Tag Archives: Beatles Books

Paul McCartney: Music Is Ideas (Vol.1) 1970-1989 – A Review

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Let’s get this straight up front. Luca Perasi’s Paul McCartney: Music Is Ideas – The Stories Behind the Songs (Vol.1) 1970-1989 is a big, weighty tome. It is way more book in real life than you might imagine from seeing it pictured on the web. At over 520 pages Music Is Ideas is thick and packed with tons of useful information. Its an obvious labour of love into which he’s poured an enormous amount of thought, hard work and creative effort.

Obviously Music Is Ideas serves as a very handy adjunct to McCartney’s own award-winning, two-volume set The Lyrics (published in 2021) which covers off a selection of just 154 songs from Paul’s earliest boyhood compositions, his Beatle days, some Wings songs, and solo work to the present day. Perasi’s book however extends and amplifies this with it’s aim (eventually in subsequent volumes) to detail absolutely every post-Beatle composition we know of. This first installment – Volume 1 – closely examines 296 released songs, plus a further 50 unreleased works. It should be said too that The Lyrics is a book Luca Perasi knows extremely well. It was he who officially co-authored the translation for the Italian market.

Music Is Ideas is also a natural partner to the terrific Allan Kozin and Adrian Sinclair release published just at the end of last year, The McCartney Legacy – Volume 1 1969-1973. While that work deals more with the day-to-day life of McCartney (and so far only goes up 1973), these two books together will provide the reader, collector, or anyone even vaguely interested in popular music and the process of songwriting with an in-depth examination of the life and work of one of our most important creative artists.

And let’s not forget Perasi’s previous runs on the board in the form of his 2014 book Paul McCartney: Recording Sessions 1969-2013 – A Journey Through Paul McCartney’s Songs After The Beatles, and his work with McCartney’s MPL company with additional research for the recent The 7″ Singles Box Set. So, there’s no question – this guy knows his stuff.

As mentioned, this latest book includes all the songs released by McCartney on album or as singles, plus side projects or songs written or co-written by him between 1970 and 1989. In other words, everything from McCartney to Flowers In The Dirt. That’s a total of 296 entries. This includes songs he didn’t write himself but has recorded (think Choba b CCCP), plus songs composed and recorded during the preparation of particular albums but maybe not released until much later. These are clustered together at appropriate points in the timeline so as not to be missed. In addition there are 50 completely unreleased songs detailed. There is also an index and a bibliography at the end which is always good to see.

Each entry deals with the story behind the song in detail: its inspiration, the demos that were recorded, as well as the studio recordings themselves. How were they made? Where was each song recorded? Are there alternative versions? And on which album or albums does the work appear?

As you read it becomes clear that Perasi tries to cover off five main aspects for each entry. He begins with an analysis of the songwriting technique employed by McCartney for the particular work – in other words how the song came into being in the first place, and by which means.

A second analysis is around the genre utilized. Paul McCartney’s vast catalogue ranges across experimental and rock’n’roll, to traditional music hall and classical. Over the years he’s dabbled in reggae, blues, folk, country, disco, children’s music and new wave, a huge array of influences – sometimes following but also often leading the way with avant-garde and electronic sounds. So, what are the influences? These are mentioned in each entry.

The third examination in each entry is how Paul worked in the studio to get the recording down. The Beatle years were a steep learning curve for him of discovering just what could be achieved in the studio and how to use the studio as an instrument in itself. So, what were the processes for each recording. These are touched on in each entry in the book.

Fourthly comes an accounting of the instrumentation used on each track. McCartney is well-known as a master of many instruments – not the least of which is his own voice. There is an in-depth look in each entry at who played what, and how. Specific attention is paid to the many vocal influences and techniques employed too. What is the style at play in any given song?

Lastly there’s consideration paid to the lyrics. What is the song about? How has it been written? What is McCartney’s main theme? Perasi breaks down each of the songs in an effort to understand and appreciate the poetry (and sometimes call out the doggerel!) for each entry.

Let’s take one example to illustrate for you what a typical entry might involve. A prime candidate is that quintessential McCartney song from the 1970s – ‘Silly Love Songs’.

