The Beatles In Mono

Good over all analytical of the Beatles catalogue, The omission of Album covers etc are a minus to the Book, but I think the cost would have been too much for Andrew, as he informs us that the cover photo is in the 'Public domain' and can be used in general, (I think, I am paraphrasing him), but the overall commentary is well researched and he qualifies everything he said about each track. I dodn't agree with everything he said, but that is always good for debate, certainly where the Beatles are concerned!

I'm fairly certain most Beatle "scholars" who come across this book will be, like myself, underwhelmed. The book promises to represent an in-depth song-by-song analysis of the differences between the mono and stereo versions of the 2009 special releases of the Beatles canon. In fact, the "analysis" generally appears as an extremely brief and often non-specific few sentences at the bottom of each individual album track review. The majority of the reviews are comprised mainly of Hickey's own evaluation of the songs in terms of their worth as compositions.Like many Beatle fans, the author rightly holds in total awe Lennon's brilliance as one of the greatest songwriters in the history of popular music. Conversely, however, his disdain for Lennon's chief creative counterpart Paul McCartney is frankly ridiculous. Throughout the book, Hickey regularly informs the reader of Paul's inferiority to Lennon on almost every level; he gives only occasional, grudging credit to Paul for his contributions to the Beatles as a creative force, while frequently dismissing McCartney tracks as being grossly overrated. Most serious Beatle fans recognize that while McCartney was certainly capable of superficial banality, particularly during the group's later period, both he and Lennon relied upon one another for not only direct assistance with each other's songs, but also for the positive effect the competitive nature of their working relationship had upon the quality of their respective compositions. Hickey never seems to recognize this crucial dynamic.It was disappointing, as a life-long Beatles follower, to have been expecting in Hickey's work an exhaustive, detailed analysis of the wonders of the Beatles in mono, but instead to find myself distracted by the author's curious disregard for Paul McCartney's contribution to the Beatles canon.

Please note this is a review of the printed book not the Kindle copy or the book's contents.Under £3 for the Kindle edition is I guess a realistic price for this.However, in printed form RRP £14 is a bit of a dream.The printed book comes across as a web page/school home work that has been printed out.The font is really large to pad it out to over 140 pages and has lots of blank leading pages (another school assignment trick).I appreciate for a Kindle book pictures aren't a great benefit but this book has one public domain/copyright free picture on the cover and that is your lot.My copy was "Printed in the UK by Amazon.co.uk"Jeff Russell's well established Beatles Album File and Discography, gets a bit of a rough deal on Amazon reviews but even he was differentiating between the mono and stereo mixes back in 1982.I'll stick to Mark Lewisohn in the future.

very good review of the mono set. made me buy the mono set

Book is cheaply done and the appearance is as if it was printed off a computer with enlarged print.Absolutely nothing new in review and after a few albums the author stops comparing the mono version to the stereo version which is the entire point of the book????????????????????