I recently finished reading John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs. I thoroughly enjoyed this book by Ian Leslie about the writing collaboration and partnership between John Lennon and Paul McCartney. I’ve been a fan of The Beatles for over 15 years now, and they became one of my favorite bands. This book added a lot of insight and depth to my understanding of their songwriting craft, the development of the Beatles, the breakup, and aftermath of the 70’s as well as John Lennon’s murder in 1980.
The Beatles are fascinating to be me for several reasons. The way they took the world by storm and completely changed the face of popular and rock music. There is a clear line before The Beatles and after The Beatles. I also just find the voices and songs to be enjoyable to listen to. There’s also a mystery to The Beatles. Although they had been together from roughly 1957, their time as a band in the public eye was ony about 6 short years, but in that brief time they revolutionized music, and then just as quickly, they burned out.
It’s hard to see how much they changed music from the standpoint of today. One of the things I did was made an Apple Music playlist of notable songs from the book, which include songs written and performed by groups that inspired The Beatles. It gives you a really good window into what the music was like and how much what The Beatles did was not simply copying these previous acts, but taking the sounds and making them their own. Although you can’t capture it perfectly, you can at least get some sense of what it might have been like to listen to them at the time and see how they changed things.
You also see the aftermath of the breakup and how John and Paul’s music changed after. The songs they wrote reflected their frayed relationship and also show how much what they wrote together was something that was truly greater than the sum of its parts. Although their solo music is good, I’ve never found myself able to enjoy it as much as I do the songs they produced together. It was nice though to read how they were able to overcome their differences and have something close to a decent relationship before John Lennon was killed. It is us who are unfortunate that we will never hear them together performing again and crafting new songs together. But we are lucky to have so much music that they did make together.