Many refer to this as the best book on the Beatles, if only because it captures their comic essence months before they arrive in America. If Alun Owens had needed a working text to draft A HARD DAY'S NIGHT, this might have worked. Braun remains a mysterious, intriguing figure; he seems to have nailed the Beatles and vanished.

Perhaps THE great lost Beatles book (well, I guess there can't be too many of those), Love Me Do shows the author with first-hand access to the Beatles through 1963, as they built from a remarkably successful English pop group towards global phenomenomdom. Out of print for years, but well worth seeking out, as Braun penetrates the moptop cliches perpetuated by the Hard Day's Night movies and gives us four individuals with much to say, and no compunction about saying it. In turn, you also get a "last of old England" sense of everything changing, as indeed it did in 1963, one of the most significant single years of the twentieth century. ( )