This is entry 126 (on page 233) of Music is Ideas. Composition is credited to Paul and Linda. We learn in the first instance that the basic track was put down at Abbey Road Studios on January 16, 1976 with just guide vocals and piano from Paul and drums by Joe English being recorded. Overdubs were added during February. The engineer was Peter Henderson. A faster tempo version that is quite different appears on Give My Regards to Broad Street in 1984, there’s a live version on Wings Over America (1976), and its also appeared on the compilation albums Wings Greatest (1978), All The Best! (1987), Wingspan (2001), Pure McCartney (2016), and as a single in the The 7″ Singles Box (2022). Oh, and a demo alternate version appears on the 2014 release Wings At The Speed of Sound – Archive Collection. This demo is important as it clearly shows – which Perasi expands upon in his entry – that ‘Silly Love Songs’ was already a completely well-defined song. All the different melodies characteristic of the final version are in place. We also learn that, according to an unofficial source, McCartney had second thoughts about the initial arrangement and that a reggae version was tried out but put aside!

Then follows an in depth examination. ‘Silly Love Songs’, Parasi writes, is “…a prime example of McCartney’s polyphonic art, here using a contrapuntal technique, piling three different melodies on top of each other over the same chord pattern. The song….masterfully alternates between verses, chorus, bridge and instrumental breaks, while concentrating on a bass line that is technically simple but full of invention and which binds the whole track together….”

There’s then an explanation of how the song was arranged and how the horn and string arrangements (by Tony Dorsey) were added. Another interesting sidelight for me was that ‘Sha La La’, a hit for soul singer Al Green in 1974, was probably an inspiration: “The link between the two is clear in many respects, such as the horn and string arrangements as well as the melodic and jagged bass line.” True.

The single was a huge hit around the world, reaching number 1 on the Billboard charts in the US, and was also number 1 in Canada and in Ireland. In the UK it peaked at number 2. (Incidentally, it only got to number 20 here in Australia!)

And so similar information is provided for each of the 296 song entries. There’s also a mix of shorter and longer entries for the 50 unreleased tracks, making this book is a great companion as you listen to your Paul McCartney collection.

It all adds up to an intriguing mix of information that truly demonstrates that music is indeed about ideas, and that the prolific Paul McCartney is never short of them.

Music Is Ideas – The Stories Behind the Songs (Vol.1) 1970-1989 is guaranteed to inform, stimulate, and lead to further exploration of the music.

Highly recommended. Bring on Volume 2!

Find out a whole lot more at: www.mccartney-musicisideas.it/

Luca is already working on the next in the series, in fact the whole series is mapped out as follows:

– Paul’s discography (Vols. 1 and 2)
– Collaborations and appearances on other people’s records (Vol. 3)

Volume 2 is expected mid 2024, and Volume 3 is due mid 2025.

A Beatle Book Bonanza in 2023

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We appear to be in something of an avalanche of Beatle books at the moment with lots of titles either out now, about to be released, or in the longer-term pipeline.

A couple of Paul McCartney books available right now are The McCartney Legacy Volume 1 1969-73 (see our review of this terrific book here), and another new one called Paul McCartney: Music Is Ideas – The Stories Behind the Songs (Vol.1) 1970-1989.

This is by Luca Perasi, whose previous work on McCartney was the highly-regarded Recording Sessions (1969-2013). Luca was also one of the two official Italian translators of the singer’s own book The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, and last year he collaborated with MPL on the label details for McCartney’s epic The 7” Singles Box release. So, he knows his stuff. Keep an eye out for our review of his new book Paul McCartney: Music Is Ideas here soon.

Another one we’ve been informed about but haven’t seen as yet is The Beatles On The Charts. This is by Michael Ventrella who has combed through nearly 60 years of Billboard to compile a list of every song and album that made an appearance in that fabled magazine’s music charts. The end result is an intriguing look at the band’s influence, including their solo efforts. Ventrella assigns points to the positions of each song and album in order to create a list ranging from the least successful to the most successful. Each entry includes a picture of the album cover or single sleeve, along with an analysis of the song or album. It looks like it’d make a great reference book to have in the library:

Looking ahead to June 13 there is 1964: Eyes of the Storm – Photographs and Reflections by Paul McCartney. This features a selection of Paul McCartney’s own photographs and memories from six of the key cities visited by The Beatles across the year 1964. It captures the craziness of the band’s intense life on the road as they steadily rose to fame, with many never-before-seen portraits and snapshots of John, George and Ringo.

