How many more books about The Beatles, separately or as a unit, can we endure? And after Paul McCartney’s 2021 semi-autobiographical book, The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, is it sensible to expect that even the most avid Beatles/McCartney fan would want to sift through more than 700 pages of what might be considered yet another tranche of regurgitated history, quotes, interviews, and deep dives into his songwriting?
From the outset, US music writer Allan Zozinn (formerly with the New York Times for almost 40 years) and Emmy-nominated UK researcher and documentary maker Adrian Sinclair, stake their claim as to why this book, which took eight years to complete, exists. Despite the “ripping yarn about four colourful, supremely talented young men who made the most stunning pop music of the 20th century and changed the way generations saw, understood and responded to the world”, The Beatles as an enclosed entity are a no-go zone, a perfectly reasonable strategy considering the sharp focus of Zozinn and Sinclair throughout the book.
There is, however, if not advance warning, then certainly advice, for anyone bar the most fanatical McCartney completist: sections of the book (notably those that document recording sessions) are so exhaustive it’s almost like swimming through treacle to get to something that little bit more interesting. Similarly, depending on what your thoughts are on specifics about publishing credits, you will either be fascinated or anaesthetised when you read the likes of “both labels carry a production credit for Paul and Linda McCartney, and publishing credits for the McCartney-McCartney songs list both Northern Songs (or Maclen, on American pressings) ... and a new publisher called Kidney Punch Music.” Lingering over or swiftly avoiding such details may be par for the course here for the committed or fair-weather fan, but you certainly can’t fault the co-authors for lack of digging.
Beginning at the break-up of The Beatles in 1969 and ending with Paul McCartney and Wings’ 1973 album, Band on the Run, McCartney’s post-Beatles life is thoroughly charted. From his recuperative time spent at his farm in Scotland (where Linda nursed him through a depressive, self-medicating phase), the writing/recording of his 1970 self-titled debut solo album and its 1971 follow-up, Ram, to forming Wings, and the release of that band’s 1971 debut, Wild Life (and subsequent albums up to Band on the Run), the detail and exploration is impressive as it is (seemingly) infinite.
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That the book works as an often compelling read is down to Sinclair’s research. Perhaps inevitably, McCartney declined to be interviewed, and while (Zozinn writes) it would have been useful to have had him around to explain certain aspects and/or clarify particular discrepancies, “our archives include thousands of radio and television interviews, and tens of thousands in print”. Factor in contemporary media interviews, thousands of previously unpublished documents (including diaries, legal papers, contracts, studio recordings data) and hundreds of interviews with “musicians, managers, recording engineers, producers, roadies”) and you get as fully rounded if dry a picture of a four-year period as you are ever likely to.
Any surprises? Highlights include an interesting snippet about McCartney’s first protest song, Give Ireland Back to the Irish, which was written and recorded two days after the events of January 30th in Derry, where 26 civilians were shot (14 of whom died) by British soldiers during a protest march against the presence of British military forces in Northern Ireland. The events of Bloody Sunday clawed at McCartney’s Irish roots to inspire him to write the song. “I always used to think,” he is quoted from a Rolling Stone interview (and referencing his former Beatles’ band mate, John Lennon), “that John’s crackers, doing all of these political songs, but this song came easily to me ... I chose to say something.” Another morsel (expertly sourced from Colin Harper and Trevor Hodgett’s 2004 book, Irish Folk, Trad and Blues: A Secret History) details Wings’ Northern Irish guitarist Henry McCullough calling McCartney a “c**t.”
Written in mostly documentarian style, for music so frequently examined the lack of critical analysis, is especially welcome (“I could probably go for very, very long periods without hearing Mary Had a Little Lamb again”, Kozinn said in a recent Los Angeles Times interview, to which we can surely all agree). A second volume, covering the years 1974-’80, is scheduled for publication in December 2024. Keep still thy beating, rock’n’roll heart ...
