They had been to London before, they had driven down and then gone straight back again. But this time they had time off. They arrived early, it was the middle of summer, it was actually a really beautiful day in terms of weather, and they had time to look around. What did they see? Knowing the kind of interests that they had, where did they go? So I did a really good chunk of research into what they might have seen and what was going on in London at the time.

They would’ve gone to Charing Cross Road where they would’ve seen the musical instrument shops, looked in the windows, ogling the guitars like bands do. But beyond that, if they were looking for any kind of a music scene like they had back home, there wasn’t one. There were dances that you could go to at the lyceum, where you would dance to records, and there were twist groups playing in certain ballrooms, or Palais-de-Danse — like the Hammersmith Palais — but the idea of there being, like in Liverpool, so many church halls with rock bands playing, that simply wasn’t happening.

So they came to London and they looked around, although they felt provincial, they knew that there was nothing really to fear there.

Rohan Silva: One of the things that comes through very strongly about The Beatles through your story is that the character of these four was there all along.

Mark Lewisohn: I was interested in telling the story of The Beatles not only from their childhood, but through their family lines, because you do get character traits. None of us suddenly arrive as adults with a blank canvas; we are the product of all the years of upbringing and the influences upon us. So you look at The Beatles’ childhood — each of The Beatles as children — and you get to see exactly the characters that are emerging.

Paul McCartney for example, who literally from infancy, from primary school onwards, would always do the opposite if someone told him, ‘You should do this’. If someone ever tries to tell him what to do, to this day he will always do the complete opposite, which is why some of the things that he’s best known for — not his music, which of course is superb — some of his private life decisions have been made in the face of encouragement not to do it.

Rohan Silva: The famous image of The Beatles crossing the street at Abbey Road, long pored over by conspiracy theorists, Paul not wearing shoes — which gave rise to the ‘Paul is dead’ rumour, because of the dead body in a coffin — your interpretation of that is that’s him wanting to be different and stand apart.

Mark Lewisohn: If you really study your Beatles and you look at all the photographs — they’re almost uncountable, there are vast numbers — if you look at them all as a body of photographic images, you see a recurring pattern, which is that Paul will often do something that makes himself different from the others. Again, you can trace it back to childhood.

“If you really study your Beatles and you look at all the photographs you see a recurring pattern, which is that Paul will often do something that makes himself different from the others.”

There’s a photograph of him in the school playground when he’s about 10 or 11 years old, and it’s just a bunch of motley-dressed schoolchildren of the 1950s all looking at the camera, except one of them who is standing in the corner reading a comic. He knew that in doing that he would draw the eye — you look at the photograph and you see that one in the corner who’s not looking at the camera. He was just aware. This awareness pervades The Beatles’ years.

John Lennon noticed it too, and in one of his interviews — I think it was the Playboy interview just before he died — he said, ‘Paul’s always got a blue ear’. That’s a typical Lennonism, he never actually had a blue ear but you know exactly what he means. There are other pictures of them in ’69 where Paul’s got his flies open. There are just little subtle things that he will do, and taking his shoes off is another one, because I think it is the first thing you see.

Rohan Silva: John, of course, no shrinking violet, one of the things that I was really shocked by reading your book was how much he did impressions of crippled people, disabled people, mentally retarded people — really brutal. What’s your reading of that?

Mark Lewisohn: There’s no short answer to it, but I’ll try. He actually traced it back to a specific moment, which was after or before a school speech day. So I was able to work out the precise date when he started to do this. In those days, in the 1950s, we didn’t have the political correctness that exists today. There was also a strong vein in those immediate post-war years of cruel humour. There were a lot of injured people around, of course, because of the war — either people who had served in the forces who had come back in some way injured, or there were people who had been bombed at home and picked up an injury.

“There was a lot of cruel humour about, and John used to do this thing where he would put on a crippled face or stamp his feet like a convulsed spastic, and people laughed. He took to doing this on stage.”

So there was a lot of cruel humour about, and John used to do this thing where he would put on a crippled face or stamp his feet like a convulsed spastic, and people laughed. He took to doing this on stage. He does it all through 1963/4/5. On Sunday night of the London Palladium — which was the big TV show on British TV in those days — they were live, they’ve got a four-act set, it’s probably about 10 minutes, they’re topping the bill — they’re already big and a substantial proportion is watching this, John does it on that. And yet, here’s the truly interesting thing, no one says a word.

There was nothing in the newspapers the next day, there was nothing at all. I really looked for any kind of public response to this and there wasn’t one. So he carried on doing it. He does it at Shea Stadium, he does it at Washington Coliseum, pretty much every time he played live he did it. And no reaction. That is the most interesting thing.

