Holy John,Paul,George & Ringo!

Given Lewisohn's track record this is almost sure to be the definitive word (or five million words) on the subject.

The volume I'm looking forward the most, by quite a significant margin, is the skiffle/Quarrymen/Nerk twins/tour of Scotland/Hamburg one and, heaven forbid anything does happen to Mark, I just hope he gets up to the release of 'Love Me Do'!

If and when it comes out, so does all the skiffle and rock 'n' roll and Anthology 1 in our house and everyhting else in that year (2011, 2012, 2013, 2014?), for me anyway, will be roundly ignored as it will be 1957.
Brylcreem on, hula hoop out.....let us rock 'n' roll.

Isn't the first volume supposed to end in 1962 somewhere with the release of Love Me Do, or signing to EMI or what not. It's the pre-fame volume. So if he's "Up To Hamburg" the question is: have they just arrived in Hamburg (summer 1960) or are they playing their last gigs there (December 1962, post Love Me Do [amazingly])

as it'll be the definitive word when it finally emerges.

Amazon have this down for release on 1st September 2011. Apparently it goes up to 1963. Weighing in at 800 pages the cover price seems pretty reasonable at £25, especially as it's discounted to £18 at the moment.

..to tell us, or will he just tell us what we already know in eye-watering detail?
He's primarily an archivist isn't he?..I'm not expecting any deep insight into their creative process or any new juicy gossip.

No one at the time thought it was possible for Mark's 'Beatles Live' story to be quite as detailed as it was.

I'm hoping he gets the feel for the era as much as the last word on the facts and he hasn't been afraid of giving his opinions in his other books.
For me, it's more about the shared British experience (and then it was a shared experience) of being 16 in '56 to '59 than what Paul had for breakfast every day!

...on the Frame front, Stimps. I weary of the phrase 'definitive' when it comes to anything to do with the Beatles, though. No matter how many words he writes and how many millions he's been paid and how much we might admire his tracking down of who said what on which date and when the triangle overdub was done of Take 17 of 'Obla Di Obla Da' or whatever, we all KNOW there will be no significant stop to the endless rolling of new Beatle books or the seemingly twice-annual Mojo cover features purporting to be the 'definitive' lowdown on this or that Beatles album or track or whatever else.

It just goes on and on. Even Pete Best has written three autobiographies by now (or is it two autos and one bio by Spencer Leigh? Either way...)

Put it like this Beowulf only wrote the one book (NB: I'm being facetious here, not daft!), roughly 1000-1300 years ago [even Lewison would have a bit of bother pinning that one down - or his tour of Scotland...], but people are still writing 'definitive' books on it and running university courses and making scholarly reputations on it to this day.

For some reason 'The Battle Of Maldon' / Gerry & The Pacemakers (delete as appropriate) seem of less interest to those who would make their reputations...

Having said that, I'll be interested to read Mark's book(s). Contrary to the way that I have yet to summon up the will to even open the current Beatle-festooned issue of Mojo...

......September 1st 2011 is this Thursday!
Anyone knows what is happening with this mega project?