I realise that writing a blog about John & Paul – A Love Story in Songs probably puts me firmly into a certain age bracket, but I don’t care. I happily admit that I grew up loving The Beatles and that love has never faded. I still listen to their music and it always makes me smile. And even though I don’t usually read non-fiction, this book looked tempting enough to borrow from Oundle Library, and I’m glad I did. I thought it was terrific.
Ian Leslie is a psychologist, journalist, podcaster and author of several books on human behaviour, so writing a book about John Lennon and Paul McCartney might not seem an obvious next step. But, like me, he’s a lifelong fan of The Beatles and in this book, that love shines through.
It comprises a Prologue and 43 chapters, each of which considers one song (more or less) from the Lennon/McCartney catalogue. Describing it like that makes it sound bland and rather dull, but it isn’t, because Leslie looks at what was happening in John and Paul’s lives when they wrote the songs, and it’s this context that makes things come alive.
Take, for example, the chapter about Tomorrow Never Knows. We’re told that in 1966 Paul was the only unmarried Beatle, living in London, while the other three lived in Surrey. “John, Ringo and George and their partners ate together, smoked together, took acid together. Paul was a visitor, bringing news from the outside.” Against this backdrop Paul gives a mix tape of songs to the others, which sparked the creativity that led to the Revolver album. There’s a lot more in the chapter before Ian Leslie looks more closely at how Lennon and McCartney went on to write Tomorrow Never Knows.
Later on, Leslie covers the slow disintegration of the band, again by looking at the music they were making, and the deteriorating relationship of John and Paul. He then follows them after The Beatles had broken up, as each of them took their different paths. The book draws to a natural close after John’s murder on 8 December 1980, although there’s the final chapter ‘Here Today’ that tries to summarise how Paul dealt with the loss of his best friend over the following months and years.
In the Notes at the end of the book Ian Lesley explains that he didn’t interview Paul McCartney while he was writing this, for the very good reason that “Since I could have interviewed only one of the principals, I felt that to do so would have unbalanced the book.” Instead, he’s trawled through a wealth of written and recorded material – books, articles, interviews and more – not in an effort to think about what happened, but to think about why it happened. He acknowledges that by focusing on John and Paul he’s pushed George and Ringo to one side and admits he’s done them a disservice. Although at times I found that irritating, it doesn’t detract from what he’s written.
John & Paul – A Love Story in Songs is a detailed examination of songs and songwriting, but it’s never dull, because Ian Leslie has written something that’s both fascinating and readable. I wasn’t surprised to read that critics have described the book as ‘revelatory’. For anyone who loves The Beatles, I’d recommend this. It may sound as if it’s yet another book going over old ground, but I really wouldn’t describe it as that. It’s full of information and insights that – for me – shone new light on music that I love. 5 Stars.
Review by: Cornish Eskimo