Best of the Beatles for Acoustic Guitar Guitar Signature Licks Book/Online Audio Paperback – November 1, 2001

(First, before I give my review, I just can't resist saying how stupid a previous reviewer was for giving this book bad reviews because it's not written for "solo" guitar -- I mean, no where in the title or description of the book are the words "arranged for solo guitar" -- there are other Beatle's tab books on Amazon that ARE arranged for solo guitar and say so explicitly in the title. Okay, sorry for the discourse here, but I just couldn't ignore such ignorance)The Wolf man has a great book here because he chose the tunes for their varied acoustic styles of playing. I have the Complete Beatles and have been using it to learn alot of lead and fill lines to incorporate into the band I play with. But since I just play lead, fill, and chord progressions, I'm never able to sit down and just play the guitar while I sing a song all the way through -- when I do play the songs I play with the band by themselves, it's just playing cool sounds, not actually a "song" -- it's just bits of fills, riffs, leads, and chord vamps. So my goal was to get this book, learn every song in it and because it DOES contain both guitars parts, it gives you the choice to write your own arrangements when you do sing and play without a band.The Wolf gives great anaylyses of the songs as he breaks down all the elements of the song, e.g., he'll describe that when guitar II plays on the bridge it's doing some country styled riffs, or guitar I for the intro borrows from a jazz style motif, etc... you get the idea. And the cd is excellently produced and recorded, you get the parts played at two speeds and the best part is all the other instruments are very accurately recorded on the left channel and the guitar on the right -- very cool! Want to see how well you have learned these parts? Just switch the balance all the way to the left channel and play along with the band -- what a great challenge.I learned and memorized "Black Bird" in one sitting -- guitar friends of mine had always told me it was an easy song to learn, but I had no idea how easy! Right now, I'm trying to learn "Julia" -- while conceptually a very simple song, since I've been playing electric lead, my finger picking has gotten very sloppy -- I'm determined to discipline myself to stick exactly to the Travis style picking they show in the book to hone my finger picking skills.My only gripe with the book, and I was originally going to give it only four stars for this, is that Wolf didn't include "Michelle", but I soon learned by surfing around on Amazon that Wolf has two other Beatle's books out and it's included on one of those -- so, what you have here is a little sublime marketing going on. To add insult injury, he included in this book, "Rocky Racoon" which has got to be the simplist Beatle guitar part. But as I thought about it, that's what makes this book cool, it can actually be used as a "learing to play guitar with the Beatles" If I ever decide to teach, I'll use this book -- it's got very beginner to more advanced stuff.As you can tell I highly recommend this book on all levels, but since there are so many Beatle's experts out there, I have to point out that I'm suspect to some of the transcriptions because many of the songs involve the use of a capo. I checked "The Beatles - Complete Scores" and some of the same titles in there do not use a capo. I've also heard that the Beatle's rarely used a capo -- to be honest I simply don't know what the truth is -- still, the transcriptions sound correct to me, then again, I haven't sat down anaylzing these particular titles against the record -- and without being able to separate the guitar parts out of the mix, I don't know if I'd be able to tell whether a capo was being used or not.Okay, I've rambled on enough, let me get back to perfecting "Julia!" Cheers!

When I was a kid - 14 years old in 1963 - the Beatles came along. This was not long after some pretty depressing times... The Cuban Missle crisis,the assassination of President Kennedy, the Racial unrest and conflicts in US cities. This was not a very happy time in the States. Those of us juststarting our teen years didn't have an awful lot of optimism for the future. We had a lot of fears, insecurities and doubts about the world in general.Enter the Beatles. A lot of people would question how a 'pop group with a new sound' could possibly have the charisma to change lives, bring hope,present possibilities, ignite imaginations. They redefined the concept of 'coming together' and showed a generation that 'there's nothing you cando that can't be done.' And that is what I, and millions of others, began to believe. What a ride it was. It wasn't perfect, it wasn't always successful,but it was a new way. I believe the Beatles music actually contributed to world peace. They bridged differences and united a generation; actually severalgenerations... They managed to unite countries, religions, thinking. No small achievement by a few young guys who could use the language of music in theireffort to find a common love in the most unlikely places.So this is me - a 61 year old, still strumming and humming along. I bought this particular Beatles music book, and it came with a CD of some of the guitarlicks and phrases that make their songs unique. It makes me smile to know that the stumbling along I did on my $25 guitar back in 1963 (with no talent or knowledge of how to play a guitar) turned out ok. I learned to play them by ear, by trial and error. And it was all exactly right.Was it worth it - the whole 4+ decades? Yes, it was. Thanks especially to Paul and Ringo, and John and George.PS - I highly recommend this simple book, and especially this seller, who was super nice and very professional.