A Masterclass In Research with Mark Lewisohn

Hello and welcome to the season five finale of Give Me Some Truth. I am your host, Obadiah Jones, and for this final episode of the season I have something special and a bit different for you. The episodes of this podcast are grounded in new details and discoveries that help to unravel fact from fiction in the history of the Beatles. Whether it is my own research or the research of one of my guests that leads us to these discoveries, we keep coming back to this word "research". Now, I am certainly not claiming that I am the only Beatles podcast that does research. Of course not. It wouldn't be true anyway. I think the word "research" gets used to mean different activities, however. So in this episode I am thrilled to welcome Mark Lewisen to the podcast for a masterclass in research. Thank you for joining us, Mark. Pleasure. Pleasure. Thank you for having me. I can think of no better person whose work demonstrates the deepest level of research. In our conversation, Mark talks about his life's work and methodology to give insight into the monumental endeavor he is in the middle of. I assume that for listeners of Give Me Some Truth, Mark Lewisen needs no introduction. Mark has single-handedly contributed more information to our knowledge of the Beatles history and legacy than any other individual. I am talking about facts, connecting events to specific dates, telling us where the group were at a specific time and what they were doing, how this extraordinary history happened. It's not that this information did not exist before, Mark. Instead it is because of his research that the information is now publicly available and widely known. His seminal reference books, The Beatles Live, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, The Complete Beatles Chronicle, and his co-authored The Beatles London are at the top of the list of essential works for every student of The Beatles history. 2013's tune-in gave us the first installment of Mark's definitive history of the group with two more volumes in progress. Mark Lewisen is undisputedly the leading authority on The Beatles and it is the result of decades of his groundbreaking research. Someone writing about The Beatles who reads and cites one of Mark's books is doing research. When I was at university, I had a music history class called Context that taught us to research and write about music in an academic way. From the way that class was taught, I understood that academic research was defined by reading existing literature and using their work to support your own thesis. This is how a lot of people understand research and how a lot of Beatles books are written. The best existing information from the best published books is gathered into a new book. What I want to emphasize before my conversation with Mark is that his research and the research we discuss is about uncovering what is not already known, finding new sources. So to kick off our conversation, I asked Mark to give me his definition of research. I suppose it means digging around until you get in my case to something that I feel I can write or would support my writing. I mean it has different applications depending on what your own product is, but for me, since I'm writing a book or books, it has to be something that enables me to write my books with a bit more clarity. Whatever that might be, I mean, it comes in a infinite number of shapes and sizes, but they all have one thing in common, which is their feeding and end product. And that's my aim always. We often hear terms like primary sources in connection with research. I understand these are crucial to your work interviews, photographs, documents. Anything at all, yeah, primary sources are absolutely vital. Since the subjects I'm writing about, even in its most recent forms, since the end of my third volume is going to be 1970, presently as I speak now it's 55 years ago. And that will only stretch longer as time goes by so there are very few. Not many first-hand witnesses left who can tell a credible story that is absolutely accurate to the moment that it occurred. And therefore any primary source is going to take me back there without the frailty of memory is vital. So I look for anything I can that will be genuine to the moment. And it's amazing how much of it there is and how many years it takes to piece it together. Somebody once said to me what seemed like probably to them a quite an obvious basic question, which was the Beatles story. Let's say in its visible form it's 1962 or three to 1970, which is say eight years or thereabouts. Why is it taking you so much longer than eight years to do it? You know you can spend many days on one day many many days on one day and you do spend many not not consciously but over the fullness of time you realize that you have. Or any one year can take multiple years to actually gather together because you're not just gathering together the single perspective you're gathering many perspectives. Almost infinite number because you go wherever there is something to learn and therefore it can be any number of perspectives and it could be hundreds per year or per moment even. So yes, you really it does take a very long time I wish it only took real time but it doesn't it takes much longer. And just to really differentiate between the kind of research you do and the way that I was taught to research academically using the arguments of scholars to support your own arguments. Yeah, your research is much more about getting to the original information. Yes, I wasn't taught to research and what the way you've described it sounds quite a reasonable way to begin. Because you know you're putting your faith in proven scholars who have been there and done that and set it down. You can challenge it but you can also learn from it. And if you read more than one account you might be able to form questions about conflicting accounts. I suppose that's true for me as well but a lot of what I write has never been written by anybody. Therefore it's it's though there are books that I will rely on. There are plenty that I won't which may be something we can return to later in the conversation but I'm going from material that hasn't really ever been reported by anybody or discovered by anybody either. And it's that process of discovery that takes so long and when people say why is it taking so long well it's the very nature of looking in places where nobody else has looked. It's not a quick exercise but the rewards are fantastic. And what the consequence of all of that is that among many consequences is that you form a distrust of the printed word as it presently exists. The published works that there are on the Beatles with many honorable exceptions but there are plenty of books that I know I must not regard at all and maybe another author wouldn't necessarily know that. One thing is for sure and that is that the research I do is research where nobody else has been and if you think that unlikely being that the Beatles is such a well covered subject. I suppose on the surface it is but in reality you need to have the dedication the devotion the and the inquiry mind to really go looking in places where nobody else has looked and it's amazing what there is still to be found. Which leads perfectly into my next question. I've heard you say that the skill to be a researcher is something you were born with and not something that you learned or not something that you can learn. Can you elaborate about what you