It should be hard to come up with “the one indispensible book” about the Beatles—I have shelves of them—but it’s not.  Most of the biographies are valuable.  Hunter Davies original authorized biography and the up-dated versions are great (esp. the less sanitized additions to the new editions) and Phillip Norman’s bio Shout, is good. Some of the more scholarly books make annoying little errors (John, not Paul, is the falsetto on From Me to You—how do you listen and not hear that?) and the newer gamey accounts don’t bring anything to the Beatle legend that you actually want to know.  Paul could be cheap, George was mean.  Say it ain’t so!  But they do keep coming up with never-before-seen photos and that’s hard to believe when you have Beatle calendars from about 1927.

The current Beatle guru, Bob Spitz, contributed his list of Paul’s best songs to a Time magazine McCartney special.  Spitz says Drive My Car was too raucous to be included on the Rubber Soul album.  But wait … isn’t that song the opening track on the Rubber Soul album?  And Spitz fails to include one of Paul’s and the Beatle’s absolute masterpieces, both lyrically and musically, the one song that had Paul and John out of their chairs and performing joyously together at the nadir of their careers and affections, Two of Us.  And listen to Ringo’s drumming.  And George’s muted but growling guitar riffs on that song.  And somebody should tell biographers and critics (and Paul himself) that Fool on the Hill is the most treacly, overblown, pompous, boring, squirm-in-your-seat, embarrassing song the Beatles ever recorded (how did acerbic John not stamp that one out?)

But enough.  Buy this one book if you don’t own a single Beatles book and buy this one book if you have them all.

Beatles Gear by Andy Babiuk, the revised edition.  Here’s the level of scholarship. John’s first Rickenbacker guitar is photographed as it looks today.  Also, the 1958 invoice from Rickenbacker to German distributor Framous with John’s future purchase (serial # V81) itemized on the invoice.  In addition, a photo of Rickenbacker salesman Jean “Toots” Thielemans at an instrument trade show.  “Toots” played a Rickenbacker guitar in an appearance with George Shearing that inspired John to buy a Rickenbacker guitar in the first place.  Lined up behind “Toots” at the trade show is the actual guitar John eventually bought.

There are a couple other “must have or at least should have” Beatle books:  The Beatles Anthology and Mark Lewisohn’s The Complete Beatles Chronicle but Andy Babiuk’s Beatles Gear is the one literally breathtaking volume.