A Chat With Beatles Expert Mark Lewisohn
No matter how much you think you know about the Beatles, Mark Lewisohn probably knows more.
Hundreds of books have been written about the band, but none with such care and authority as those by the 58-year-old British author. His resume includes comprehensive releases on their concert performances (“The Beatles Live!”) and studio work (“The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions”), for which he was given a Beatle obsessive’s dream job, getting paid by EMI Records to enter the inner sanctum of the Abbey Road studio and listen to the band’s recordings.
“I was a researcher and realized that the books (on the Beatles) were not quite as well-researched or written as I had expected them to have been,” he told The Associated Press during a recent interview, explaining how he evolved from fan to author. “One project led to the next and suddenly I found myself with a career as a writer, which I hadn’t actually intended.”
The Beatles themselves welcomed him to their special world. He assisted on the band’s multimedia retrospective Anthology that came out in the 1990s and served as the editor and writer of “Club Sandwich,” a magazine run by Paul and Linda McCartney. Lewisohn is in the midst of a three-volume biography of the Beatles and most recently contributed text for a coffee-table book about their landmark 1964 film, “A Hard Day’s Night.”
Source: Pollstar
