Well researched and well laid out book by a person who obviously loves The Beatles. If you want to know who played on what, when, where and with whom on every song the individual members of the band released during their solo careers, this is the book for you. ( )

I won this from Early Reviewer and was excited. I am a big music fan in general and a Beatle fan in particular, but not a die hard fanatic. To put it in perspective, I own 8 Beatles CDs (All the non soundtrack LPs from Help on, plus the 1 compilation) but not everything they've every done. I also don't own any Beatles solo music and haven't listened to much of it other than the few songs that get heavy rotation on Classic Rock stations. I found this book to be great as a starting point for songs to listen to and as a look into the history of the (former)band and its members as the years went on. Jackson organizes the book around the concept of 12 hypothetical "Beatles" albums cobbled together from the solo work of the former bandmates. This is great for the idea of giving the reader places to start their listening and ways to avoid the dead spots that exist in all their discographies. He also gives a decent amount of background information about each song, its origins, its musical style, and how it reflected the life of the Beatles who were involved. This occasionally goes to extremes. Many of the songs clearly reflect on what the writers were going through at the time, but there are a few "this may have been inspired by" moments in which Jackson tries to tie a song into some larger thread in the performer's life, and without any evidence, it just ends up seeming a little silly. Thankfully, there are only a handful of those analytical overreaches. The other minor downside is that by dividing it up into albums, he wants to balance many factors such as having the correct balance of writers on each album, with Lennon and McCartney equally represented until Lennon's death, and with Harrison getting a few and Starr generally getting one per album. This means that the songs are not always presented chronologically and one album from one Beatle may be divided up over several of these hypothetical albums (like All Things Must Past) while another "album" may contain cuts from two or three McCartney albums. This makes the history aspect of the book loose a little of its flow. I don't want to overemphasize these issues. On the whole, I found this to be a great read. While I found it to be engaging, I can't comment too much on the quality of Jackson's musical taste or choices in selecting songs for the book because I haven't heard most of them, and definitely haven't heard most of the ones he didn't pick. However, possibly the best thing that I can say about the book is that it made me want to listen to his choices, and I have started to process of working my way through his selections. ( )

The biggest compliment I can pay this book is that it made me want to start working through my own Beatles collection and pull together playlists to create these "what if" albums pulled together from the Fab Fours post-breakup solo efforts. I've played the mythical Beatles album game a few times but never considered using it as a way to build a framework for an examination of the post-Beatles work and lives. - It's a concept that works surprisingly well.

From a biography perspective the work suffers from a couple of mistakes in the non-Beatles references that can make you wonder how accurate the Beatles material is. Much of it is repeated from other bios and a few Beatle myths are presented as fact, especially in relation to the early days (my own personal area of study), but it is refreshing to read a Beatles book that doesn't pull its punches about the Fab Four's dark sides, as well as recognizing how their individual contributions combined to make something special that was greater than the sum of its parts. ( )

Early this year (2014), I took a MOOC on the Beatles through Coursera. It was fantastic. I learned about the early days of the Fab Four in Liverpool and Germany, the phenomena of Beatlemania in the early 60s, the studio years, and the eventual end of the Beatles. But it stopped there. My own personal knowledge of the post-Beatles years is limited. I have a John Lennon greatest hits album, but don't own any solo albums by the Beatles. This book covers the post Beatles years in detail, imagining 12 additional Beatles album from 1970-2011 made up of the best songs on the Beatles solo albums. Along the way, I learned a great deal, not just about these songs (each chapter focuses on 10-12 songs that would be on the album, who wrote them, what they might mean, their historical significance), but specifically about the relationships between the details. I had no idea about how much McCartney and the others fought, Lennon's interior battles, Harrison feeling so slighted as a songwriter, or even Ringo's contributions. The book assumes some familiarity with the songs, which I don't have, but after reading this, I'm going to explore the post-Beatles output. ( )

I received this book as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers. This book is a trove of information about the fab four and their lives after the fab-breakup. It is generally chronological, with songs arranged into eras. The author pulls in much information for each song (citing at the outset great helps like YouTube and Wikipedia), and also sharing his own insights and reconstructions. It is well written, and the author has a unique voice and approach to the history of Fab.

The author has an interesting voice, which well belies articles from RollingStone, or Mojo. Here are a few quotes that Illustrate the author's voice. For the song Jealous Guy, part of what the author writes:
"It's the quintessential song for domestic abusers and narcissistic vampires everywhere, the fragile depths of the singer's own remorse and pain so convincing that the woman is seduced into staying, even though part of her knowns it will happen again" (39).
In speaking of the song 'You're sixteen:'
"Today, YouTube cranks argue about whether it's appropriate for Starr to escort a sixteen-year-old into his car. But back when the tune was originally written, Jerry Lee Lewis has married his Thirteen-year-old cousin and Elvis was dating a fourteen-year-old Priscilla in Germany" (101).
And in speaking of the song 'No more lonely nights:'
"Loose lips sank no ships at Fort McCartney, and we'll probably never know. Then again, his life could have been completely blissful with Linda, and he could have been drawing on earlier romantic angst from Jane Asher, or just making the damn thing up. Linda herself sings very nice, breathy 'la-la-las' on it" (181).