mean by that? I think you can learn how to research I don't think it's such a science that if you don't know it then you can't know it. But I think if you've got a natural flare for it then you're going to have as in any subject if you have a natural flare you're going to be above you're going to be better at it than someone who is to whom it doesn't come naturally for whom is a slog. And I just have I may have mentioned this in another interview but I have a set of skills which aren't really very well suited for anything other than what I do. They don't help me to fix my car or put shelves up at home or anything like that but they are very well suited to the job of being a Beatles researcher. I have an innate ability to think of where things might be and to get the door open in however that is achievable to open the door so that I can get inside it. I can be quite persuasive but in a very nice way. I try to make sure that every interaction I have on this project and it's a very long project is a positive one and a very beneficial one both for me and for whoever's helping me I want whoever helps me to be glad that they have. A lot of my time is spend. a proportion of my time is spent maintaining friendly contacts with people who have been very helpful to me in the past because you can't just ditch them when they've served their purpose. That's not a very nice thing to do and I want everyone to be glad that they've helped me and to be comfortable with the way I present what they've told me. So I don't want to change the meaning of anything anybody said. I have no actual agenda to do anything other than it would be truthful to the topic and I think that goes down very well but it's all very labor intensive and I work on a loan on this so I can't just say to a secretary, drop someone online and tell them how pleased I was to see them. I do it myself and that keeps the relationships good but it takes time. You began I think like most people as a fan of the band and the music. Still am, still are. When did that develop from general interest to something you were actively researching trying to find out new information? That would be in about 1979 when Philip Norman who doesn't have a nice word to say for me at all these days but I'll say a few nice words for him in that he was he felt I might be of use to him when it came to the writing of his book that became shout. I don't think it had a title yet and he came to me I think to mention me in his book he wanted to find out about a young fan I was 21 at the time but I think I remember I was still living with my mom and dad and my record collection and my Beatles collection was up in my bedroom like it is when you live at home and I took him out there and showed him my collection of boot legs and things like that such as it was at that time and I think I must have mentioned that there were certain elements of the Beatles history which when they were told in different books had were always had conflicting information and I offered to do some research for him or he asked me to do some research for him whatever it was at the end of that visit I had a small commission from him to find out some information that would help to make sure that he got his book better informed and one of them was well it's two big three big ones and they all sent me off on different paths one was to establish the date that Leonard met McCartney second one was to establish the dates of the Beatles tour of Scotland with Johnny Gentle and the third was to find out when it was that the Beatles the Beatles had appeared on BBC Radio with the Northern dance orchestra when Brian Epstein arranged for the fans to go to Manchester to the studio in a coach a rented coach and there was a kerfuffle afterwards and I think Pete got left behind because he was swarmed by goal fans and he thought that was June 1962 but when exactly was it so I set out to find those things for him and I answered the questions that he had by just following my nose really I just as I said I had an intuitive knowledge of how to do research and profound thought I had when doing the research in the library and finding for example the date the Leonard met McCartney which was July 657 my immediate thinking and I was 21 at the time was why hadn't other authors found this first because Phillips was not going to be the first book on the Beatles I mean it was already quite a few although a minimal number now dwarfed by what we have today but then it already was quite a few and I remember thinking other authors should have been here too why weren't they here and it was the first realization I had they're not every author puts every ounce of effort into their books they take shortcuts and the reader may not ever know it and that was a disappointment to me but obviously left the field wide open for me to do the job properly because I knew that if I researched the Beatles properly I would be pretty much on Virgin territory and so and the BB the Beatles at the BBC thing I was actually working in the BBC at the time as a clerk and it was pretty easy for me because I think on day one of my BBC career when I was 16 years old I'd already ascertain that there were information departments within their corporation and I knew how to use them so none of this was particularly a challenge but it was all quite long-winded because I decided to find every live engagement the Beatles had ever done and every live broadcast session that they'd ever done and that took a while but it was there to be found and I just went and found it because I was the first person to do it it kind of set something of a benchmark for how the Beatles could be researched it's always not all but significant quantity of Beatles information is now on the internet not all of it right but huge amount is it out there you can find almost anything now the click of a mouse or the press of a button I'm taking the listener here back to a time when the internet didn't exist and when this simply wasn't known you can now find out when the Beatles played in Carlisle and when they played in Lewishham and when they played in San Diego wherever San Francisco Madrid but it took a long time to find that out in the moment it was writing letters to people and making long distance funcals and all of that and I'm very glad to have been the one who did it and it's I'm glad that it's available so easily now but on the other hand it's just a little bit of me that thinks if only you knew how hard it was to find this but that's the thing about research once you found it it's for other people to share and I do do everything I do for sharing I don't keep anything you know I don't hold back a gem of information so that I'm the only one who's got it it is all for sharing and and my my firm belief is that the more you know about the Beatles story the more you're going to be an absolute awe of it and I am constantly yeah you alluded there to the Beatles Live which is your first book yes that took you seven years to research yeah it came out in 86 I'd started it those little bits of help for Philip Norman in 79 yeah and so you started it with the Johnny Gentle dates presumably started finding the quarry men at the Waltson Church Fade in 57 although there wasn't known to be 57 but I found that it was and then plugging every gap that I could between there and kind of stick park and I did pretty well but not perfectly and I knew that in the moment because whenever you compile any kind of huge catalog of something there will be things that