We think we know John and Paul, but we really don’t.
With so many books already written about The Beatles, this claim, made by Ian Leslie in John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs (Faber), that few of the books contain real depth of insight, appears a bold one.
Yet in 43 enthralling chapters – each focused on a different song written by arguably the world’s most famous songwriting duo – Leslie sheds new light on the extraordinary relationship between John Lennon and Paul McCartney. With all its twists and turns, Leslie beautifully and movingly charts their love story, which began when they met as Liverpool teenagers in 1957, and ended only with Lennon’s murder in New York in 1980.
Yes, a love story. For Leslie – a fan since discovering his parents’ Beatles albums on vinyl as a child – it is a story that transcends our clumsy modern idea of the “bromance” and draws on Aristophanes and Montaigne to argue that Lennon and McCartney were more than friends, rivals or collaborators. They were intimates, who bonded in the wake of losing their mothers as teenagers; they were young men who longed to make an emotional connection with each other and with audiences. The pop song, of which they became master creators, was a vessel into which they poured feelings of grief, euphoria and everything in between.
When we speak via video call, Leslie tells me he certainly did not want to come across as arrogant in his opinion of previous books on the subject. “I felt I had to write this because I hadn’t read an emotionally perceptive book that really focused on the things that I find most fascinating about The Beatles: the alchemy of these four guys, and John and Paul in particular.
People got in touch to tell me how moved they were by it
“Many of the existing books don’t much bother with the music, or even seem that interested in it. That seems to me odd because these guys thought and felt in song – that’s how they processed things. If you want to understand them, you have to look at the songs. So I wanted to find a way of integrating the emotional narrative with the musical one.”
Contrary to the popular take on the Lennon and McCartney relationship as one of polar opposites, locked in rivalry, Leslie writes that their partnership, “even at its most competitive, was a duet, not a duel”. His assertion that their hard to categorise, “volatile, conflicted, madly creative marriage” has been deeply misunderstood is interesting in light of his previous books, which focus on aspects of human psychology; including Conflicted: Why Arguments Are Tearing Us Apart and How They Can Bring Us Together. The headline quote on Leslie’s website reads: “Instead of putting our differences aside, let’s put them to work.” We Can Work It Out, you might say.
While Leslie had not previously written a music book, he was encouraged to do so partly by the viral response to 64 Reasons to Celebrate Paul McCartney, a long-form Substack piece he wrote during lockdown. “People got in touch to tell me how moved they were by it.” So he composed a proposal for John & Paul but didn’t really expect a publisher to bite because of the sheer number of existing books on the band.
Yet even the most devoted Beatles fan will find delightful and surprising new gems of insight in John & Paul, such as Leslie’s thrilling descriptions of how perfectly Lennon and McCartney’s voices dovetail and harmonise; or his fascinating analysis of the complexities of the authorship of a song like In My Life.
In summary, I love the way the book re-infuses the reader with the sheer Scouse wonder of it all – that these kids from Liverpool, who couldn’t even read music, became, as Leslie puts it, “among the most important cultural voices of the 20th century”.
This post was originally published on here
