Even before the Beatles hit the big time, a myth was created. This version of the Beatles legend smoothed the rough edges and filled in the fault lines, and for more than forty years this manicured version of the Beatles story has sustained as truth - until now.

The product of almost a decade of research, hundreds of unprecedented interviews, and the discovery of scores of never-before-revealed documents, Bob Spitz's The Beatles is the biography fans have been waiting for - a vast, complete account as brilliant and joyous and revelatory as a Beatles record itself. Spitz begins in Liverpool, a hard city knocked on its heels. In the housing projects and school playgrounds, four boys would discover themselves - and via late-night radio broadcasts, a new form of music called rock 'n roll.

Never before has a biography of musicians been so immersive and textured. Spitz takes us down Penny Lane and to Strawberry Field (John later added the s), to Hamburg, Germany, where - amid the squalor and the violence and the pep pills-the Beatles truly became the Beatles. We are there in the McCartney living room when Paul and John learn to write songs together; in the heat of Liverpool's Cavern Club, where jazz has been the norm before the Beatles show up; backstage the night Ringo takes over on drums; in seedy German strip clubs where George lies about his age so the band can perform; on the lonely tours through frigid Scottish towns before the breakthrough; at Abbey Road studios, where a young producer named George Martin takes them under his wing; at the Ed Sullivan Show as America discovers the joy and the madness; and onward and upward: up the charts, from Shea to San Francisco, through the London night, on to India, through marmalade skies, across the universe - all the way to a rooftop concert and one last moment of laughter and music.

It is all here, raw and right: the highs and the lows, the love and the rivalry, the awe and the jealousy, the drugs, the tears, the thrill, the magic never again to be repeated. Open this book and begin to read - Bob Spitz's masterpiece is, at long last, the biography the Beatles deserve.

Prologue 3

MERCY

1. A Proper Upbringing 15

2. The Messiah Arrives 34

3. Muscle and Sinew 47

4. The Showman 68

5. A Simple Twist of Fete 93

6. The Missing Links 115

7. A Good Little Sideshow 129

8. The College Band 141

9. Chalk and Cheese 151

10. Moondogs and Englishmen 160

11. Hit the Road: Jac 175

12. Baptism by Fire 201

13. A Revelation to Behold 232

14. Mr. X 252

15. A Gigantic Leap of Faith 270

16. The Road to London 282

17. Do the Right Thing 304

18. Start Time 323

19. A Touch of the Barnum & Bailey 347

20. Dead Chuffed 366

MANIA

21. The Jungle Drums 383

22. Kings of the Jungle 406

23. So This Is Beatlemania 426

24. Once Upon a Time in America 457

25. Tomorrow Never Knows 486

26. In the Eye of a Hurricane 505

27. Lennon and McCartney to the Rescue 537

28. Into the Cosmic Consciousness 564

MASTERY

29. Just Sort of a Freak Show 595

30. A Storm in a Teacup 627

31. A Very Freaky Experience 658

32. The Summer of Love 682

33. From Bad to Worse 709

34. An Additional Act 736

35. Good-bye to the Boys in the Band! 766

36. Disturbing the Peace 798

37. And in the End... 824

Acknowledgments 857

Notes 861

Bibliography 948

Discography 959

Index 962