escape your attention things that may only come to light because you've done that pioneering work someone else would get in touch and say oh there's another one that isn't in your book for whatever reason it might be so I have a few more now than I did then that information got updated in my book the complete Beatles Chronicle but the live book is a I can't look at it anymore because it's too embarrassing but the information in it is it was a good start yeah I mean it's pretty thorough even for performances that you didn't have a specific date for you included ones that were rumored to have happened yeah I had two sections one was engagements played other engagements played and engagements not played where I would hear of them playing somewhere but I couldn't find the date so I would narrow it down as best I could and I could and then include it in a section at the end and then there was engagements not played where they had either been advertised for something that didn't eventually happen or they would be I would receive word that they were meant to be doing such and such a thing but it never happened because of X reason so I had those in a separate section in the book but even then in nineteen I mean I was researching that book between 79 and 85 and even then only 20 years 20 plus years after the events there was already a lot of misinformation that I was being told that I knew I couldn't believe it would tell me oh yes they came here in the January 1963 and it was my idea that they called themselves Beatles with an A and I possibly in those very early days I might have tried to contradict that person on the phone in a phone call say if we were having one these days I just don't say anything you let people think what they need to think but there's no point in disabusing them of their of their notion I had a similar experience when I met a woman from Australia who saw them on the 64 tour and she was convinced that they played yesterday during that tour I did actually try to correct her but she wasn't too happy about it I've discovered that people do not like I mean it's hardly a great discovery is it people don't like incorrect it um especially if it's something that they might have told them repeated times because the thing about the Beatles is that um their impact on mankind has been so great that anyone who had any kind of brush with them any kind of an association with them will have found themselves talking about it a great many times over the years with some exceptions I have actually found people who have never talked about it the stories of the freshest of all but inevitably with the constant retelling things will begin to deviate from the truth of the moment and to the point where you know she heard yesterday in 1964 when it hadn't been written yet at least not as yesterday so maybe now would be a good time to talk about your interviewing methods. When you go into an interview with someone who has witnessed this history, are you going in with an idea of the sort of answer you want to get out of them or are you trying to immerse them in the period that they lived and see what comes out of it? Well, it's certainly the latter, but I mean, going into something with something is immediately I feel the wrong attitude anyway. In that, I learned long ago as an interviewer, that if you in any way narrow the subject matter for your interview E, you may get only narrow answers. So you don't want to set down any kind of parameters to what they might say, because they might well come to mention something that you wouldn't have dreamed of thought, you know, thinking to ask. So it's easier just to let it be and find out what they want to say. But inevitably, of course, you do wish to get from them the things that you know they were present at. So I don't do this so much now because the years have passed, but 20, 25 years ago when I was researching this project, I've been on it that long already. I would sit down with people and I would dress the area if we were sitting at a table, I would put things out on the table that were pertinent to not only their association with the Beatles, but the Beatles at that time or the scene that they were witness to at that time, if they'd say it was someone who used to go to the dance halls in Liverpool. So I put out photos and flyers and posters and tickets and anything like that, not even at things, not just at things they were present at, but other things generally. And it never failed to be a brilliantly rewarding method of interviewing people because you would get what you would going to get from them anyway, but you get it with an extra dimension of colour and immediacy because they've been transported back. They're not merely remembering something that happened 40, 50 years ago. They're actually in a sense because of what's in front of them. They're kind of there again, seeing people they used to know, seeing clothes that used to be worn and so on. And quite often you get very good things from it that you wouldn't have dreamed to ask. So that is a very good method and I would encourage anybody interviewing on any subject to do that as much as possible. But these days there aren't that many first-hand witnesses left. And also now typically one will interview by Zoom or something like that and it's not so easy to have that direct one to one as you can when you're sitting over a cup of tea with someone. But generally that is the best way of doing it and it has produced spectacularly good results. So I've done over 600 interviews for this trilogy now, which is madness really. But my wisdom in doing a lot of the volume two and three interviews early has paid dividends because now so many of the people I've interviewed have passed away since I saw them. And if I hadn't got to them we would never have their story and their stories are rich. You have to take my word for that at the moment but it's coming. Well we know how good they are in tune in. Yeah exactly, it's the same kind of richness as that for all three volumes. But if I'd saved them up until say I'm not doing such and such a person until volume three, I'd be missing a lot because even if they're still alive the memories are fading. We're talking about first-hand witnesses 75 or more. Definitely. And is that 600 unique interviewees or 600 separate interviews some multiple times with the same person? No, 600 different people. Oh wow. Some of whom have been interviewed before of course, but not in the way that I've interviewed them. I think Billy Hatton of the foremost said to me, said to Spencer Lee once, Mark Rosen's just interviewed me for four bloody hours. But I really had him talking about the names years. Not only the Liverpool years, but also the names years what it was like to be an act on Brian Epstein's management books and all of that. And he was staggered by how much he remembered because it was all the stuff he usually said plus a whole lot more. And ultimately the end of the day I might use about 5% of that. But all the interviews I've done are in my archive and my archive is will be available for everybody in the future. So other people can draw on the same interviews and get different things. If we go back to the Beatles live for a second, I thought it'd be fun if you could walk a step by step through how you arrived at a specific date. So how about the Nirk twins in Caversham? Oh yeah. Well, your question is something right there, the Nirk twins in Caversham. I did not know about Caversham. There were a few books