The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present

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Nuorena kuolleen äidin rooli sanoituksissa on suuri, samoin Linda-vaimon. Nämä teemat alkavat kirjan mittaan jo toistua turhankin paljon. Avioeroon päättynyttä liittoa Heather Millsin kanssa ei mainita sanallakaan. Tällainen valikointi on tietysti täysin sallittua, mutta hieman rapauttaa rehellisyyden vaikutelmaa. It is heavy. If they’d tried to make it one volume it would have been unmanageable. The sleeve is nice. (This part reminds me of The Complete Far Side, 1980–1994. It also needs two volumes in a sleeve. So did the The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, 2 Vols w/Reading Glass. I am keeping the former for forever if I can. I just recently gave up the latter after owning it for over 50 years. It had sentimental value but was 50 years out of date and didn’t make the cut of only about 1,200 books left out of an original estimated 15,000.) In between each song were these incredible photographs, many never before seen, many taken by Linda, and some very cool handwritten lyrics and notes. (Paul has great handwriting on top of being the most talented songwriter of our time.) I listened to the song while reading each entry. There were not nearly enough songs from Ram included in the collection, but I did discover a few hidden (to me) gems from Wings and his solo work--Daytime Nighttime Suffering, Jenny Wren, Arrow Through Me, Great Day, Happy With You ...all those were new for me! Some songs were better than others, but I suppose he is proud of his more recent work too and wanted to highlight it and not make it too heavily focused on the 60s and 70s (though I wouldn't have minded if it was.) Even if you are a Paul fan, it is difficult to listen to his songs without noticing a fairly steep drop off in quality after he left the Beatles. The contrast highlights something that every Beatles fan knows: the interaction between the four of them—most especially, between John and Paul—are what made the group so special. Paul himself admits this. John Lennon is a constant presence in this book; their partnership (and friendship) was clearly the defining event in his life. The breakup of the Beatles hit Paul like a divorce (complete with legal squabbles and petty insults); and much as the divorced dad must learn to cook, Paul had to learn to write songs without the input of his great friend and partner.

British Library announces free display celebrating the songwriter and performer featuring original lyrics and photographs from the book. Neither lyrics nor commentary will be studied quite as closely as the pictures of Paul looking fabulous for more than 50 years I found this striking and think this encompasses who Paul is. He's forever the optimist, and he's the one who was concerned with giving The Beatles a proper send-off with "Golden Slumbers"/"Carry That Weight"/"The End" at the end of Abbey Road. He was and is keenly aware of the legacy that this little band from Liverpool has had, and it seems to me that he sees himself as the protector of that legacy. It is more a blessing than a burden, and frankly, Paul is a global treasure. A trivial example is enough to illustrate the value in their collaboration. Paul released his song “Teddy Boy” on his first solo album. The version on that album is nice enough; it is a catchy tune. Yet, if you ask me, the practice version recorded by the Beatles during the “Let it Be” sessions is significantly better—partly because of the musicianship of Ringo and George, and partly because John improvises a silly vocal part (mostly nonsense) that helps to add a much-needed counterpoint to Paul’s lyrics. By itself, Paul’s song is a fairly inane tale of a boy and his mother, not dramatic enough to be moving; yet re-contextualized by John’s ironic commentary, Paul’s lyrics take on a comic aspect that helps to salvage the song.Sir Paul has arranged 154 favourite compositions alphabetically, with lots of glossy photos. But in the essays that accompany each song, his underlying purpose is to affirm his status as a writer ... what fan will not enjoy a meander that feels like a long private audience with one of the Fab Four? Economist Everything I do seems to be painted with 'Beatle', and there is always some sort of echo that comes from that echo chamber...Some might regard this as a burden, and some celebrities, like Greta Garbo, have become hermits, but I'm very happy about it all because I think it was a great thing we achieved and I'm very proud of it... More often than I can count, I’ve been asked if I would write an autobiography, but the time has never been right. The one thing I’ve always managed to do, whether at home or on the road, is to write new songs. I know that some people, when they get to a certain age, like to go to a diary to recall day-to-day events from the past, but I have no such notebooks. What I do have are my songs, hundreds of them, which I’ve learned serve much the same purpose. And these songs span my entire life" - Paul

There is also lots of great additional material including biographical info, many photos of people and works in progress, and so much else. In addition to the song lyrics, it works as a biography, as a book on the creative process, etc. Different readers will focus on different parts and take away different things from the reading experience. Finally, his politics bore me. I mean, the anti-Trump nonsense? This last year under Biden has been a real disaster, worse than any leader in any nation in the free world has ever been. And while Paul endorses the left, he admits that he has enough money to help family with medical problems so they can get immediate access to the best doctors without having to wait 6 months, which is the problem with socialist medicine. See Paul's a true capitalist - buying song rights and healthcare - while espousing socialism for the rest of us, which is the problem I have with politics in general, so better to say nothing at all. The book will reveal the never-before-seen lyrics to an unrecorded Beatles song titled 'Tell Me Who He Is'. In THE LYRICS: 1956 to the Present Paul recounts his life and art through the prism of 154 songs from all stages of his career. The Lyrics is edited and introduced by the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon. From All My Loving to Your Mother Should Know, the former Beatle illuminates a life spent puzzling how to get from the beginning of a song to its end David Hepworth, Observer

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I found it worthwhile to listen to the song on YouTube whilst reading the lyrics to a song. All his songs are on YouTube. He has written some superb love songs, ‘for example, ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’, ‘Here, there and everywhere’, ‘Warm and Beautiful’, and ‘Somedays’, and some of his other songs are also lyrically very well done, for example, ‘Eleanor Rigby’, ‘Penny Lane’ and ‘Let it Be’. The problem, which only strikes you on lifting the second weighty volume, is how are you supposed to actually read a thing like this? By this point you’re into N, where Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five will be followed by No More Lonely Nights, The Note You Never Wrote and Nothing Too Much Just Out of Sight, and there’s no narrative arc to carry you along. Whilst he has included songs published in the last 40 years, it is the songs written between 1956 and 1980, and his comments about his life during this time period that I found particularly interesting. He is a bird watcher, lost his drivers licence for a year for speeding too often, painted a large shed roof, sheared sheep, bought his first guitar on a loan scheme, lived in his girlfriend’s family home in the attic room where there was a piano, met Bertrand Russell by phoning the famous philosopher and arranging to meet Russell. It's lovely to hear all about these songs that have become the playlist of my life. Some stories a committed Beatles fan would knows. And there is a bit of repetition. But damn is it worth it with the insane amount of new stories and anecdotes Paul brings in. I cannot help but realise that so much of what I do is still entangled with the fact that I was in The Beatles. In fact, I say to people that I still am in The Beatles. Well, maybe not in The Beatles, but I'm still a 'Beatle'. The philosophy we had was, and remains, very attractive; it's a whole-world picture - an insistence on the freedom of creative thought that we discovered and that I still love...And a lot of the Beatles stuff still is amazingly timely, so I'm happy to bathe in it. (p.618)