About half of this book makes for some highly enjoyable, often insightful reading about the music we all know. The down side is that many stories, events and recording sessions that have already been narrated hundreds of times reappear here with puzzling frequency -- one can claim "Just in case there are new listeners" only so many times before the appearance of new Beatles books appears largely superfluous. But there's some great stuff here, if you're willing to be patient about the age-old anecdotes.
But we now have at hand an excellent example of why irresponsible history-skewing should be taken out of print before it bleeds into other texts and muddles the relevant knowledge base. Geoff Emerick's -Here, There and Everywhere- is cited often, especially in "The Beatles as Recording Artists" by Jerry Zolten (an essay that's also grammatically disastrous). Emerick's book is well known to be filled with errors, outright fabrications, and Emerick's taking credit for things that George Martin actually did.
Anything that Cambridge allows to be published as an academic "Companion" should, one would immediately assume, be combed over, fact-checked, and basically made to adhere to responsible literary practices. There are mistakes in other sections, as well; for instance, Howard Kramer, in "Rock and Roll Music," claims that the Beatles had to record twelve new songs for their first album, when in fact they only needed ten (the other four were the already-recorded A and B sides of their first two 45s).
Clearly, politics, rather than offers of fresh insight, figured strongly in which writers were chosen to write pieces for this collection.
For some reason, critics' opinions (credentials, please? It's like telling someone to immediately switch tastes in food...there's no right or wrong in music) are cited often, along with chart positions -- especially in Michael Frontani's mere list of facts in narrative form, "The Solo Years." Why? Talk about irrelevant -- especially in a book with more-intellectual-than-the-other-stuff pretensions.
If you've already got all of the other truly great books about the Beatles (Many Years from Now, the group's own Anthology, Recording the Beatles, the Complete Beatles Recording Sessions and, if you're into ultimately irrelevant but fascinating musical discussion, Tell Me Why), then this one won't do you any harm. It's often highly entertaining. But if you're looking for a place to begin reading about the Beatles, how they approached the studio, what they did to revolutionize the recording industry, etc., then I'd strongly recommend starting elsewhere; there are more consistent, more factually responsible volumes available, including those I've just listed.
(Incidentally, it's surprising that even the detail-oriented writings on the Beatles still haven't mentioned the speed discrepancies between first two American albums -- at least as they're heard on the Capitol boxed-set CDs -- and their much faster British equivalents. Many songs on Rubber Soul have this UK/US speed difference as well. Surely I'm not the only person to have noticed that the American transfer speeds were off?)