on the Beatles by the late 1970s. I was intent on finding out where they had played when they had played and what the story was. I remember there was one 1960s American paperback that had them playing in not redding because it often got reported as a redding which is very close to Caversham. Bigger than Caversham and therefore Caversham is almost a satellite of redding. But it actually had it as bending. Slightly deaf writer heard that somewhere and wrote it as bending. This is an example of how things get written without if you're not bothering to check your facts. I can't do that. I'm genetically in disposed to writing about something that I haven't checked. So how would I find out? Well, fantastically in 1981, just at the time when I was looking for the knowledge and not really knowing how to begin. I remember going to the British Library, the newspaper library, looking at the redding evening post, which is the nightly newspaper for redding. I think published six days a week. I didn't know when, you know, was in 1958, was it '51, was it '60? I mean, would it have been mentioned in the paper anyway? No reason why it would have been mentioned in the paper. Even events that were relatively public might not get a mention, let alone something as obscure as this. I mean, Paul McCartney in 1958, let's say he would have been '16. Or maybe not even '16. But Mike McCartney in 1981 published his first book called Thank You very Much. I think it was called The Max in America. And he had been a collector of ephemera, thankfully, and it kept a lot of it. And reproduced facsimile in that book, a postcard sent to him by Paul, his brother Paul. From, I think it said 'Cavisham' or no, he might have just, he mentioned the note to him. I'm trying to remember it now. He mentioned we're playing on Saturday in the bar, Build as the Note Twins. And it mentioned Mike and Bet. And I knew that that meant Mike and Bet Robbins. Bet Robbins is Paul's cousin, but actually she was kind of like an anti-figure. She was an anti-age but a cousin, but an older generation. And she was married to a man called Mike Robbins, who had been a Butlin's Red Code. And I think she had been a Red Code as well. So they were in entertainment. And it was evident that this pub that they were playing in was owned by Mike and Bet Robbins, or they were the tenants of it. So the first thing I did was call Mike McCartney. I got his number. And I called him up and I begged him to get out the postcard from his box, assuming he had been, it had been returned by the publisher. Because I couldn't make out the postmark in the book. The reproduction was not good enough, but maybe the postmark might be more visible on the original item. And he took some persuasion. He really didn't want to be bothered to do it. I think I had to call him two or three times. I made a little bit of a nuisance of myself, just hassling him. Have you looked here? I'll give him another week. Then I'll call again. I'm sorry. Is any going to take you many? But if you could please. And he then went and did it. And he said you read the postmark allowed to me. And I could see that it was the Easter school holiday of 1960. Then I phoned Mike and Bet Robbins. And I spoke to Mike Robbins long dead now, but still alive in 1983. And I said, were you running a pub in the Kavisham area or the Reading area in 1960? And he said yes, the fox and the hounds on Gospruck Road. So suddenly, I had a venue for it. I had the story for it that we're playing on the Saturday night. I got, I spoke to Mike about it, Mike Robbins, he remembered it. Played the Saturday evening in the tap room sitting on high bar stores. Did the world is waiting for the sunrise at his request. Then I think that they played on the Sunday as well Sunday lunchtime drinking session, which was 12 till 2 in those days. And that was it. I had the date. I had the place. I had the story. And suddenly, it all comes together. And that was how it was done. Ever since then, Mike McCartney has always remembered me as the guy who made a bit of a nuisance of myself in making him go and fish out that postcard. I've stood with him at parties when he's told other people thinking it's a witty story to tell. other people are that bothered about it. But I remember him telling Neil aspirinal once, you know what this guy did, you know this guy made me get out that poster. But you know, that's what you have to do. But you know, now it's, it's got a blue plaque outside it now, that pub unveiled by Kate Robbins, who was the perfect person to do it, Mike and Betts daughter. So can I go there as well from time to time? I was there not so long ago. And it's just amazing to think that Lenin and McKinney paused till it's school. You know, it's only on school and the job was at art school. They're on school holidays and they've come down. They've hitchhiked down to Reading, down to Caversham and stayed there a few days. Fantastic story. I visited the pub last year after a day at the BBC written archives. Do you know how much the Fox and Hounds has changed since John and Paul were there? Oh, the Fox and Hounds has changed about three times in the years I've been going to. I mean, I first went there in about, oh, 1986, seven, something like that. And it was already no longer then that as it had been in the 60s or 1960s, which is essentially the 50s. And then it changed and changed again. I did, on one occasion, I was there. It was having another refurb and there was a skip at the back where they'd thrown a load of old pub fittings. And I took a bar stool from the skip because it was obviously being thrown away. And I've kept it, which I still have. But I don't think it's the one that Lenin and McKinney used sadly. But you know, I just did it because it was there bigging to be taken. But no, it's had many refurb sins. And when I was there in May, I think it was, it had changed again. Inside the pub, you would never know that there was, it had any connection, but outside is the plaque, which is great. It strikes me that another gift you have is your ability to recall information off the top of your head. Is that another skill that feeds into your work? Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, I'm getting on. We're all getting older. And I have friends who are, or I know people who are beginning to lose their memory. And it's a fear of mine that it's going to happen at some point. It may sound like a joke and perhaps it is, but it could well be that the last thing that I forget is the Beatles stuff, because it's so ingrained. And it's so pertinent to what I do. If I do start to lose my memory, it's going to have a significant impact if I haven't finished my trilogy yet, because it's vital that I am able to determine the fact from fiction. And it's vital that I have the recognisation of the content as to how to use it. And if any of that starts to weaken, it'll weaken the entire thing. But it's far so good. Yeah. Yes, good. All that reference that you're talking about, that's all in your head. Yeah. The ability to fact check something, bounce it off, bullshit, test it. Yes. Yes. That is all in my head. It's not to say I don't have to look things up every once in a while for a reason or another. And I'm not trying to say it's 100% of the time that it's like that, but significantly so yeah, it is. It makes me think about when you won the Beatles Brain of Britain title at the first London convention. Yeah. Obviously you had read as much as you could about them in magazines and