Guide to British Music of the 1960s
February 1998
Book Review
Paul McCartney Many Years from Now
This is the authorised biography of Paul McCartney. The author Barry Miles was one of the partners in the Indica Galley and bookshop in the mid-1960s, a venture where Paul was very much involved. Therefore, he does know Paul very well and makes extensive use of recent interviews to give Paul McCartney's perspective on issues surrounding the Beatles.
This is not a full biography of McCartney's life, rather it focuses extensively on the Beatles years, life in 1960s London and his relationship with John Lennon. One of the most interesting aspects is the discussions about writing the Beatles' songs. There are put into the context of where and when they were written and by whom. While is it fairly widely acknowledged that songs were not always co-compositions, some clearly were and some had one dominant writer. There are two songs where there is some debate about who wrote them. Lennon has claimed to have had a greater hand in Eleanor Rigby than generally thought while McCartney takes some credit for In My Life, for me one of the greatest ever John Lennon songs. These are debates that will never be resolved. Many of the Beatles' musical experiments also tend to be thought to be more of Lennon's work but it was in fact McCartney who had been experimenting with tape loops before starting to incorporate them into Beatles' recordings. The book looks to redress the imbalance of Paul being second fiddle to Lennon's genius. Indeed, as the decade progressed it was Paul who gradually assumed the mantle of group leader. Lennon's own interest in the group appeared to decline as he moved towards drug dependence and later was more interested in Yoko than the group. John was gradually leaving the band while Paul attempted, ultimately in vain, to keep it together. This is graphically illustrated in the film Let It Be.
It was probably the earlier years that saw the tightest bond between Lennon and McCartney, either in Liverpool or later when Paul would drive from Central London to Lennon's Weybridge home to write or finish songs. Even if the contribution of either of them to the other's partly written song was little more than one line, the friendly competition between them ensured that the Beatles produced a volume and quality still unequalled. In addition, they started to shift the rules of popular music, not following the decade's styles but helping to dictate them, sounding contemporary and innovative despite the march of time and taste.
The descriptions of McCartney's life in the swinging London of the mid-1960s runs throughout the book. Once the Beatles' moved south, Paul was the one who immersed himself in the London arts and music scene, living in Marylebone with the Asher family, where many songs were written, and then later in St John's Wood. It was this exposure to different musical elements as well as his family upbringing that brought all in different styles and melodies to his compositions.
The book should be seen as the Beatles from the McCartney perspective. It takes quite a bit of reading being 650 pages but it never ceases to be enthralling, opening up new insights about the greatest musical act in history.
ISBN: 0805052496
First published 1997 by Secker & Warburg.