Two Minutes and Twenty Seconds

The British historian and biographer Mark Lewisohn had already written or co-authored six books on the Beatles when he set out, in 2003, to research and write what he promised would be the definitive history of the  band. Tune In, the first volume in The Beatles: All These Years, a planned three-part opus, was published in 2013. Of the roughly 2,000 titles that have focused on the Beatles, it remains the gold standard: a work of staggering detail weighing in at more than 800 pages plus seventy-six pages of endnotes. And it doesn’t even cover the years when the Beatles were famous, concluding as it does with the first stirrings of Beatlemania at the end of 1962.

Initially, Lewisohn suggested that his second volume would be ready by 2020. There’s no sign of it yet. Instead, we’re left to imagine what pleasures await. We can assume this much: The next book will dwell...