TUNE IN The Beatles--All These Years, Vol. 1

If you love the Beatles, and good history, then this audiobook feast will both fill you up and whet your appetite for more. It's one of the most detailed biographies written about a rock band, and by the end we're still only up to 1962. Two more volumes are planned. Narrator Clive Mantle has a deep, rather formal, English accent, which is appropriate for some histories but is at odds with the subject at hand. He reads with sterling diction, varies his pitch to keep this mammoth work moving, and occasionally allows a character voice to seep through. A book on what the Beatles represented, though, pleads for a more energetic reading. Unfortunately, we don't get that. R.I.G. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine [Published: JANUARY 2014]