newspapers and books. But it seems like the information that you won with was very specific dates and things that the average fan would not have necessarily known off the top of their heads. No, no. I was fortunate in that the way that quiz was structured, it was a two day convention Saturday and Sunday. The quiz final was on the Sunday. But if you wish to enter, you could pick up a form and fill out 20 answers to 20 questions on the Saturday and then hand it in on the Sunday morning. Well, I recognised from the questions that one or two books in particular had been used to frame the questions. And I had those books. So I knew the answers. I think you had to hand it in on the Saturday. You couldn't take it home. But nonetheless, it was handy for me that I realised what well they were drawing from and then answered them. Because I was so engrossed in those books myself. I found a newspaper article about your win and it mentioned that two of your correct answers were the date of John and Cynthia's wedding. Yeah. And the announcement date for the awarding of the MBEs. Right. Yeah. Easy peasy, aren't they? Well, yeah, but still impressive. I assume both were from 100 Davies biography. I think the MBE date was from the Roy Car and Sony title. For me, I got it from the Roy Car and Sony title book because they reproduced full page the front, the front page of that day's daily mirror during the 12th 1965. And that just had gone into my head. And what was the other one? John and Cynthia's wedding. All was 2362. That may have been from Hans's book. Yeah. But I have a retensive memory for things that interest me and otherwise I let things go. I don't retain everything I ever know. Just the things pertinent to the Beatles. Yeah. So far, we have been talking about research defined very specific information, like a date for a concert. Yeah. But another part of your research is the context that all this happened in. Yes. When did you, I guess, evolve from a researcher into a historian? It's a funny thing, actually, because I never quite knew what to call myself a Beatles expert or a Beatles author. And I was always, I've always had that Englishness of being uncomfortable with an overglossy adjective. I kind of shrivel from praise, unless it's deserved. But someone who doesn't know me calls me this and the other, then I'm a bit embarrassed about it. But at some point during the writing of Tune in, I either got called or I settled on Beatles' historian, but I was a bit embarrassed about it. I was the only one around who called myself that. And I was a bit embarrassed. But now there's loads of us. It loads and loads and loads of Beatles historians now. Self-professed. Yeah. Which I suppose I am as well, although it's stuck and is what people call me. I do still get embarrassed about being called a historian, because I do think generally speaking a historian has a much broader palette to work from the mind. Although to get to the nub of your question, since I am now a Beatles historian, I realize that you can't only tell their story as if they exist in isolation, because context is a vital part of everything that is pertinent to the Beatles. And so in order to tell that context really thoroughly and to get it right, I've had to dig very deep into a whole range of other subjects that are only tangentially connected to the Beatles. And I suppose in a sense that does now make me a proper historian, because I'm not, I can't just tell the Beatles story. They didn't exist in a vacuum. I've said that many times, but it's so true. Apart from anything else, if you don't show what the world was like when they enter the mass consciousness, say the beginning of 1963 in the UK. And then beyond Britain in other countries as well, then you can't gauge the true impact of the changes that they made. You have to see how things were in order to understand how they were changed. And then at the end of it, you'll see a huge difference between life as it's lived in 1969 and 1970. A life as it was at the beginning of that decade. And that change is not entirely due to the Beatles, but it is significantly due. And there's certainly an accelerant in so many things that you wouldn't necessarily associate them with. So now I feel the need to tell all of that. In order to show that, you know, they weren't just a pop group who had a few hits, but the magnitude of their breakthrough and their impact was seismic. Hard in 2025 to come up with an adjective that isn't overused. But all the ones that are trotted out on a daily basis, all this iconic nonsense, applies really only to them and not to many others. Which brings us to the current project all these years. Yeah. When you began this project, you put out a public plea for people to come forward with any information they think might be helpful or that you hadn't heard and for specific people to get in touch with you. Did useful information come out of this plea? Yes. The specific names, I ran a letter in British weekly newspaper called The Stage, where there were lots of people associated in somewhere rather with show business, with performing either on the stage or behind the scenes, who I'm very, very good at finding people and seldom defeated. But there were people who I was having great difficulty finding and I just thought, well, I'll put their names in the stage. And I think I got about three or four answers from that, which was not a bad average. But in the book, in tune in, actually have an appeal at the end of the book for anyone either who was a first-hand witness to something to an event to a moment to come forward or anyone who has either through inheritance or through collecting anyone who has an item that embodies information a document in particular a letter photograph or recording that they think is not in general circulation and they could please let me know what it is and I've had a huge take up from that hundreds of very valuable responses a friend of mine an American writer who wouldn't have done such a thing himself said to me you don't want to do that because you get all sorts of loonies you know getting in touch with you wasting your time or telling you things that you already know but that's that there's been a little bit at that you know a dribble of that but there's been a lot of invaluable things that I mean since since I've made it my my business all those years ago to find out every reasonably salient thing about the Beatles that there is to know even if I don't use it I'd like to know it know what it is I'm not using as well as what I am using it was incredibly useful to draw in things that I would never have found because I don't know who those people are and they're all over the world as well and I've had great responses from either first-hand witnesses to hanging outside their houses or outside their offices or people who have ended up with pieces of paper that that handed down by their grandparents or something like that not theirs but my grandmother gave me this and you know fantastic just as one still learns from the things that come up through auction sites and that's exploded in recent years with the internet I mean it used to be used to be Sotheby's Christie's Phillips and Bonham's and those kind of companies that that had auctions and now there are lots of internet auction companies and of course there's eBay and I try to keep on top of all of that which is quite time consuming but it's amazing what turns up literally one off things you know they just come and go and you grab it