JANUARY 2014 - AudioFile
If you love the Beatles, and good history, then this audiobook feast will both fill you up and whet your appetite for more. It’s one of the most detailed biographies written about a rock band, and by the end we’re still only up to 1962. Two more volumes are planned. Narrator Clive Mantle has a deep, rather formal, English accent, which is appropriate for some histories but is at odds with the subject at hand. He reads with sterling diction, varies his pitch to keep this mammoth work moving, and occasionally allows a character voice to seep through. A book on what the Beatles represented, though, pleads for a more energetic reading. Unfortunately, we don’t get that. R.I.G. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
The New York Times - Janet Maslin
…the intrepid reader who enters the portals of Tune In is probably in the presence of slow-gestating greatness. The finished history promises to have monumental stature, and this warm-up may turn out to be its most revealing installment. Mr. Lewisohn executes the difficult trick of introducing five major characters—John, Paul, George, Ringo and Liverpool—and patiently establishing each before their paths cross. It is invaluable to view each band member as a separate individual…It's also eye-opening to read Mr. Lewisohn's revisionist versions of the most widely propagated myths about band members' early years…
The New York Times Book Review - Tim Riley
…an extensive and engrossing group biography built on a well-raked mountain of exacting new research…[Lewisohn] retells this epic tale in a manner that, while ambitious…also manages to be expertly controlled and propelling…Lewisohn doesn't just tell the story fully and entertainingly, however. He also challenges some sacred strands of received wisdom.
From the Publisher
An epic unprecedented in rock ’n’ roll biography, and a great read . . . there’s a surprise on every page.” —Mojo
“Beyond essential . . . a wildly evocative portrait . . . The saga is clearer and richer here than it’s ever been. Lewisohn writes in novelistic detail and with the obvious conviction that none of the previous Beatles biographies have ever been good enough.”—Entertainment Weekly
“A radical event and a joy to read . . . Lewisohn’s work stands as a monumental triumph, a challenge not merely to other Beatles biographers but to the discipline of biography itself. If only all important subjects had their Lewisohn.” —Washington Post
“The biggest, deepest Beatles book ever.”—Rolling Stone
“The widest possible angle on an extensive and engrossing group biography built on a well-raked mountain of exacting new research . . . expertly controlled and propelling.”—New York Times
“Lewisohn manages to fill in blanks that no one knew were empty.”—The New Yorker
“A triumph. Not only an enthralling account of the Beatles group’s origins, far superior to anything that has gone before, but also an essential piece of social history . . . Lewisohn has set out to do the Beatles justice and write the definitive history. I think he is succeeding.” —The Times (UK)
“A book with a difference, one that ensures all previous rock tomes will gather dust on high cobwebbed shelves . . . Lewisohn has set the benchmark in popular music history that he alone can match.” —Huffington Post
“Every single page brings the Beatles back into focus and moves them away from legend. Common myths fall apart under Mr. Lewisohn’s research.” —New York Journal of Books
“In its close focus and historical ambition, the trilogy may be compared to Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson or John Richardson’s A Life of Picasso; it is unlikely to be surpassed.” —Daily Telegraph (UK)
“A game-changing study which raises the bar in a genre characterized by pap or pretension. A meticulous piece of work – I can’t wait for volume two.” —The Independent (UK)
“I can think of no greater praise for Tune In than to say that it gives the Beatles the beginnings of the biography they deserve. It is hard to imagine the subsequent volumes, covering more familiar ground, matching the gripping quality of this constantly surprising work.” —Financial Times
“This is the story told in Proustian detail, told so definitively that, after this, that really should be it.” —The Guardian (UK)
“With imagination, energy and a gripping plotline, Lewisohn manages to put flesh and blood on the story as never before.” —The Sunday Times (UK)
“Packed with revelations and demystifications.” —The Economist
“A major event in music publishing . . . the definitive account of the Beatles.” —GQ
“Lewisohn treats his subjects seriously, as historical, if ultimately remarkable, figures, and eschews the myriad myths that have grown up around the band in favor of the sorts of details and minutiae, wrapped in a serious but breezy narrative, that give us the fullest picture of who John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and, eventually, Ringo Starr were.” —Esquire
“A fast-moving page-turner overflowing with warm humor, passion, and (of course) music. Likely to become a principle text in 20th-century studies, a sort of Complete Shakespeare with a much better soundtrack.” —VH1.com
“As a Beatles scholar, Mark Lewisohn has no serious rivals. [This is] nothing less than a lifetime’s work embracing the cultural and personal history of the Fab Four, a multi-volume epic written on a scale unprecedented in its genre.” —Irish Times
“Tune In is brilliant in describing the addictive power of rock and roll when there was no imaginable alternative in a doomed town. [Tune In] turns up the colors in a world that has faded to grey.” —Herald Scotland
“Unearths searing new facts that change our historical perspective of what we’ve always been told, setting history on its ear.”—Examiner.com
“A definitive history of the band.”—The Wall Street Journal
“Written with passion, authority and vitality, this is an absorbing book.”—Edinburgh Evening News
“Epic in its scope, forensic in its detail, Tune In is like reading the Beatles’ story for the very first time.”—R2/Rock ‘n’ Reel
“Lewisohn has a knack for underscoring the moment, the precise moment, when things change.”—Slate.com
“A clear-eyed appraisal of rock’s most beloved band.”—CNN.com
