LEWISOHN: Let's crowdsource this bastard.
Check a footnote.
Whether you heroically tear straight into him like @wingsoverlagos or you find one thing like @delightfullyatomicfest did, it matters! What I hoped for and imagined from the beginning was some sort of crowdsourced work. There is too much for any one person, and one of the biggest problems with Beatles' sources is that they're not all equally easy to get to for everyone. And although this has become personal for me, it is an objectively huge problem for all Beatles fans and scholars that the man who has collectively been called the Beatles historian has—and I cannot say this clearly enough—BEEN JUST MAKING SHIT UP.
He literally ends ‘Tune In’ with a fabricated line that he sources to John Lennon. (!!!)
(Which I might not have realized for ages—if ever—if not for this @wingsoverlagos post)
Lewisohn has no shame.
And while it may seem like we are screaming into the void right now, I will tell you that we are not. I fear jinxing anything so I won't say more now, but our work is not in vain. People are paying attention. How can they help but pay attention? It's too shocking a betrayal. Too great a breach of trust. It has become overwhelming and impossible to ignore, and it has happened so quickly. Just by a few people taking the time to do the work.
And what is obvious now is that if you take a piece of source material that's referenced and go through it you will find butchered and fabricated quotes. And whether you do it that way or just check a footnote that interests you PLEASE TELL ME what you find! 🙏🏻
I am trying to gather all this up in one place. An ammo dump, if you will. If you want credit, tell me how you want to be credited, linked to, and any combination thereof. (I don't like taking credit for things I don't find, anyway.) But either shoot me a message or @ me or all of the above so we can collect all together and it can have the cumulative effect it deserves. (I will respond, but sometimes I am gone for a few days at a time, and occasionally for up to a week. I always come back, though.) #crowdsourcelewisohn
I have also set up an email for collecting funky footnotes: [email protected] (At this point I'm only checking this once a week.)
If you look, you almost certainly will find.
If you have any Beatle magazines or Pete Best's book, "Beatle!" you could be a superhero. (One chapter of Best's book is available online, but I haven't been able to find the rest.) Or if you have any less-available source material I am urging you—begging you—to jump in and check some footnotes. With Lewisohn as bold as he is in the easily searchable things just imagine the license he's taking in the rest. But whether hard to find or commonplace, check a source. It adds up and it kind of feels good to uncover some bullshit.
For your edification and motivation I am adding a clip — lightly edited to take out some Lewisohn devolutions (so here's the queued up link) — of Mark Lewisohn bragging and basking in the praise of being called a historian who should be ranked alongside the great LBJ biographer Robert Caro, of him saying that the Beatles should appreciate anyone writing a biography of this high a standard about them, and a momentary lapse into deep resentment that they don't appreciate him. And then he gives his little speech about the Beatles being about “truth with a capital ‘T’” and how he is writing a biography to match that truth.
“Truth” is a word Mark Lewisohn needs to keep out of his mouth. If you feel like he should be struck by lightening for uttering it, that is exactly what I am talking about.
We are that lightening.
Honestly, what AKOM started is so awesome. It gave this an outlet. (And I still go back and listen for both source material and motivation.)
It's sickening to listen to this now. Sickening because Lewisohn has been making us all his dupes for far too long. We have been his marks, and there's almost nothing I hate more than being conned.
