney's (now ceased) fanzine Club Sandwich. This led to him being invited by the former Beatle to write the liner notes for several of his albums, namely Flaming Pie, Band on the Run: 25th Anniversary Edition and Wingspan: Hits and History. He also wrote the liner notes for the retrospective six-CD box set Produced by George Martin – 50 Years in Recording, and the Beatles' albums 1 and The Capitol Albums, Volume 1. He was heavily involved in The Beatles Anthology project.^{[6][dead link]}

The Beatles Recording Sessions

According to Daniel Finkelstein, writing in The Times in 2014, Lewisohn was responsible for identifying comedian Jasper Carrott as the source in 1983 of the famous remark, 'Ringo isn't the best drummer in the world. He isn't even the best drummer in the Beatles.' This observation has generally been attributed to John Lennon, but Lewisohn had been doubtful because he could find no record of his having said it and thought it was out of character for Lennon to say something that he did not actually believe, though he was also well known for making mischievous remarks.^[7] However, Lewisohn has since confirmed that the line actually originated in a 1981 episode of the BBC radio comedy series Radio Active, written by Angus Deayton and Geoffrey Perkins.^[8]

The Beatles: All These Years[edit]

In 2005, Lewisohn announced that he had started work on a three-volume Beatles biography.^[9] He was quoted as saying of the work:

The Beatles story has been told very often but, in my view, rarely very well. I'm writing a wide-ranging history and my aim is true: to explore and comprehend what happened in and around the Beatles, and to write it even-handedly, without fear or favour, bias or agenda. A rock and roll group came out of Liverpool and shaped the last half of the 20th century the world over, and their music transcends changing times. The whole extraordinary story needs to be fully recorded and it needs to be done now, while first-hand witnesses are still with us.^{[6][dead link]}

Volume 1 was published in October 2013, entitled The Beatles: All These Years, Volume One – Tune In.^[10] Lewisohn was quoted as saying 'It took longer to research and write than I could ever have anticipated'.^[11] In an interview published on 28 December 2013, Lewisohn estimated that the second volume would be published in 2020 and the final volume in 2028 ('about the time he turns 70').^[12] However, in August 2018 Lewisohn tweeted that it was 'way too early to say' when he would be able to publish Volume 2.^[13]

In autumn 2019 Lewisohn toured a one-man show, Hornsey Road, around theatres in England, also stopping at Dublin and Edinburgh. The 25-date tour was an entertaining multimedia history lecture about the Beatles’ last-made album, Abbey Road. The tour title referred to EMI’s 1956–57 purchase of a recording studio in Holloway, north London, where the Beatles would have recorded had, ultimately, EMI not altered its course and decided to keep all company recording at the existing studio on Abbey Road. Lewisohn’s tour achieved sell-out status in a number of venues, the proceeds helping fund his continuing writing of the history trilogy The Beatles: All These Years.^[14]

Other work[edit]

Although the Beatles are Lewisohn's area of particular expertise, he has also written on a variety of other subjects. One of his best-known works is an encyclopaedia of comedy on British television screens titled Radio Times Guide to TV Comedy, published in 1998 and updated in 2003, also available online as the BBC Guide to Comedy until 2007. He has also written Funny, Peculiar, a biography of Benny Hill, published in 2002.^{[6][dead link]}

In the past, Lewisohn has written for magazines, including the Radio Times and Match of the Day. He also helped to edit the book Hendrix: Setting The Record Straight, written by John McDermott and Eddie Kramer.

Personal life[edit]

Lewisohn is Jewish.^[15]

Bibliography[edit]

• The Beatles Live! (1986)
• The Beatles: 25 Years in the Life (1987)
• The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (1988)
• The Complete Beatles Chronicle (1992)
• Radio Times Guide to TV Comedy (1998)
• Funny, Peculiar: The True Story of Benny Hill (2002)
• Radio Times Guide to TV Comedy (2nd edition, 2003)

• Volume One – Tune In (2013)

• The Beatles A Hard Day's Night: A Private Archive (2016)
• An Englishman in Mons (2017)

As coauthor[edit]

• In My Life: John Lennon Remembered (1990)
• The Beatles' London (1994)
• The Beatles' London (2nd edition, 2008)

As editor[edit]

• Wingspan: Paul McCartney's Band On The Run (2002)

References[edit]