Overall a fun read that transports you into Fab territory. ( )

Andrew Grant Jackson's Still the Greatest: The Essential Songs of The Beatles' Solo Careers is a fascinating reference of the lives and careers of the Fab Four after the group disbanded. The legacy of the Beatles followed (haunted, even) the men for years after they signed the divorce papers, and this book celebrates that by organizing the best songs of their solo into hypothetical albums. Each song includes information about it's creation or what was going on in the personal life of its creator, and while sometimes painful, the well-researched context makes this book a must-have reference for any Beatles fan. This is an encyclopedia of facts, and I'm guaranteed to win next time I play Beatles Trivial Pursuit.

However, interspersed in the summaries and analyses is horrific commentary on Yoko Ono by the author. These parts were jarring and upsetting, and I feel like the editor might have skipped over them by mistake - I can't see the purpose of such vitriol and it demeans the author and the book.

Beyond that, Still the Greatest is a fascinating read and a poignant, if somewhat meloncholy, suggestion of what could have been. ( )

Still the Greatest is a highly entertaining wish list of the Beatles solo releases compiled into hypothetical Beatles albums, annotated with biographical discussions of what went into each recording.

Jackson’s compilation is meticulously researched and insightful. Each entry summarizes the technical production and production notes, the inspiration and motivation for the recording, and a biographical summary of the artist(s) at that time. The book is broken into into easily digestible sections for each song and organized into hypothetical albums. Although Jackson focuses on the solo work of the Beatles, he reaches back into the history of the group to flesh out the biographical information and discuss the making of the songs. Half the fun of reading this book was cuing up the songs (or looking them up on YouTube) and listening while reading that entry.

Endlessly entertaining and insightful, Still the Greatest is a must read for Beatles fans and a recommended read for music fans. ( )

The author sets out to catalog the best of the Beatles solo work through biography interwoven with song interpretations. This works nicely - the biography sections are just the right amount of information to give context for the music and how it related to the relationships in the ex-Beatles lives at the time. It also gives you an idea of why they were so much better together than they were apart. As a solo artist a lot of John’s stuff bounced between raw and angry or “hippies will save the world” naiveté. Beyond “Maybe I’m Amazed”, Paul’s solo work can be a bit sugary and thin. Hearing the solo stuff you can really see what they did for each other when working together - that meeting somewhere in the middle was exactly what they both needed (and I think is what started to happen naturally after a few years). George started off strong - and in fact may have the best post-Beatles output - but faded fast. You can see how limiting him to 2 songs/album drove him to be focused and selective while still in the group (by Abbey Road it could be argued his 2 songs were the best on the album, and “My Sweet Lord” and “What is Life” are as good as any of their solo work).

I think where Jackson pushes it a bit is in his proposed “extra Beatles albums”, and how many songs he decides to include. The idea of putting together their best solo work a is an interesting one, and I enjoyed most of the notes he had on both the meaning and making of the songs. But I think he may have been better served narrowing it down a bit when it came to the actual albums. There were just too many pedestrian songs - it leaned a little too much towards the “super fan/can do no wrong” perspective. The 8 proposed albums (of 14 songs) between 1970 - 1980 could have been narrowed to 4 or 5 (of ~10 songs) to better effect. It was a bit of a cop out that almost ALL of the songs from the stronger solo works (Plastic Ono Band, Imagine, All Things Must Pass, Band on the Run) were included. And yet - I can’t deny I found a few gems in there. In particular, the demo of “My Brave Face”. The version McCartney released I never cared for - sort of sappy & overproduced. But in the demo Costello’s voice is much higher in the mix, and it almost gives you goosebumps because it sounds like it could be a lost tape from 1964 with McCartney & Lennon doing harmonies. And I had forgotten all about “All Those Years Ago”, Harrison’s Lennon tribute from 1981 that I enjoyed at the time but hadn’t listened to in 30 years (and, as I mentioned, I forget existed). There were a few others too, and I guess the ones that worked for me will be different than the ones that others discover, which is a decent argument for over-inclusion. ( )

A quintessential biography written in the only way one can when the subjects are the music world changing Beatles, through their songs. The bio starts as the Beatles as moving in different directions sometimes seemingly as far from one another as they can get, showcasing what each was capable of alone that didn't quite come out when together. ( )