This is volume one of a projected three-volume series in which Mark Lewisohn – the world-recognized Beatles historian – presses the Refresh button to relate the entire story of The Beatles as it’s never been told or known before. Here is a full and accurate biography at last. It is certain to become the lasting word (that is, if Mark ever gets around to the other two volumes, c’mon dude!)

Volume one explores and explains a period that is by very definition lesser-known: the formative pre-fame years, the teenage years, the Liverpool and Hamburg years – in many ways the most absorbing and incredible period of them all. The Beatles come together here in all their originality, attitude, style, speed, charisma, appeal, daring and honesty, the tools with which they’re about to reshape the world. It’s the Beatles in their own time, an amazing story of the ultimate rock band, a focused and colorful telling that builds and builds to leave four sharp lads from Liverpool on the very brink of a whole new kind of fame. Using impeccable research (I’ll say) and resources, Tune In is a magisterial work, an independent biography that combines energy, clarity, objectivity, authority and insight. The text is anti-myth, tight and commanding – just like the Beatles themselves.