The Beatles: All These Years is a three-part series of books about the Beatles and their cultural impact, written by English historian Mark Lewisohn. The project was begun in the early 2000s and has yet to be completed. He described the endeavour as a response to the "poor" standard of research typically afforded to the band's history. The first volume, Tune In, was published in 2013.
Background
Lewisohn previously wrote six Beatles references book throughout the 1980s and 1990s, including The Complete BeatlesRecording Sessions. Around then, he expressed a view that there was an oversaturation of Beatles biographies. In the early 2000s, his feelings changed, as he realised that none approached the depth or breadth of other serious biographies, such as Robert A. Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson. He began formulating plans for a project of similar scope in 2003. A year later, he was given a £1.2 million advance to write a "definitive" three-part Beatles biography series for the publisher Little, Brown. At the time, it was expected that the books would be finished by 2017. In addition to drawing upon his previous research, Lewisohn devoted six years to researching the first volume in the book. He consulted many people who had never been interviewed before and employed methods "rooted in a psychotherapists' technique" to help them recover lost memories. Other material was drawn from the raw transcripts of Brian Epstein's A Cellarful of Noise and Epstein's personal diaries, schedules and business records.
''Volume One – Tune In''
The Beatles: All These Years: Volume One – Tune In was published on 19 October 2013; the abridged American edition reduced the page count from 1,728 to 944. The coverage spans the 1940s to 1962. Lewisohn described the book as "predominately... about Liverpool". One of its major previously-unreported accounts concerned George Martin's signing the Beatles to Parlophone Records. The book also explores the many ways in which the band almost broke up and, by detailing the evolution of their concert set lists, illuminates their transition from a covers band into a group performing their own material. In his review for the New York Times, music criticTim Riley wrote that "Younger readers will find a profound exploration of how and why rock's aesthetic explosion of the 1960s continues to influence contemporary life in everything from recording production and fashion and celebrity journalism to social mores, gender identities and the internationalization of youth culture." Independent contributor Emily Jupp reviewed that much of the book's accounts are "without precedent and despite a tone of clear, worshipful admiration for the band's music, doesn't let his affection cloud his judgement and the book doesn't shy away from exposing the less palatable and less publicised sides of their personalities, such as John Lennon hitting his girlfriends."
''Volume Two'' and ''Three''
In 2013, Lewisohn estimated that the second volume would be published in 2020 and the third in 2028. In 2018, he tweeted that it was "way too early to say" when he would be able to publish Volume Two. In 2019, he toured England with a stage show, Hornsey Road, that covered the making of the albumAbbey Road. The show was assembled to help fund his continued writing of Volume Two. As of 2020, Lewisohn's website states that Volume Two would not be published until 2023 at the earliest.