As with McCartney’s 2021 book, The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, a special, extremely limited boxed and cloth-bound edition (175 copies worldwide) of 1964: Eyes of the Storm has been made available as part of an effort to support independent booksellers. You’ll have to be fast and have deep pockets to secure one of these. Check out your local independent store to see if they scored a copy and how they intend to sell it:

In October comes Bruce Spizer’s latest installment in his Beatles Album Series and it is now available for pre-order. The book, the seventh to be published in the series, covers the albums Please Please Me and With The Beatles, as well as their associated singles and the American albums Introducing The Beatles and Meet The Beatles!

And finally worth noting, for release later in the year (November 14 to be precise), is the much-anticipated book by respected author Kenneth Womack on the life and times of famous Beatle roadie, friend, fixer, confidante, and sometimes co-composer, Mal Evans.

This one will be worth the wait as it is an authorised biography, with Womack being given access by the Evans estate to Mal’s diaries and the treasure trove of his vast, never before seen archive including hundreds of drawings and photographs, memorabilia and ephemera from inside the Beatle camp. Living the Beatles Legend: The Untold Story of Mal Evans is published by Harper Collins’ Dey Street Books. Pre-orders for are currently available on Amazon here. Tantalizingly, it will be followed in 2024 with a fully illustrated version. Cannot wait for that one.

Of course if you’re interested in Beatles books generally you must listen to The Beatles Books Podcast. It’s available on Apple Podcast, Spotify and Podbean, or wherever you get good podcasts. Host Joe Wisbey regularly chats to a wide variety of Beatle authors and writers and it is always interesting and informative as he seeks to discover what inspired them to add their particular entry into the 1000’s of books about The Beatles out there. Check it out.

The McCartney Legacy, Volume 1, 1969-73 – A Review

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Cool cover, huh?

That cover is a harbinger of what is contained inside.

Let’s get straight to the point – this is one of the best studies of Paul McCartney and his solo music you are going to find. Epic and essential, full stop.

The McCartney Legacy by Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair is the first installment of what will become a multi-volume set. As its subtitle suggests, Volume 1 captures the life of McCartney in the years 1969-1973. That’s immediately following the dissolution of the Beatles, a period in which he had to recreate himself as both a person and a performer. In musical terms, this first volume takes us from the LP McCartney through to Band On The Run.

This book is a seriously in-depth and revealing exploration of McCartney’s creative and personal life. The thought and research that has gone into it is immediately evident. But it’s not scholarly and cold in tone (as some highly researched books can be). It’s actually a real page-turner! Kozinn and Sinclair write in a conversational and descriptive style that belies the hundreds of interviews, extensive ground-up research, and the thousands of never-before-seen documents they’ve trawled to give us a very approachable and personal story. They are very good storytellers and it is almost guaranteed that every couple of pages you will learn something you didn’t know about Paul McCartney and his music.

Kozinn and Sinclair initially set out to do a book about McCartney’s solo time in the studio, detailing recording dates, personnel, etc. – a bit like Mark Lewisohn’s 1988 book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, but looking at Paul’s solo career. However, following a couple of interviews with former Wings drummer Denny Seiwell and the discovery of a treasure trove of additional information that he had, the pair decided to change tack and broaden the scope of their book considerably.

Once you read this book you’ll have a renewed insight into the music McCartney created across this period. In fact with the clever connections the authors make and the stories they tell you’ll never be able to hear some songs in the same light again. Take for example ‘Another Day’. In late 1970 and early 1971 the song was being recorded and worked on as part of the preparations for the album Ram. But Paul, knowing that in February 1971 he had coming up a key court date in the messy ‘divorce’ proceedings that were under way with his former band mates, wanted a new single to be out and played on the radio to coincide with his and Linda’s court appearance. He settled on that single being ‘Another Day’ to send a subtle message that nothing could faze him. Despite his life and business dealings being publicly picked over, for him this was just another day: “It’s just another day, du-du-du-du-du, it’s just another daaaaaay!”

