Mark Lewisohn about the upcoming volumes

The paperback edition of "Tune In" is published September 3, 2015.

Renowned Beatles author Mark Lewisohn was a guest at BeatleWeek in Liverpool this year, and had a session called "Ask Mark", a revival of his BeatleWeek sessions in the eighties. Here, he discussed not only volume one, "Tune in" of his Beatles biographic trilogy in the making, but also revealed a bit about the two upcoming volumes.

As a matter of fact, the first question posed was "How's book two coming along?". Lewisohn is still thinking that volume two will come out in 2020. He is still researching, and writing hasn't started. There is already enough material to write a substantial volume two, which he could start writing right away, but he hasn't yet turned every stone, and wants to be absolutely correct before he starts the writing process.  And he says that he is discovering something new almost on a daily basis, so it does indeed look as if there are still a lot of unturned stones. Volume two will be completely different from what he first imagined it would be, and he still has no title of volumes two and three. And no, they will not be called "Turn on" and "Drop out".

One of the interesting questions put to Lewisohn at the very end of the Q&A session was why the Beatles took such a long break exactly 50 years ago. Returning from their American tour on September 1st, 1965, collectively The Beatles did nothing for six weeks, which did make the creative process of writing and recording "Rubber Soul" in time for the Christmas market a difficult and rushed one. Lewisohn had no firm answer to this, but let it be known that the times when they went out of the public eye were as interesting as the rest of their story. This is one of the reasons why further research is needed before the writing of volume two can commence.

New material, stories and people from the period covered in volume one, "Tune In" has turned up after it's publication, but will not be included in the upcoming paperback edition of that book. Lewisohn says that it will be used in some way, but is still not sure how and when.

The people whose lives we have been following in "Tune in" will also be featured in the upcoming volumes. We are talking about the people who were left behind, people like Allan Williams, Bob Wooler, Rory Storm, Pete and Mona Best etc. As their lives were still influenced by the Beatles and their success, we will get to see what happened to them along the way.

Fortunately, someone recorded the Q&A session and put it up on YouTube: