All Together Now First Complete Beatles

amazing ,detailed, book, about beatles, together,or solo, till 1975!

This is one of the books that STARTED the in depth documentation of everything Beatles. When it first appeared in 1975 there had been nothing like it . If it had just been a complete Beatles discography 1961-1975 (group and solo) that would have been a feat (and a much needed reference). This book is much more however covering sideman careers (former Beatles' appearances on other artists recordings), songs written for other artists, related artists discographies (inc Paul's brother Mike) , filmography, bibliography, bootlegs and US and UK chart histories 1962-1975. Two further volumes expanded the work into the 1980s. In the last few decades other writers have written dozens of special interest books to follow up on these two authors work. The newer authors focusing on one section of the work.The only thing I haven't seen updated and expanded is the chart histories... I still reference this book often ...

Although this volume is now dated, and has been followed by two supplementary volumes by the same authors, it is nice to see that it is still in print. Podrazik and Castleman were the first to take a serious approach to Beatles recordings, and they did much of the original research on Beatles record releases in American and England that was used, revised and expanded upon in later references. There is a notable ingredient of fun in the way this material is presented, which should be considered by some later Beatles discographers who seem to take the business far too seriously. After this volume appeared, all discographies that followed were measured by a new, higher standard. Betty Mitchell