There's Mark Lewisohn, for example.

He has been writing books about the Beatles since the late 1970s, and in 2013 he published the first part of his opus magnum "The Beatles: All These Years", a three-volume essential history of the group.

The first volume has 944 pages in the English original, the extended special edition has 1728 pages - and with both books Lewisohn has only arrived in 1962, shortly before the Beatles' big breakthrough.

The second part will appear in 2023 at the earliest, ten years after the first.

Jorg Thomann

Editor in the “Life” section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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Lewisohn is likely to cast the greatest shadow among Beatles biographers, but he is only one of very, very many.

At the end of his book One Two Three Four, Craig Brown lists a six-page selection of works that he consulted for the work on his own treatise - there are more than two hundred, a good half of them dedicated directly to the Beatles.

And as if the sheer volume of competition wasn't intimidating enough, there are also the millions upon millions of Beatles fans, many of whom can easily rival the professional historians in terms of expertise.

Describing a guided Beatles tour of Liverpool, Craig Brown concedes to himself and to his readers:

He never recovered from his brief proximity to world fame

Despite all that, Brown has written his own Beatles book and even won the 2020 Baillie-Gifford Prize for non-fiction for it.

how did he do that?

If new things can hardly be brought to light, a biography has to rely on something else: a bold thesis, a special tone of voice or a special form.

As a satirist, Brown brings his own tone of voice with him, and he has also considered one form: instead of a chronological narrative, he delivers a collage of 150 anecdotes of various lengths, which sometimes focus on the Beatles themselves, sometimes selected companions and sometimes people, who never met the Beatles themselves but were influenced by them.

Brown has compiled amazing stories for these miniatures.

Like that of Melanie Coe, who was voted the winner of a playback competition by Paul McCartney at fourteen, ran away from home at seventeen and inspired the very McCartney who read an article about it to write the song "She's Leaving Home";

he didn't know that he knew the girl.

Or that of the postman Eric Clague, who delivered a sack of fan mail to McCartney's parents' house every day - and a few years earlier had been the young policeman whose vehicle killed the mother of McCartney's bandmate John Lennon.

It's about the drummer Jimmie Nicol, who was allowed to stand in for Ringo Starr at eight concerts on a tour in 1964 and never really recovered from this brief proximity to world fame.

It's about a singing nun, a Beatles-obsessed drug detective and the many charlatans who buzzed around the band.

All of this adds up to the kaleidoscope of an exciting, colorful and crazy decade.

Details of crime and injuries

And the Beatles themselves?

Craig Brown's penchant for the outlandish and the eccentric places his particular focus on John Lennon, and the image that emerges is unflattering.

But so are the supporting characters George Harrison, stubborn and mostly cranky, and Ringo Starr, a lovable but humble fellow;

McCartney comes off best with Brown.

Worst of all is Yoko Ono, not at all because of her alleged contribution to the band's demise (Brown would have to be a bigger fan to blame her), but because he obviously finds her appalling as a person and as an artist.

In the chapter on Lennon's brutal attack on his buddy Bob Wooler, who had accused him of a homosexual escapade with the band manager Brian Epstein, Brown provides a kind of meta-criticism of the profession in which he practices himself.

In order to show "how arbitrary and subjective historiography can be", Brown lists in a table the reliably differing details about the course of events and injuries that the various biographers and contemporary witnesses described;

not a clumsy move to arm himself against the rigorous exegesis of all the “Beatles archaeologists” (Brown) who inevitably pounce on his work as well.

Other ideas are less convincing.

Craig Brown's book is confidently told and entertaining, even if the jury's praise at the Baillie-Gifford Prize for reinventing the biography seems exaggerated.

This would have required the ambition to deliver profound character studies of the Beatles instead of quickly sketched portraits of more or less bizarre types.

Brown's book also fails to capture the magic of her music, albums and songs.

In the last chapter, the author uses a simple but effective trick to prove how things can be done differently: he tells the short life story of the unfortunate Brian Epstein backwards - from the shaken Beatles' reactions to his early death to the young concert-goer who recognized the potential of the group and paved the way for it.

It's dignified and moving because Brown presents Epstein as most of his other protagonists are denied: as people.

Craig Brown: "One Two Three Four".

The Beatles' Fabulous Years.

Translated from the English by Conny Loesch.

CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2022. 670 p., ill., hardcover, €29.95.