The Second Volume of Illustrations.

Altogether something like 180 songs by the Beatles have been published, but since many of the earlier compositions are very repetitive in theme and would not have provided enough difference in illustration, we were able to weed them out. Having done this we sent lists to the 43 contributors and asked them to tick off the ones they wanted to do. Ironically enough it quickly got to the stage where nearly all the ones I wanted to do had been chosen by someone else - but never mind !

What I have tried to do is to present a book which is as entertaining to the eye and the imagination as a Beatles album is to the ear. For an artist it is a challenging exercise to take a lyric and illustrate it. And of course, there is a very long tradition of this. Artists have always illustrated passages from the Bible or from poems, and we have tried to do the same thing here. In a sense the Beatles are a religion: they turn people on by what they say and by what they represent.

The Beatles and their music have captured the tempo of the world today. I believe that the illustrations in this book may illuminate their contribution to the style of their generation.

A fabulous fabulous book ... fab drawings, and all the lyrics too.
A perfectly stylised indication of the sixties art world.
Essential.

(I counted them, and made it exactly 86 songs that are represented !)