1. ^ ^abCatching Up With Mark LewisohnArchived 5 January 2009 at the Wayback Machine What Goes On, 4 April 2005
2. ^'Historian given £1.2m to write Beatles trilogy'Archived 19 February 2010 at the Wayback MachineThe Independent, 26 April 2004
3. ^Byrne, John (30 September 2019). 'Lewisohn: 'The shadow of The Beatles is still enormous''. RTC. Retrieved 14 January 2020.
4. ^'Travels In Music: Ep. 1: The World's Leading Beatles Historian, Author of 'Tune In' Mark Lewisohn'. Travels In Music.
5. ^The Complete Beatles ChronicleArchived 12 February 2012 at the Wayback Machine icLiverpool. Retrieved 19 June 2008
6. ^ ^abcdMark Lewisohn at United Agents.^{[permanent dead link]} Retrieved 19 June 2008^{[dead link]}
7. ^Daniel Finkelstein, The Times, 8 March 2014
8. ^'Did John Lennon Say Ringo 'Wasn't Even The Best Drummer In The Beatles'?'. Radiox.co.uk. Retrieved 6 January 2021.
9. ^Mark Lewisohn announces new comprehensive Beatles bioArchived 5 January 2009 at the Wayback Machine What Goes On, 11 April 2005
10. ^Empire, Kitty (20 October 2013). 'The Beatles: All These Years, Volume One – Tune In by Mark Lewisohn – review'. The Guardian. Retrieved 25 October 2013.
11. ^Whiting, Tim. 'Q&A with Mark Lewisohn'. MarkLewisohn.net. Archived from the original on 17 March 2014. Retrieved 7 November 2013.
12. ^Kozinn, Allan. 'Tune In, and Turn on the Reading Light'. New York Times. Retrieved 31 December 2013.
13. ^Mark Lewisohn [@marklewisohn] (10 August 2018). 'Sorry folks, but it's way too early to say when Volume 2 will be out. Tune In was bigger than War and Peace, and the next one will be its equal or more. It's an immensely researched and complex history and won't be out until it's done. Hang in there – it will be worth the wait' (Tweet) – via Twitter.
14. ^Williams, Richard (11 September 2019). 'This tape rewrites everything we knew about the Beatles'. The Guardian. Retrieved 14 May 2020.
15. ^Simons, Judith. 'Influential Showbiz Writer Who Inspired Paul McCartney's 'Hey Jude''. The Jewish Chronicle (2018)

External links[edit]

• Media >Book / eBook

Could this be the definitive guide to the Beatles' recording sessions?

The KLF, in their book The Manual (How To Have A Number One Hit The Easy Way), say: 'You will find engineers everywhere trying to impress you with the fact that Sergeant Pepper was recorded on a four-track. This is of course as relevant as the fact that no JCBs were used in the construction of the Great Pyramid.'

Every engineer knows about Pepper being done on four tracks. The more intelligent engineer will have realised that there were perhaps other factors involved in making Beatles recordings what they are: room ambience and probably lots of boxes with valves, that sort of thing. But it's actually very hard to find concrete information about how these recordings were made, and what they were made with. Until now, that is...

Much as archaeologists have spent no end of time investigating the mechanics involved in building a pyramid, Kehew and Ryan have made it their business to find out everything there is to know about the the methods by which the Beatles' music was recorded. Of course, given that this took place considerably less than 4000 years ago, and that most of the people involved are still very much alive, their task was probably a great deal less speculative than that of the archaeologists. After all, you're going to get much more definite answers if you can talk to the people involved and look at the equipment they used than you will if you're sitting around looking at a 40-ton block of stone and trying to work out how a bunch of guys in loincloths, with no JCBs, managed to move it about and use it to create pleasing geometric shapes.

Recording The Beatles is a huge book, and there's a simply awesome amount of information collected within its 500+ pages. It is the result of over a decade of research, in which Kehew and Ryan tracked down and interviewed as many ex-EMI staff as they could find, located and photographed examples of nearly every piece of studio equipment in use at Abbey Road between 1962 and 1970 and spent countless hours investigating the contents of EMI's archives.

The Beatles Recording Sessions Book

The book is divided into four sections. The first looks at the design and construction of Abbey Road itself, and at the different roles of the various studio personnel. The second section is about recording equipment, and features an enormous collection of highly detailed (and clearly labelled) photographs, as well as a wealth of information about each piece — much of it provided by the people responsible for using, maintaining and, in some cases, actually building the equipment. Section three follows a similarly detailed format, but looks at effects and instruments belonging to Abbey Road and also at other studios used by the Beatles during their career.

Section four is about the actual production of the Beatles' records. There is a chapter for each year from 1962 to 1968, and a joint chapter for 1969 and 1970. Each chapter looks at the general techniques being used during that year and also features 'A Closer Look' sections which explore specific songs from that year in greater depth. The sheer volume of information doesn't let up here either, and the section is awash with 3D diagrams of studio layout, track sheets, photographs to show things such as drum mic placement, and lists of the equipment and instruments used during the sessions.

I expect that this last section will generate the most interest among prospective readers — and it doesn't disappoint. But it's the preceding sections that really make it work: all of the background information places the content of this section in context, and gives you a clear understanding of how these records were actually made.

Apart from the stunning amount of data contained in this book, the other striking thing about it is how fluently written and well laid out it is. Given the amount of technical facts here, you might expect a book that is rather dry in tone, but this is simply not the case — largely, I suspect, as a result of the authors' boundless enthusiasm for their subject. While you could use the book as a work of reference — something to be dipped into at random or to answer a specific question — I'd be surprised if most readers did not end up going through it from cover to cover. It really is that enjoyable.

Many of the techniques and processes we take for granted in the modern studio were pioneered by the people who recorded the music of the Beatles. This book gives a fascinating and unique insight into how they worked, how their equipment worked and how they used it to create not only the records we know so well, but also music recording as we know it.

Best Books About The Beatles

Kehew and Ryan should be immensely proud of what they've achieved here: a vast, in-depth and amazingly well researched document of recording history. Recording The Beatles is a feat which is surely on a par with working out how to build a pyramid with a less than adequate number of JCBs.

Recording The Beatles Book Curve Bender

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Recording The Beatles Book For Sale

Recording The Beatles by Brian Kehew and Kevin Ryan (ISBN 0978520009), $100.