In 1983, Beat(le) Literature was a new field of study, with plenty of space on a bookshelf that now groans with hundreds and hundreds of titles that dissect every miniscule corner of Fab Four history.

They range from the expansive (Mark Lewisohn’s detailed studio tomes and ongoing, massive, planned three-volume “definitive” look) to the very narrow (an early fan wrote A Cheese Sandwich for John Lennon, in which her sole personal connection to a member was fulfilled in the title).

Sure, the Beatles’ first manager Allan Williams and Apple “House Hippie” Richard Dilello had published works in the ‘70s (The Man Who Gave the Beatles Away and The Longest Cocktail Party, respectively), but they were about a specific timeframe.

General “serious” biographies included Hunter Davies’ 1968 The Beatles, but it was authorized by the group. Philip Norman’s groundbreaking Shout! In 1981 was the first more objective look. It stripped away some of the freshly scrubbed myth of the band as the anti-Rolling Stones (the young Beatles had sex with prostitutes in Germany! They ate amphetamines like candy!).

So, when true Beatles insider Peter Brown—who had been with the group from its early days as manager Brian Epstein’s assistant through the end of Apple—and music journalist Steven Gaines came out in 1983 with The Love You Make: An Insider's Story of the Beatles, it made waves among fans.

That included this writer, who as a 13-year-old purchased a copy at that year’s Beatlefest convention in Houston and nervously stood in line to have Brown sign it. Here was a guy who actually knew the Beatles. I didn’t even balk at spending a chunk of the money I had saved for the event - $14.95 (the equivalent of $48.56 today) on the hardback.

Brown was so close to the band that John Lennon namechecked him in the Beatles “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” retelling the true story of how he facilitated the pair’s wedding when they were looking for a place to get hitched immediately: “Peter Brown called to say/You can make it okay/You can get married at Gibraltar, near Spain.”

For The Love You Make, Brown and Gaines conducted scores of hours of interviews with the three surviving Beatles, wives and girlfriends, and business and personal acquaintances. Some of the material was used in the book while, most of it remained embedded on cassette tapes.

Now, more than four decades later, Brown and Gaines are publishing excerpts from many of those talks for the first time ever in All You Need is Love: The Beatles in Their Own Words (352 pp., $32, St. Martin’s Press).

There are many, many reasons that make the book one of the more valuable Beatles tomes of recent years. Brown and Gaines talk to many of those closest to the group, both as eyewitnesses and active participants to their story.
All the interviews were conducted in 1980, prior to the assassination of John Lennon, while memories were still fresh (only widow Yoko Ono’s was conducted afterward). It’s a sad footnote that Gaines mentions he was scheduled to talk to Lennon, before that became impossible.

Also, with the pair of writers usually talking to their subjects together, all have had some sort of relationship with Peter Brown. So, it’s more like talking to a member of the family than snoopy writer. The Q&A format works well in making the characteristics of each speaker jump out, and almost all of the subjects are no longer alive, making their observations even more important.

And the talks reveal not only extra layers and information to well-known stories of Beatles lore but uncover entirely new anecdotes. It’s one thing to hear about the famous debacle in the Philippines during a concert tour that had the group and their entourage legitimately scared for their lives as a story. It’s another to hear the genuine fear in the words of those who were on the ground during the chaos.

On the lighter side, we read that NEMS employee and group confidante Alistair Taylor remembers how a sheepish Paul McCartney—not wanting girlfriend Jane Asher to know that he caught a case of crabs from another female assignation—asked the Fix-It man out of Asher’s earshot to acquire some helpful topical medicine from a doctor. Oh, and Taylor had to pretend that it was he who was suffering from the malady.

Service to the Beatles, it seems, took many forms.

In addition to Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison, and their wives and girlfriends, subjects run the gamut of the group’s existence, including some familiar to Beatlefans including Bob Wooler, Neil Aspinall, Derek Taylor, Robert Fraser, May Pang, John Eastman, and Ron Kass.

The pair also get on the record some of the “villains” of the Beatles story, including electronic shyster “Magic Alex” Mardas, music publisher Dick James, and controversial manager Allen Klein. Many talk about the same incidents, but just like a musical Rashomon, memories—and finger pointing—often differ.
Many also reminisce about Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ troubled and multi-faceted manager. A closet homosexual at a time when it was actually illegal to be one in Britain, his story is equal parts debonairness and desperation. Whether his death by pill overdose was an accident, a suicide, or some combination is of conjecture to all.

All of that makes All You Need is Love not just another Beatles book, but a valuable, historical, and utterly enlightening collection of chats about the chaps from Liverpool. The book could be twice as long and still enthrall and enlighten.