I'm a beginner guitarist and cannot claim a great depth of experience with guitar tab books, but I have to say I've had a lot of fun with this book and I feel "The Beatles Guitar" has suffered from some poor and inaccurate reviews, likely scaring away some worthy buyers.
I bought this as my first tab book on a whim at a local guitar store and was immediately crushed to come home and read here the few but mostly negative reviews here, claiming the songs are for beginners only (sniff); not in the right key; poorly coordinated with the actual songs etc. I patiently put it aside untouched with plans to return it and ordered the very highly rated Best of The Beatles for Acoustic Guitar (Guitar Signature Licks) using PRIME. Well...be forewarned that not only does that book have far fewer songs, the scores are not fully fleshed out..they only provide enough background to explain how they are arranged (i.e. the songs are not even complete). To boot, they are not at all beginner-friendly and written for multiple guitars.
So...not having returned this version yet I cautiously decided to try a couple of the songs and whatta ya know... I had a blast! I tagged about eight songs, mostly from the earlier Beatles catalog, as they tend to be simpler, and let my fingers find new calluses to make these songs play well. I've even used the tabs to get a little finger picking in between the chords, and find that to be pretty well done too. But...there's another book around here that tops 'em all... The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook (Guitar Chord Songbook), which I've been feeling was my Holy Grail to overcome all the bad criticism this book is getting slammed for.
Thanks to Father's Day and an Amazon Wishlist I received the "Chord Songbook" and jumped right in. It really is a great book and maybe over time I will reach for it more times than Beatles Guitar, if for anything because it has so many more songs. But I just did a random scan of the same songs in each book and have to point out that the previous reviewer's dissing Beatles Guitar for dumbing down the songs is just plain wrong. From the songs I compared the keys are the same; capo positions are the same; chord placement and usage is the same (barring an occasional slight variant for the more complicated ones) and the lyrics are accurate too.
If anything, "The Beatles Guitar" provides even more info by listing the notes, tabs and strum patterns, so if you are not completely familiar with a song (not many aren't), this will help you out a lot. Try and figure out "Blackbird" without tabs, for instance.
Lastly, in the intro the book itself tells you they have taken some liberties with the original arrangements so that a solo guitarist can replicate some of the bass and drum sounds to give a listener a more complete song experience. Perhaps they have, but I haven't found that to be an extreme case.
If you've gotten through this long-winded diatribe thank you very much and we now return you to finding the right Beatles book for your level of playing. Don't count this one out too quickly. It has a lot of songs and a lot of good information. Best of luck.
