Lennon and McCartney: Together Alone: A Critical Discography of their Solo Work Book

I really hated Paul McCartney as a kid. I thought he was the lame Beatle, the wimpy Beatle, the one hiding behind a smile and a smirk while John Lennon changed the world with his bold ideas and George Harrison defied the wealthy in favor of spiritual quests and Ringo Starr just took in and healed all of the loneliness and pain of teenage life on earth with his big, sad eyes.

Having grown up a lot in the past thirty five years, I was really impressed by this book and all it reveals about Paul's real achievements as a Beatle and a man. I never knew that Paul, like John, lost a mother at an early age. But while John was running around punching out little old ladies and bullying helpless cripples in order to "forget" Paul was actually trying to make something of himself musically. This book provides a fascinating analysis of how differently the two of them operated -- Paul was an effortless mimic who could pick up any instrument, or singing style, and duplicate it perfectly within weeks. Whereas John tended to just sound like himself and to hell with anyone who didn't like it!

The best passage about their songwriting was something like, "but while Paul wanted to woo the audience with melody, John wanted to jar them. His goal was to get in their faces and tell them exactly how he felt -- and to force them to feel something too." How these two opposite approaches resulted in the greatest rock and roll music ever made is an amazing story. And the author really breaks things down, going into the nuts and bolts work in the studio. He outlines how "Come Together" began as just a few lines of surrealistic poetry John made up while stoned out of his mind, but later became an elaborate musical tapestry of whining guitars and shivering drums which was largely orchestrated by Paul. (Though it's also interesting to note the extent to which John, George and even Ringo ultimately came to resent Paul's tendency to "direct" them in the studio.)

Altogether a fascinating book -- one of the best rock biographies I have read!