Alongside the copious information on every page there are many illustrative photographs and memorabilia scattered throughout as well, as are frequent breakout boxes containing the aforementioned dates detailing his recording sessions.

If this truly is the first of a multi-volume set, let’s hope that subsequent volumes arrive much faster than Lewisohn’s 2013 biography of The Beatles. Ten years later we are still waiting for Volume 2 of his epic…..

Kozinn and Sinclair however say they’re well under way with preparations for The McCartney Legacy Volume 2. It should be in stores in late 2024. It will cover the years 1974 – 1980. We can’t wait to read the next installment!

Volume 1 is getting rave reviews. The only criticism of it we’ve seen so far is that the font used is a bit small and spindly to read! (FYI it looks like a slight variation of a font called Brandon Text Light).

You can read a generous extract of The McCartney Legacy here to see if you like what you see.

If audio books are more your thing, here’s an extract from the Introduction, read by Simon Vance, to further whet your appetite:

The McCartney Legacy Volume 1 is published by Dey Street books (an imprint of Harper Collins).

It’s available in hardcover, paperback, e-book and, as mentioned, an audio book and audio CD:

The McCartney Legacy Volume 1 1969-73 is highly recommended.

Paul McCartney – 1964: Eyes of the Storm

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Liverpool, London, Paris, New York, Washington, D.C. and Miami.

Six cities pivotal in the success of The Beatles as their music and their fame burst into the world, changing a generation forever.

The year: 1964.

Captured on film by one of those at the very centre of the storm: Paul McCartney.

In 2020, a treasure trove of nearly a thousand photographs taken by McCartney on a 35mm SLR camera was re-discovered in his archive. It was realised that his photographs form a unique view of the months towards the end of 1963 and beginning of 1964 as Beatlemania erupted in the UK and, after the band’s first visit to the USA, four young men became the most famous people on the planet. These photographs serve as a personal record of this explosive time when The Beatles were inside looking out – right inside the eye of the storm. 

Now comes a new photographic exhibition and a book, 1964: Eyes of the Storm – Photographs and Reflections by Paul McCartney. They present his photographs and memories from six cities, capturing these intense months with many never-before-seen portraits of John, George and Ringo.

In his Foreword to the book, and in the \introductions to each of the city portfolios, McCartney remembers: ‘what else can you call it – pandemonium’, and conveys his impressions of what Britain and America were like for him and his band mates in 1964 – the moment when the culture changed and the Sixties really began. 

‘Anyone who rediscovers a personal relic or family treasure is instantly flooded with memories and emotions, which then trigger associations buried in the haze of time. This was exactly my experience in seeing these photos, all taken over an intense three-month period of travel, culminating in February 1964. It was a wonderful sensation to be plunged right back.

Here was my own record of our first huge trip, a photographic journal of The Beatles in six cities, beginning in Liverpool and London, followed by Paris (where John and I had been ordinary hitchhikers just over two years before), and then what we regarded as the big time, our first visit as a group to America’ – Paul McCartney

1964: Eyes of the Storm Photography Book Includes: 

  • Six city portfolios – Liverpool, London, Paris, New York, Washington, D.C. and Miami – featuring 275 of McCartney’s own photographs – and his candid reflections on them 
  • A Foreword by Paul McCartney
  • Beatleland, an Introduction by Harvard historian and New Yorker essayist Jill Lepore
  • A Preface by Nicholas Cullinan, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, London, and Another Lens, an essay by Senior Curator Rosie Broadley

The book, to be released on 13 June, is accompanied by a major exhibition at London’s National Portrait Gallery from 28 June – 1 October, 2023.

The Gallery will display, for the first time, a selection of the extraordinary archive of rediscovered and never-before-seen photographs taken by Paul. 

