Having fun jamming with the greatest band of all time, the Fab Four! Enjoy this new take on their classic love IF I FELL from their 3rd studio album "A Hard Days Night" released on July 10, 1964.

Here's my personal website landing page - https://linktr.ee/cocoyclaravall

#sixties

Got home earlier tonight after a long day and three hours' worth of sleep the night before, following on the heels of three equally long days (and similarly short nights); finally caught up with three days' worth of BookLikes posts and am now dog-tired (again).

So I thought before logging off I'd just drop something here for the resident Beatles fans that I picked up the other day ... (the Brits may have seen it, but if not, I hope the above link is going to work even if you're not on LinkedIn -- I originally intended to post the video clip itself, but that doesn't seem to be working, either).  Anyway, enjoy!

I was 12 years old when the Beatles came to the US in 1964, a perfect age to become a Beatlemaniac.  In reading teen magazines prior to their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, my favorite was George.  But that changed the night of February 9, 1964, when glued to the TV set as were 73 million other people, I fell under Paul McCartney’s spell.  For the rest of the 60’s, I read anything and everything written about him and the other Beatles.  True Beatlemania had set in.

But over the years, I can’t say that I’ve read all that has been written and actually this is the first biography that I’ve read about Paul.  So I can’t compare it to other biographies about him and I can’t really say whether there’s new information contained in it or not.  A lot of it was old to me but a lot of it I didn’t know before reading this book.  What drew me to this particular book was that I had read that the author, Philip Norman, was quite against Paul in his 1980’s book “Shout”, saying that “John Lennon was three quarters of the Beatles” but has since then changed his opinion of Paul and wanted to set the record straight.

In this book, the author had tacit approval from Paul, meaning that, while Paul wasn’t actually cooperating in the writing of the book, he wasn’t interfering either and that opened doors to Mr. Norman.  At the end of the book, the author says that he uncovered a different McCartney than the world thought they knew, a man who was a perfectionist and a workaholic.  But that’s the McCartney I’ve come to “know” over the years.  How else could he have accomplished what he has?  So I didn’t actually discover a “new” Paul but rather the book confirmed what I already thought about him.

This is a very comprehensive biography, starting off with the births and upbringings of his parents and ending in present day.  The author is a very good storyteller and I found the book to be readable and entertaining.  I gulped when I first saw the 849-page figure on my e-reader but there are many photos (many of which I’ve never seen) and the book just flew by.  The author also does a fine job detailing the history behind many of Paul and John’s songs and the meaning of the lyrics, which I found to be very interesting.  All in all, it seems to be an honest portrayal of my fav Beatle and I enjoyed reading it.

This book was given to me by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.

I must state, right at the beginning, that I am an unabashed Beatles and Wings fan.  This is the music with which I grew up, and there was a time in my life when I devoured every word that was written about either band, and Paul McCartney in particular.  I thought I knew everything there was to know.

Except that I didn't ... and this book proves it.

McCartney speaks quite frankly to Scottish journalist Tom Doyle in this book, as do many of his former bandmates and friends.  He opens up about his nervous breakdown and constant battles with depression, largely crediting the late Linda McCartney for helping him get through those dark and difficult times.  There is a lot of discussion about his music, of course, and how the (largely  press-manufactured) battles between McCartney and John Lennon affected his work ... but there is also a lot to learn about his decision to get out of the proverbial rat race and live on a farm in Scotland, and how the isolation had a healing effect on him as well.

McCartney is both jocular and more than a little foul-mouthed (as one might expect from a fellow who grew up in a rough town like Liverpool), and is likewise pretty frank about how he sees some of the mistakes he made over the years. 

Some of the things that surprised me the most were learning about how lean the post-Beatles years really were, with so much of the band's money tied of in litigation.  McCartney lived in a house with dirt floors, for example.  Wings sideman Denny Laine, the former lead singer for the Moody Blues, was homeless and sleeping on a mattress in his manager's office when McCartney asked him to come to Scotland to work on a project.  No one was rolling in the proverbial dough, and yet the creative impulse was still flowing strong.

This is the kind of book that I recommend not only for Beatles fans, but for those who tend to think of the recording industry as being way more glamorous than it really is.  I feel like I gained a great deal of insight into McCartney via this book ... as well as an understanding that it is really only the tip of the iceberg.

This is a great interview, which will be treasured by true Beatles' fans.  Interesting, funny, entertaining, insightful, irreverent, and more.  I loved it.