while it's available it's fantastic how these things come up and the obsession is always with the autograph and and I've said this before but it's the least interesting thing to me I don't care too hoots about the autograph what else is on that piece of paper that I can learn from that's the key thing and you know you a piece of paper here and a piece of paper there and one here one there and suddenly you've got things that plug in together they know that they don't exist in the same place literally other than if you've grabbed the images of them they exist on your computer and you file them in such a way they slot together they tell a story that you wouldn't know without those constituent parts it's all brilliant um detective work that and the internet obviously brings it to you you've still got to you know it's not gonna well yeah actually you can even come straight to your inbox can't it but but generally speaking you've got to go and look at some sites to find it but yeah it's incredible you have to keep your antenna attuned yeah yeah and that's another another thing um the marks my workout different from other authors it is that um I've heard it said by other writers you know I've got enough now don't need anymore I've got enough I've got enough to tell us so I will I had for this trilogy I had enough about 20 years ago but if I'd drawn the line then there would be huge amounts that I would have missed of really cracking stuff so there is no enough you know um obviously you as a professional writer you have to have a recognition of when the moment it comes to say I'm gonna use what I've got but even then during the writing process you have to keep your eyes open when I was doing the Beatles Live um I was trying very hard to find every example of the date sheets that Brian Epstein used to give them on a weekly basis way or playing in the coming seven days and then beyond that a list of where you might be playing it or will you will be playing in the next two months say there was an incomplete collection of them I there were fragments of them I had one here and I had one there but they were weekly and so in theory they're probably a hundred that I didn't have and I had pretty much put the Beatles Live to bed when um hunter Davis published an updated edition of his biography and he had one in there that I hadn't seen before and it told me about three dates that I didn't even know about and I got them in at proof stage into that book but it was a lesson first of all it was a lesson and you've never got everything but set which I knew anyway but secondly it was don't be shy to ask people what they've got I hadn't thought to ask him what he had I assume that what he had was what he put in the first book I didn't realize he would have more now I would not leave that to chance I would go there and I have in Hunters case been there and seeing everything he's got yeah where would those sort of items exist other than in the personal collections of the surviving members they I mean one exists the one came up about five years ago when we know the story of Neil Aspen or Falling Hill in January 63 when the Beatles had to go to London they got Mal Evans to drive them down this heroic epic journey um that uh indeed them to Mal but Neil continued to be ill so in fact they had other deputies in the in the days that followed and one of them had kept I think he was a guy used to drive Jerry in the pacemakers around they just who else can we find now I've had a job so it couldn't be him every day um and and this other this other road a part-time road manager had kept a piece of paper um a guy called Judd Lando is in a bank with the hideaways for some reason or rather he ended up with one which he's let me see um a couple have come up through auction houses eventually I got to see Paul's collection but Paul's own collection is sporadic he has more of the weekly account statements than he has the date sheets but the account statements are where they've paid in the last seven days so still incredibly valuable but mostly from a period that I know about but now I know about how much they were paid and so on the very first time I met Neil Aspen or was me asking him have you got any of these sheets thinking well he's the roadie he would have kept them but he hadn't kept any at all so you know I still only have a patchy collection of those and I dream of having all of them and there will be things on there that I don't know anything about you know you have to accept that but you can't wait for them you you've got you've got to go to press at some point you know so how do you make that call when can you say okay research stages over and I need to start writing yeah well um as I just said it's never over but you have to relegate it to second place or keep it bubbling along but don't make it your priority I've had many years in which research was the sole priority and it's no longer that but I haven't closed the door on anything in my case it's um it's the obviously there's a demand this book is published because the readers are waiting for it the publishers are waiting for it and my own clock is ticking I've got to get on with it understandably so there are people who can't fathom wise taking so long um but I would just suggest that if you look at tune in you'll get some sense of why it's taking so long and this book is much more complicated than x1 volume 2 much more complicated than tune in and yet it can't be a complicated read it's got to be that same easy read that got to be that same page turning compulsion so that that's a harder task and uh which is why it's taking a long time but you know I've researched it's definitely secondary now um I've heard you compare the writing of these books and researching the history as a million piece puzzle every little bit of information is another piece you fit in do you ever feel that there's going to be a point where we step back to look at the full picture and there are unfillable holes yes yes you won't necessarily see them I don't I don't think any holes are going to be obvious to readers of this book because it's going to be so full of stuff no one's going to notice what isn't there but I might draw attention to things that aren't there I'm quite happy to do that I'm not precious about it and thinking I'll obscure the fact that I don't know this bit because that is I don't need to go in for deception like that um in fact it would be better it will be better if I if I don't have deception of any kind like that because if the if the holes are visible and then people might come along with something and fill them that belongs there um so the well writing and now is is to be honest and um if I've got a hole it's it's it's there I don't know why this happened but something happened or there's the conflict the possibility of conflicting accounts where you don't actually know you can't be certain what happens so and this occurred a few times in tune in as well where I just set down two or three accounts and said it could be this and it could be this and it could be this and and people might find a thread through them that so they think is right but I mean if there is a thread that I think is right I'll probably thread it myself but um if I'm not sure I'm not going to guess it. So the That's the process really. - I wanted to ask you about another specific example about that specifically. - Yeah. - In tune in, I believe you left out how Mona Bess came to purchase eight Hayman's green. - Yeah. - The building