Updated to include Paul McCartney’s knighting and the deaths of John Lennon and George Harrison. Philip Norman’s biography of the Beatles is the definitive work on the world's most influential band—a beautifully written account of their lives, their music, and their times. Now brought completely up to date, this epic tale charts the rise of four scruffy Liverpool lads from their wild, often comical early days to the astonishing heights of Beatlemania, from the chaos of Apple and the collapse of hippy idealism to the band's acrimonious split. It also describes their struggle to escape the smothering Beatles’ legacy and the tragic deaths of John Lennon and George Harrison. Witty, insightful, and moving, Shout! is essential reading not just for Beatles fans but for anyone with an interest in pop music. "The best, most detailed, and most serious biography of the Beatles and their time." -- Chicago Sun-Times "Nothing less than thrilling...the definitive biography." -- The New York Times Philip Norman has an international reputation as a chronicler of pop music and culture. Shout! , his groundbreaking biography of The Beatles, first published in 1981, has been continuously in print ever since. He went on to write definitive biographies of the Rolling Stones, Elton John, Buddy Holly, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Sir Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, and, most recently, George Harrison. Also an award-winning writer of fiction, he was one of Granta ’s first Top 20 Young British Novelists. CHAPTER ONE: "HE WAS THE ONE I'D WAITED FOR" John Lennon was born on October 9, 1940, during a brief respite in Nazi Germany's bombing of Liverpool. All summer, after tea, people would switch on their radios at low volume, listening, not to the muted dance music but to the sky outside their open back doors. When the music cut off, before the first siren went, you knew that the bombers were returning. Liverpool paid a heavy price for its naval shipyards, and for the miles of docks where convoys stood making ready to brave the North Atlantic. The city was Britain's last loophole for overseas food supplies. Night after night, with geometric accuracy, explosions tore along the seaming of wharves and warehouses and black castle walls, and over the tramlines into streets of friendly red back-to-back houses, of pubs and missions and corner dairies with cowsheds behind. During the worst week so many ships lay sunk along the Mersey there was not a single berth free for incoming cargo. But on Lime Street the Empire theater carried on performances as usual. Sometimes the whole audience would crowd out into the foyer and look across the black acropolis of St. George's Hall to a sky flashing white, then dark again as more bombs pummeled the port and the river. Mimi Stanley had always worried about her younger sister, Julia. She worried about her especially tonight with more Luftwaffe raids expected and Julia in labor in the Oxford Street maternity home. When news of the baby came by telephone Mimi set out on foot from the Stanley house on Newcastle Road. "I ran two miles. I couldn't stop thinking, 'It's a boy, it's a boy. He's the one I've waited for.' " She held John in her arms twenty minutes after he was born. His second name, Julia said -- in honor of Britain's inspirational prime minister, Winston Churchill -- would be Winston. Just then a parachute-borne land mine fell directly outside the hospital. "But my sister stayed in bed," Mimi said, "and they put the baby under the bed. They wanted me to go into the basement, but I wouldn't. I ran all the way back to Newcastle Road to tell Father the news. 'Get under shelter,' the wardens were shouting. 'Oh, be quiet,' I told them. Father was there, and I said, 'It's a boy and he's beautiful, he's the best one of all.' Father looked up and said, 'Oh heck, he would be.' " Mimi's and Julia's father was an official with the Glasgow and Liverpool Salvage Company. He was aboard the salvage tug that tried to raise the submarine Thetis from her deathbed in Liverpool Bay. He had five daughters and brought them up strictly, though he was often away from home salvaging ships. "We loved Father," Mimi said, "but we liked it when he went away to sea and we girls could kick over the traces a bit. If ever there was a boy I had my eye on, I used to pray at night, 'Please God, let no one be hurt but let there be a wreck.' " Mimi was slender, brisk, and dark, with fine cheekbones like a Cherokee. Julia was slim, auburn-haired, more conventionally pretty. Both loved laughter, but Mimi insisted there should be sense in it. "Oh, Julia," she would endlessly plead, "be serious." Julia could never be serious about anything. Her marriage to Freddy Lennon in 1938 had been the least serious act of her life. She met Freddy one day in Sefton Park, and commented on the silly hat he wore. To please her, Freddy sent it skimming into the lake. She started bringing him home, to her whole family's