Chock full of conversations and interviews with each of the band members, conducted both then and now, this is the definitive biography of The Beatles as told by its own members. Contemporary interviews with Paul, George, and Ringo given for the purpose of this book are spliced together with words from the late John that have been gathered from print, broadcast, and manuscripts—each with an indicated date—to create coherent pages and subject treatments, as though the four had been brought back together for a final, retrospective conversation. Opening with the band members' separate accounts of their childhoods, the anthology then moves into a year-by-year organization that allows for great detail and many digressions—how The Beatles initially came together; their rough early concerts; the phenomenon of their rapid rise to fame; the musical and social changes that they both propelled and reflected; and frank conversations about the most enigmatic part of their history, the band's dissolution.