that eventually housed the Casbah. - Yes. - Can you talk about why? - Why I didn't mention it. Yeah, I did have some things in there that the best family don't usually say like, best is not actually Pete's surname, that it's Scanlan's, which was an interesting thing. And that the three sons each had a different father. You know, things that they don't normally talk about. My aim is to tell the truth as best I know it. I wasn't present at these events. So I can't be certain of, unless it's really research properly, I can't necessarily be certain of it. But I also have a sense of when things may not be right. And there were some things about that is that story that the best family tells the three devoted sons tell of their mother that she put on a bet on Never Say Die in the 1954 Derby. And it won it, I think 33 to one was it. Written by a young up and coming, Jockey called Leicester Pickard, who went on to become the British horse racing Jockey for the next two or three decades. I've not, that's a story they like to tell, but I've never felt convinced of it. And I didn't want to put it in the book if I wasn't certain about it. And you can't ask the best because they fall behind the story. It is their story. They're not going to admit that it isn't right or that they may, it may be prone to some exaggeration. There was enough about it that concerned me. And at the end of the day, I wasn't certain that how she acquired the house was necessarily that relevant to the fact that five years later, John Paul and George are playing in a cellar in that house. What was relevant that Never Get's mentioned is the fact that there was already a teenager's club on the same street. And that basically she lifted the idea from a place called Lowlands, where Pete used to go to Lowlands. I think he may have been a member there. George had played at Lowlands. George had played on the Havens Green before the Caspar was ever open, which they never mentioned. That was much more interesting to me because Lowlands was a community association, not a profit thing. And a couple of people told me that Mona Best said to I think the musicians and maybe even some of the members, if you go to Lowlands, I won't let you into my club. So she was pretty forceful about it. She was a forceful woman, Mona Best. I mean, I had personal experience of her. I liked meeting her, but I had the measure of her in that she was very dominating, very powerful woman. You didn't mess with her at all. And she kind of ruled the roots in every sense and led the lives of all the people who fell under her spell. So I was interested in telling the Mona Best story, which I did, but I wasn't certain that I was convinced of the never say die thing. If a person pawns all their jewelry collection, which is an incredible thing to do, and puts it on an outsider in a horse race, an outsider, is it likely that they are not going to bet again for the next several years? Because though the myth is that she bought the house with the money, gambled in 1954, they actually didn't move into that house until '58, '59, because it shows as another occupant on the electoral register, and then it shows empty. And I think they finally appeared on it in the '59, '60 register. So I was wondering about, would you do that if you were a gambler, a high stakes gambler at that, would you never bet again with the winnings? It's unlikely. So there was sufficient doubt there in my mind just to think, oh, you know, if I put it in and rule it out, that's a bit hard. So I just thought I wouldn't put it in, left it out. - One of my listeners actually suggested that as the topic for an episode, and so I looked into it a bit. I noticed that in Pete Best's first book, Beetle, - Yeah. - That story is not told. - Good observation. - But then it is told in the later book that Pete and Rogue published together. - What about the one in between the one he did with Bill Harry, is it in that one? - Oh, I don't know, I'd have to check. - Yeah, I'll have to check, yeah. I quickly wanna interrupt to say that I did check Pete Best's second book, The Best Years of the Beetles, and then never say die story does not appear there either. Since it is such an incredible story, why did it only show up in the third book? - Beware of things that crop up in the third book. The most egregious example of which is Pauline Sutcliffe, who wrote three books about her brother. And only in the third one did she mention that John Lennon had kicked Stewart in the head and possibly caused the injury that led to the brain hemorrhage that led to his death. Only in the third book, not in the first book, not in the second book. And between the second and third books, I interviewed her together with Kevin Howlett of the BBC. We went to her house together and we interviewed her. And we put it to her that Albert Goldman had suggested that John Lennon kicked Stewart. And she would not have a bar of it. She thought it was the most outrageous complaint, not a scent of evidence, nothing at all to support it, how dare he, and then she writes it in her book. And unfortunately, with the internet being what it is, it's out there now. And Julia Baird's third book, the same. Beware third books. I don't mean my volume three. People who returns were subject more than once. - Right. - You alluded to this before, but I want to ask how technology has helped or hindered your process. Like you said, the internet is full of information, but it's not all correct information. And pretty much all the information that is there is information that has been presented in some form before. So you're not finding those nuggets that nobody has ever seen before. - No. Well, there's no way that you can exist in 20 to 25 as a writer and not use the internet as a tool. It's how you use it, that's the key thing. The, your ability to get wildly wrong information is there and the ability to find just the thing you're looking for is there as well. I don't know how I would describe the way I use it. I probably used it to support my research rather than to go discovering things. And a little bit like I mentioned earlier about, you know, how hard things were to find and now you can get them immediately, I'd spent many years on all my books, including The Trilogy in newspaper libraries. And I would go to other countries to look at their newspapers if it wasn't easy to do so within the UK. Now a lot of that is online and it's word searchable. And I, you know, had no facility for word searching so I would miss things, you know, you're not always going to find a word buried on a page. But I still maintain that, while word searching has its, had an enormous value and I found great things using internet newspaper archives, specific searches that you go and do and you find the very thing you're looking for. You still can't be actually looking at every page, including those that don't have anything for you because it's in doing so that you get the context. And the context is key to what I'm doing as well as the nugget itself. So I'm very happy that I started this project in the days of turning pages in libraries, even if now a lot of that is done online. Other, I mean, Wikipedia is a phenomenal resource, you know, for, it's not that everything in it is to be trusted but I think it's a superb, a superb service. My own entry is not very good and I've been frustrated in my attempts to improve it but I'm assuming that much of what I find there is going to be right or it's going to be sourced to something that