Mark Lewisohn gives us a taste of his new Beatles show - “62 stories from 1962”

Mark Lewisohn, author, old pal of the pod and without question the world’s leading Beatles authority, is back onstage in October. As with his last show in 2019 about the making of Abbey Road, he’ll be using illustrations from the archive he’s amassed over 40 years - unheard tapes, unseen newspaper clippings – to tell 62 two-minute stories about their life in 1962. To add “a touch of drama”, each half of the show will be exactly 62 minutes long. It starts with a tale about the clock he’s holding in this picture.

‘Tune In’, the first instalment of his trilogy, came out in 2013 and ends with the making of their first album and he’s currently immersed in volume two, Turn On, which covers the next four years. This, he barely needs to remind us, is “the best job in the world”. At one point here he delivers a soliloquy about the grim challenges the world’s enduring in 2022 and how the “purely joyous” story of the Beatles is the moral uplift we all need, “the best of humanity”. And talks about the magnetic allure of Beatles landmarks, visiting the Royal Turks Head Hotel in Newcastle recently because She Loves You was composed in one of its upstairs rooms.

And he remembers the first shows he ever saw – T Rex at the Empire Pool, the Greedy Bastards at the Electric Ballroom at which he pogo-ed so energetically he ruptured his Achilles tendon.

We know a ton about the Beatles but came away from his Abbey Road talk in disbelief at the amount we’d learned. See this new show at London’s Bloomsbury Theatre and you’ll no doubt feel the same. It couldn’t be more highly recommended.


The tour website:
https://beatlesevolver.com/

Promo films (tasters of the show):
@marklewisohn-official

website:
https://www.marklewisohn.net

Twitter: @marklewisohn

Instagram: marklewisohn19


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