SHAKE IT UP, BABY!

A chronicle of perhaps the most important year in the life of the Fab Four.

The year 1963, by Scottish Daily Mail journalist McNab’s account, opened with the Beatles playing gigs in tiny halls in the Scottish Highlands in a sleety, frozen January. It closed with hit songs and ambitious plans to bring the band to the U.S. In between was an endless flow of music and adolescent screams, punctuated by high-toned and sometimes avaricious business dealings. First, for instance, came the backdoor negotiations over the order of credits for Lennon-McCartney compositions, which left Paul to admit grudgingly, “John had the stronger personality and I think he fixed things with Brian [Epstein] before I got there.” Later, both Lennon and McCartney suffered from a deal cut with a music publisher, Dick James, which delivered fat paychecks to James and Epstein and rather thinner ones to John and Paul. And everybody got worked over when it came to the merchandising wizards. Notes McNab, “During their career, and especially the lucrative touring years, it’s widely estimated that The Beatles lost out on a figure north of $100 million in merchandising fees—the first real rock’n’roll swindle.” For all those dark moments, though, the year 1963 prepared the Beatles for their massive breakthrough the following year, a breakthrough that, though Ringo was pondering opening a beauty salon and George Harrison some sort of business in the event that it all came crashing down, never really slowed down. The Ed Sullivan Show, with its 73 million viewers on that February night in 1964, was the storied start, but, as the author makes clear in this sometimes labored but detail-packed account, it really began bar by bar, town by town, mile by mile, a success won by endless work.

Though covering well-worn ground, a trove for Beatles completists.