I can go and check myself. And obviously Googling and pictures, yeah, I mean, I use it a lot. I mean, it's just whatever I'm doing, it's a constant answer to a question. But by no means is it everything. And anyone who writes their book solely on what they find on the internet can't possibly have anything new in it because it by very definition of it being online, and it's there already, someone's found it and put it up there. But it's worth saying that keyword searches are far from perfect. The text from the newspapers has been manually entered from the original print into the computer. - Yeah. - So it doesn't always catch everything. - Absolutely right. I mean, yes, yes, because there are things I know that exist in newspapers that aren't found by searches because the word was smudged or something in its original form, in the ink form. But, you know, it's a great value. But I'm still, you know, I'm old enough now to be quite old fashioned in the way that I work. And I still like physical materials. I like to be handling photographs and pieces of paper not just be working digitally. - Are there people, friends or mentors who influence the way you work, your research methods? I guess I'm thinking of people like Pete Shroiders or Richard Buskin. Yes, of course there are and there's a lot of very good Beatles writers now who are doing good work and they're doing it from a foreign country, you know, not the country where things actually originated. Adrian Sinclair, he's a Yorkshireman, he's an English but you know, he's a Macartney research for the Macartney legacy books is extremely good. I go back to Harry Castleman and Wally Padrajik whose first book the Beatles altogether now, followed by the Beatles again and then the end of the Beatles through a trilogy really. They were pioneering books in their day and altogether now is about to celebrate or is celebrating is 50th anniversary. That was the book or one of the books that the quiz master used in that 1976 quiz that enabled me to get the answers right because I consumed their book. They showed me how in a Beatles world information could be interesting. It's essentially a discography but they come at it's from so many different angles many more have now been developed but they were the pioneers of it and so that made a big impact on me. Pete Shroyd is my friend in the Netherlands in Amsterdam, he educated me into how to look at a photograph and find out some information that isn't necessarily obvious but if you keep looking at it you will see more. Right in the background there might be a newspaper folded up in the corner of the room and if you have a good enough resolution of the print or whatever you can go in with a magnifying glass and see what newspaper that is. Then go to the library and find that newspaper and then you'll know it was either that day or very soon after that the picture was taken. I've been doing that for years now but it was Pete who educated me. This can't be the same day because he's got a different tie on you know that kind of just so what that education was was there's more there's more to it that meets the eye you keep looking and you might see more and that's a good generalization in terms of finding information. And in America now I mean this Bruce Spiser he does his all sorts of books books on the record labels it goes very deep he's a typical of the example now people who drill very deep within one topic the people's on VJ records which I think was Bruce's first book. I mean VJ have been a footnote really and and he made a whole book out of it and yeah you've got to really be into the Beatles to like that book but boy boy the information within that book is fantastic. And I just take from it the bits I need but I know that he's done the job because he used files and so on so and there are lots of people around now like that who doing doing really good work. And no doubt you one day will do something. I'm sure I'm faith in you that you're going to do something like that thank you. Well to wrap it up we obviously have volumes two and three of all these years to look forward to when you're finished I trust that we will have a pretty solid picture of the history and we'll also have your archive which is incredibly rich and I'm sure has loads of information that will not end up in these books. What do you see as the future of Beatles research? Well my plan is to make my archive fully available to anyone who has any need to look something up and in its core that is about the Beatles but beyond the Beatles in the research of this trilogy I have swept up huge amounts of information. So I would say anybody writing anything about post war life particularly in Britain but in many other countries as well would find something of that they're looking for in my archive. Because of the you know the kind of corollary information that I picked up. But also there's the information I'm not using or I'm using the headline of something and they can someone could go much much deeper on it I want students to use it I want other writers to use it. It is I'm sure the greatest repository of Beatles information that exists anywhere and by that I mean photographs and recordings and you know every anything that you can learn something from. But also the books themselves I very much someone said to me you know this is the last word on the Beatles isn't it and I bloody hope not. Because I think that people might be inspired by this book just to follow to drill down on any one thing that I'm writing about and open it up further and wider. So and I think that's a very real possibility there is the Beatles is a very human story and the next two books have many many many hundreds are really touching human stories which in themselves any one of them could be a play or poem or an art piece or something like that some creative spur could be had from seeing the beauty within what I'm writing now. So I'm hoping that that appreciation of the Beatles just kind of opens like a flower and the people find yet more ways to enjoy them and the story. Well that is an excellent way to end thank you very much for your time Mark thank you thank you very much. And I think I've told you this before but it was reading tune in that set me down the research path that has resulted in this podcast so it is inspiring thank you. It's a pleasure is lovely to hear that it really is I mean we will have our influences and you know it's good to leave an imprint like that so I'm very glad to hear that thank you. And there you go a master class in the research process with Mark Lewis and I always enjoy listening to Mark talk both about the Beatles and himself and of course it was nice to hear him say he has faith in me. When I started the podcast Mark emailed to say he listened to the episode about Ringo in Sardinia and that my findings and conclusions matched his own on that particular subject. I honestly don't know if he has listened to any other episodes so I don't know if he is completely aware of all the good work that is being done. Time will tell if the conclusions he reaches for his books support my findings or prove them wrong. I really believe that we are both working toward the same goal all we want is the truth. Thanks for listening that is a wrap on season five. If you want to send me a comment a question or a suggestion for a future episode I am on Facebook Instagram X and blue sky at Gibby some truth pod or you can email give me some truth pod at gmail.com Until next time bye for now. [Music]