Mark Lewisohn does not possess a natural stage presence, it has to be said.

Lewisohn is our guide for the evening and he talks to the audience while introducing photographs, film clips and, crucially, lots and lots of Abbey Road audio. This is a one man show with minimal stage design (the zebra crossing is recreated with a small table and chair, stage left) dominated by a big screen. That never happened but it’s one of many fascinating ‘could have beens’ explored in the show that runs for around two hours (with a 20 minute interval in the middle).

Lewisohn has called the show ‘Hornsey Road’, which is a pithy reference to the fact that EMI nearly bought a studio in Hornsey Road in London to record all their pop/rock output with a view to keeping their studios in Abbey Road (at that time called EMI Studios) for classical/jazz output only. If you are going to lock yourself away for nearly a quarter of a century to write what amounts to a VERY BIG BOOK you probably need some money coming in (for cups of coffee and Kit Kats etc.) and this, it seems, is part of the motivation for the rock star approach of hitting the road to offer audiences some detailed insight into the making of the last recorded album by The Beatles: Abbey Road. There is no official release date for volume two at the time of writing. In 2005, he started a three-volume biography of the band which, by his own estimation, will take around 23 years to complete! Volume one of The Beatles: All These Years was called ‘Tune In’ and was published in 2013. One imagines it must rankle a little bit, but Lewisohn has not abandoned writing about those four lads from Liverpool. Kevin Howlett (also a great writer and Fabs researcher) is now the preferred choice when it comes to Beatles audio history, and indeed, he has also contributed significantly to both The White Album and Abbey Road reissues, at Apple/Universal Music’s request. Pepper super deluxe (not including the lyrics at the end) and none of them are written by Lewisohn, which would have been unthinkable if such a project had been conceived in the late 1980s or early 1990s. For example, there are nine sections to the book in the Sgt. In recent times Lewisohn has found himself outside the circle, when it comes to Apple and The Beatles. He was ‘inner circle’ and also worked on projects like Paul McCartney‘s Wingspan book. A Fab Four scholar who was once trusted by Apple/EMI to listen to all the audio tapes a few decades ago and produce authoritative tomes such as The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions and The Complete Beatles Chronicle. Mark Lewisohn has made his name as a Beatles expert.

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