Paul McCartney’s natural instinct at age 14 was to start writing songs, and he’s never stopped. In the 1960s, McCartney changed the world forever as part of The Beatles, co-writing, singing, and playing some of the most legendary songs of all time.
This month, Paul McCartney has released his much-anticipated book “The Lyrics.” In the book the Beatle recounts his life and art by diving into 154 songs from all stages of his lustrious, decade-spanning career.
“The act of writing songs is a unique experience, unlike anything else I know,” said McCartney in the foreword to his new book.
The Beatles began writing songs for their fans, who, at the time, were mostly young girls, like “From me to You” or “Love Me do.” McCartney recalls in “The Lyrics” that, “as we matured, we became aware that we could take songwriting in other directions, often to another level, which meant writing songs for ourselves.”
The book highlights lyrics from 1956 to present, from all stages of Paul’s career with songs including “Blackbird,” “Live and Let Die,” “Hey Jude,” “Band on the Run,” and “Yesterday.” It even includes a set of lyrics to an unrecorded Beatles song “Tell Me Who He Is.” During the writing of the book, the hand-written lyrics were discovered in one of McCartney’s notebooks. They are believed to date back to the early ’60s.
Showcasing many treasures from the musician’s archive, the book — which is edited and introduced by the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon — includes hand written lyric sheets, unseen personal photographs (including a handful taken in East Hampton, like the one featured on our cover), drafts, and drawings. Each song is accompanied by a commentary by McCartney, shining a unique light onto his creative process.
“I hope that what I’ve written will show people something about my songs and my life which they haven’t seen before. I’ve tried to say something about how the music happens and what it means to me and I hope what it may mean to others too,” said McCartney, an 18-time Grammy winner, in a statement.
While there has never been an autobiography by McCartney, “Fans or readers, or even critics, who want to learn more about my life should read my lyrics, which might reveal more than any single book about The Beatles could do,” he shares.
“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,” said McCartney. “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.”
The book reveals the process and many of the people behind some of the most famous songs of all time, from his earliest compositions through his time with The Beatles and Wings to today.
“Based on conversations I had with Paul McCartney over a five year period, these commentaries are as close to an autobiography as we may ever come. His insights into his own artistic process confirm a notion at which we had but guessed — that Paul McCartney is a major literary figure who draws upon, and extends, the long tradition of poetry in English,” said Muldoon.
“Muldoon is a poet. Like me, he is into words and understands the poetics of words — how the lyrics themselves become their own form of music that can become even more magical when paired with a melody,” wrote McCartney.
As they were writing the book, McCartney describes that, “Long-dormant memories were stirred up, and new meanings and patterns suddenly emerged.”
“I never thought I would want to analyse these lyrics, many from back in the 1960s and ’70s. Many of them I hadn’t thought about in years, and many I hadn’t played in concert for decades. But with Paul as a sounding board, it became a challenge — and a very pleasant one — to revisit the songs and pick them apart, to discover patterns that I never knew were there,” McCartney stated.
McCartney, a Hamptons homeowner for decades, was born in Liverpool in 1942. In 1997 Paul McCartney was knighted by Queen Elizabeth for his services to music.
Jump to the more recent, McCartney released the Grammy winner for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album, “Kisses on the Bottom” (featuring “My Valentine”). He joined forces with Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic and Pat Smear of Nirvana on “Cut Me Some Slack” from the feature film “Sound City.” He released “Only One,” recorded by Kanye West and McCartney, and “FourFiveSeconds,” a collaboration with Rihanna and West. In 2016, he was named as the UK’s most successful album artist of all time.
McCartney’s lifelong commitment to charitable work includes decades worth of philanthropic activities for PETA, The Liverpool Institute For Performing Arts, One Voice, The Vegetarian Society, Nordoff Robbins and Adopt-A-Minefield — as well as his participation in historic benefit concerts including Live Aid in 1985, The Concert for New York City in 2001, Live 8 in 2005 and 12-12-12.
To accompany the new book, the British Library is hosting a free display entitled “Paul McCartney: The Lyrics,” on view through March 13, which will celebrate the songwriter and performer and feature previously unseen lyrics from his personal archive.
