Note: Thank you to NetGalley, University of Minnesota Press, and Jonathan Cott for the advanced reader copy of the book. This review will also be posted on NetGalley. What follows is my unbiased review of the book.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney pretty much changed music as we know it. Their writing style and ability to compose a song was different from what had come before, even if the influences were much the same as other musicians of their era. Nowhere is that clearer than the double-A side single which contained the songs Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever.

Jonathan Cott was the last journalist to interview John Lennon, three days before he was shot and killed. He has been a music journalist and contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine and has authored numerous books. In Let Me Take You Down, he approaches those two songs as reflections of each other. Strawberry Fields Forever was written by John Lennon while Penny Lane was written by Paul McCartney. Both songs seem to lend themselves to the memories the two men have of growing up in Liverpool.

Cott details the events of the tour prior to the release of these songs, which led The Beatles to collectively decide to stop touring. The events were pretty harrowing, especially in the Philippines. After returning to England, John Lennon left to film his part in How I Won the War in Spain. It was there that he began writing Strawberry Fields Forever. Cott details how the isolation Lennon felt at the time likely contributed to the tone of the lyrics. Often something Lennon wrote would inspire McCartney, and that is where Penny Lane fit in. The record company chose to release it as a double-sided single, which was likely a big marketing mistake.

The first part of Let Me Take You Down covers all that led up to the recording of these songs as well as the technical aspects of recording it. In the second part of the book, Cott interviews five people about these songs: guitarist Bill Frisell, urban planner and musician Jonathan F. P. Rose, Jungian analyst Margaret Klenck, actor Richard Gere, and media artist and musician Laurie Anderson.

While I could appreciate the first part of the book, there wasn’t much there that was anything new. Much of the information is also available in The Beatles Anthology, and Cott cites it numerous times as a source. When I looked at the second half of the book, I initially thought it was going to be filler to just make the book longer. However, I was surprised by the insights into the music and what it meant to these very diverse people. Most of the time seems to be spent on Lennon’s Strawberry Fields Forever. Depending on who you listen to, there are many different ways to interpret the song. It seems to be the darkness of growing up in Liverpool while Penny Lane seems to be the lighter side. Or, as some say, Strawberry Fields Forever, with the idea of “take you down” is the representation of the underside of the city where “nothing is real” while Penny Lane represents the above-ground city with its “blue suburban skies.” This ended up being a lot more interesting than I thought it was going to be.

When I thought about how to rate Let Me Take You Down, I thought about a close friend of mine who is a huge Beatles fan. Would I tell her to buy this book? Would I tell her it’s something she needed to read? My answer is that I would not discourage her from buying it if she had an interest in it, but I don’t see it as something a Beatles fan has to have. I think it’s all right for what it is, but there’s also a lot of extraneous information in the book, as well as the troubling fact that, despite assuring readers at first that she’s not going to attempt to psychoanalyze John Lennon, Klenck seems to do just that.

I think this is a book that will appeal mostly to die-hard Beatles fans who feel the need to read everything about them. It’s not a bad book, but it’s just that much of the information is out there in other forms. I don’t remember ever reading the interview Cott did with John Lennon, so I will likely look that up after reading this. While the interviews were interesting and good, they seemed to have a lot more extraneous material than just interpretations and what the songs meant to them.