Still the Greatest

As recommended by USA Today and excerpted on Rolling Stone.com!More than forty years after breaking up, The Beatles remain the biggest-selling and most influential group in the history of popular music. Fans endlessly replay their songs, craving more, while thousands of cover versions of their songs have been recorded and performed. Band biographies, pop music histories, song books, and academic titles on the Fab Four clutter shelves. But never has there been a definitive guide to the finest songs of The Beatles after they called it quits.Still the Greatest is a love song to the songwriting and recording achievements of Paul, John, George, and Ringo after each struck out on his own. In this creative history, Jackson selects the best songs in each solo career and organizes them into fantasy albums they might have formed had the legendary group stayed together. This romp through the post–Beatles history of each artist delves into the circumstances behind the composition, recording, and reception of each work, offering a refreshing take on how spectacular much of The Beatles’ second act truly is.Jackson assesses the more than seventy albums and nine hundred songs the four collectively released, selecting the crème de la crème of their output. Still the Greatest brims with facts (release dates, writing and performing credits, and information about production techniques) and insightful analyses of the music and lyrics. In telling the stories behind the songs, Jackson recounts the remarkable influence the Post Fab Four continued to have long after the big split. Both a handy reference and an engrossing cover-to-cover read, Still the Greatest is an invaluable companion for those who thought it all ended with the 1970 album Let It Be.

In this creative history of the solo careers of John, Paul, George, and Ringo, Jackson reimagines the artists’ individual output into “fantasy albums” that could have been put out had the Fab Four remained an intact group—“The Beatles Albums That Should Have Been” (which would have made a fine subtitle). Nearly 200 songs have been cherry-picked, with extensive information offered, such as musicians, chart history, story behind the creation of the song, and the meaning of the lyrics. The chummy tone and the sheer subjectiveness make this unsuitable as a reference work but loads of fun for Beatles fans., The celebration of the Fab Four's 50th anniversary continues with Still the Greatest: The Essential Songs of the Beatles' Solo Careers. Author Andrew Grant Jackson, a music journalist and filmmaker, delves into the more than 70 albums and 900 songs collectively unveiled by John, Paul, George and Ringo since they disbanded 42 years ago. "There are a dozen brilliant Beatles albums to be carved out of their solo albums," Jackson has observed. Included, too, are collaborations with other icons such as Phil Spector, Eric Clapton, Elton John and Elvis Costello., Analysis, commentary, and biography on the Beatles abound, but relatively little has been written about John, Paul, George, and Ringo’s post-Beatles recordings. Freelance music writer Jackson’s first book spotlights what he considers the best of the ex-Beatles’ oft-underrated post-1970 recordings as solo artists, and as members of Wings and the Plastic Ono Band. Jackson, an obvious Beatles fanatic, compiles his chosen cuts into 12 fictitious albums spread across the past 40 years. Jackson critiques and analyzes each song and puts it into biographical context, adding detailed studio session information, recording credits, and sales-chart peaks. The analyses are insightful and informed, with the author relying heavily on previous scholarship and interviews with the ex-Beatles and associates, and adding his own strong opinions. Jackson admirably digs beneath the obvious hits to uncover and discuss deep album tracks, commercial flops, and rare b-sides. Ringo fans will be delighted by Jackson’s insistence on finding room on each “album” for at least one of the funny Beatle’s tracks....VERDICT This creative, enlightening, and informative work by a welcomed entrant to Beatles scholarship is highly recommended to anyone interested in learning more about the Fab Four’s sporadically great post-breakup recordings., Overall, it's an interesting take on what might have been; an imaginary glimpse of what The Beatles may have released to the world as a group had they remained together....Going over each track with a fine-toothed comb, Jackson not only gives us details of where each Beatle was at that stage of their career but also what lead them there. On top of that he includes extensive production details for each song, including session musicians and where and when it was recorded., Still the Greatest is a very interesting and creative look at The Beatles’ solo careers, and makes for a more enjoyable read than a typical reference volume. Still the Greatest is an excellent volume and definitely a worthwhile read for music scholars, music enthusiasts, or fans of The Beatles.

Andrew Grant Jackson has written for Rolling Stone, Yahoo!, Slate’s “Blogging the Beatles,” Baseline Studio System, music magazines Burn Lounge, Mean Street, and Dispatch, and copyedited the Hollywood monthly magazine Ingenue. He directed and cowrote the feature film The Discontents starring Perry King and Amy Madigan and served as actor Jeff Bridges’s development associate at AsIs Productions.