This is an iconic duo in an epically iconic band.
The Beatles created music you have had in your head since childhood reveal new and unsuspected shades of meaning 50 years later. Beatles songs aren’t like most pop songs; instead of fading, they take on a richer color and nuance with time, not least because new generations of fans inquire more deeply into what previous listeners might have overlooked or simply misunderstood. One twist of the kaleidoscope and a song we thought we knew suddenly sounds even better than it did the first 100 times we heard it.
The author argues that there was “no John without Paul, and vice versa”.
This is about the songwriting partnership of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and the unprecedented peaks the two of them scaled in remaking English popular music. This is about going deeper than the myth about the pair--he tries to figure out what their chemistry was and why it fell apart. After the Beatles finally disbanded, the author challenges the consensus that formed that Paul was the straight man to John’s rebel bohemian – vanilla against brimstone – which hardened into holy writ on Lennon’s murder in 1980. Their collaboration was as tight and co-dependent as two climbers roped together on a mountain face. They each went on to do more but there was never the same magic, and this is an interesting take on what that was all about.