Rohan Silva: He seemed to stop doing it after taking LSD.

Mark Lewisohn: The last examples of it are in the same time period that he starts to take LSD. I think LSD obviously, as it would for pretty much everyone who takes it, would have a profound effect on him. I think he began to come to terms with who he was a lot more.

If you look at all the newsreel film of The Beatles — a lot of it’s on YouTube — when John Lennon pulls these faces, a lot of that is when he’s feeling self-conscious. So I think there was an element of it that was him being self-conscious about the camera being on him, or in some way it’s a reflection of [being] crippled inside, for want of a better phrase. I think he may have felt crippled inside in some way, and goodness knows he had enough cause to. And then it stops, and it stops in that period. I don’t exactly know why he stopped doing it but that’s a reasonable assumption.

“I think John may have felt crippled inside in some way, and goodness knows he had enough cause to. And then it stops, and it stops in that period.”

Rohan Silva: John was significantly older than Paul and George in relative terms, at a time when being two or three years older than someone was a big deal. How do you think that shaped the dynamic between them and how did that evolve?

Mark Lewisohn: The point about John is that A) he started it, B) he was the eldest, C) he did deign to stay friends with younger kids, which is not something common to all teenagers — when you’re 17 you don’t necessarily want to hang out with 14/15 year olds.

John had already left school and gone to art school, they were still at school, he was growing sideburns, having sex, he was [noticeably] older, having had so many other, older experiences than Paul or George, and yet he was prepared to accept their company on an even basis. But they in turn, if you can put yourself in the position of being 14/15, you’re hanging out with a 17-year-old, you do look up to that person. So they did always look up to John.

Paul McCartney came up with the perfect phrase of how he idolised John as a ‘fairground hero riding the dodgems’ — you see it in the old films, there’s always someone going around the dodgems collecting money, hopping from car to car, and you think, ‘Cor, this guy’s grown up’, and you’re just the kid wanting to bump people around. So he was Paul’s fairground hero, and that is a key thing to keep in mind. It meant that Paul had to be really determined in his quest to impress this guy, and he obviously did. John, to his great credit, accepted the possibility of being impressed by someone who was a couple of years younger than him.

“When John suddenly began to pay less attention, to look elsewhere, to look to Yoko particularly, a vacuum was formed. Paul stepped up because he felt that he could, and that shifted everything. George and Ringo didn’t want to be there anymore once Paul was thinking he was the leader.”

So John was the leader of The Beatles, and although they used to say they had no leader — and in many respects they didn’t — he actually always was. The Beatles as a group begin to fall apart in the period where John suddenly abdicates his leadership in 1967/8, he’s looking elsewhere, he’s not so concerned about leading these guys anymore. Imagine any group of people — there is a dynamic within that group of people. When John suddenly began to pay less attention, to look elsewhere, to look to Yoko particularly, a vacuum was formed. Paul stepped up because he felt that he could, and that shifted everything. George and Ringo didn’t want to be there anymore once Paul was thinking he was the leader. So it upset the apple cart.

The last ever Beatles live performance – on the roof of their Apple HQ

Rohan Silva: I’m also struck by the moment when John and Paul have gone off to Paris, they get their Beatles haircuts, and George sort of copies them but goes further.

Mark Lewisohn: Yeah, George was the youngest and the quietest, but not quiet. It was always the myth that he was the quiet one; he just only spoke when he felt there was something worth saying. He did bring great strength and stability to The Beatles. There’s the moment that you mention with John and Paul, their Beatle haircut was something like an Adolf Hitler haircut, believe it or not, and they weren’t modelling it on Hitler, but it was styled for them and it had a kind of diagonal sense to the fringe, whereas George just cut it in what we would now know to be the Beatle haircut and took it a little further than they had. They then adjusted theirs to be like George’s.

Rohan Silva: The same with leather?

Mark Lewisohn: Yeah, George was always the Beatles’ fashion leader — he was sharp, a very sharp dresser. He was a great rebel at school, because they went to a very strongly conforming grammar school — The Liverpool Institute — with fierce teachers, and particularly a fierce headmaster. You had to adhere to the uniform. But George would always do everything he could to rebel.

There’s this friend of his called Arthur Kelly who I interviewed, who was with George in the corridor one day when this maths master — Dippy Dewhurst — walks down the corridor and goes, ‘Harrison, those are not school shoes!’, and George is going, ‘What are school shoes? I come to school, I’m wearing shoes’. But they weren’t regulation school shoes. He was always bucking the trend. In The Beatles he always went for things first like the leather jackets and then the leather trousers in Hamburg.