Like the book, the exhibition provides a uniquely personal perspective on what it was like to be a ‘Beatle’ at the start of ‘Beatlemania’ – from gigs in Liverpool and London, to performing on The Ed Sullivan Show in New York to an unparalleled television audience of 73 million people. At a time when so many camera lenses were on the band, these photographs share a fresh insight into their experiences, their fans, and the early 1960s, all through eyes of Paul McCartney. Find out more and get tickets here.

P.S. If you’re wondering about the cool music used in the YouTube promo video above it’s the McCartney track ‘222’, released as a bonus track on the special edition version of “Memory Almost Full“. The song was written for his youngest child, his daughter Beatrice, when she was aged 2. See The McCartney Project for more detail.

Four Sides of the Circle – A New Beatle Book

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Last year saw the release of the lavish Let It Be box set. It celebrated the final Beatle LP, their swansong after a ten-year run as the biggest band in the world. The box set was accompanied by Peter Jackson’s extended 8-hour documentary Get Back, detailing the creation of the album. Despite the fact that Let It Be had been recorded more than a year earlier, its May 1970 release has forever seen it associated with the news that The Beatles were to continue no longer.

However, with an organisation as tight and complicated as The Beatles (along with their company Apple Records), things weren’t destined to cleanly end for them overnight.

It would take until the close of 1974 before all four members had signed the contracts that dissolved their immense, famous and complex partnership.

This, argues author Terry Wilson, makes the period from 1970 to 1974 a “second phase” for the band. Despite each member pursuing solo careers, technically they were still The Beatles and this continued on across that four-year span. As individuals they were tied together legally and financially. And they worked together collaboratively on many solo and other projects.

Wilson’s book is called Four Sides of the Circle. In it he details this often overlooked “second half” in the history of the band. It was an era of huge creativity and output. An era that gave us absolute standout releases like Lennon’s John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine LPs, McCartney’s RAM and Band on the Run, Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, and Starr’s Ringo, along with a myriad of other great and sometimes lesser-known songs and recordings.

These happened because band member collaborations continued in a variety of forms throughout this distinct “Phase II”. Their paths inevitably crossed both in and out of the studio despite the huge dissolution process looming over them.

Four Sides Of The Circle uses a very accessible song-by-song format, stepping through (in chronological order) all the formal recordings the individual Beatles made between1970-1974. It actually begins slightly earlier with John Lennon’s ‘Give Peace A Chance’ from June 1969, and concludes with Wings ‘Love In Song’, recorded in November, 1974. Every song – released and unreleased – has production details, recording location, who played what and (where applicable) the US and UK release dates. The song is then discussed by Wilson and critiqued with an appreciative eye. Each song is given a context with a clear emphasis on the music being made. This detailed and sequenced approach presents a true chronology of the period for the first time.

This is a book with something for even the most well-informed Beatle fan. Wilson is comprehensive and knowledgeable. There’s great detail here. In many ways he takes quite a scholarly approach – but the research never gets in the way of making Four Sides Of The Circle very readable. It finally completes the fascinating, long and winding story that was the Beatles. A story where – right to the last – they remained at the top of their game.

As Wilson writes on the final page of his book: “The legal conclusion of the Beatles technically occurred on 9 January 1975, when McCartney’s four-year-old case was settled, the completed paperwork having been sent back to London for the court to make its formal declaration. A cursory glance at the current edition of Billboard shows that on this day, Lennon was at 47 on the singles chart with ‘#9 Dream’; Harrison was at 16 with ‘Dark Horse’; Starr was at 7 with ‘Only You’ and McCartney was at 4 with ‘Junior’s Farm’. Appropriately, Lennon and McCartney were at number 1, courtesy of Elton John’s version of ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’ on which Lennon sang and played.”

“They ended at the very top.”

Four Sides of the Circle is a great read and a fantastic reference book. Not only does it contain extensive background and historic notes on each song, in the appendices there’s a complete song list, record release details (complete with US and UK chart positions), a bibliography, and what we always like to see in books like this: an Index. It is the sort of book you can dip in and out of endlessly. Here’s the blurb on the rear cover:

At over 420 pages Four Sides of the Circle is very reasonably priced. You can find it on Amazon Australia, Amazon US and on the Amazon UK site as well. The US and UK sites also have a “Look Inside” feature so you can check out sections of the book in more detail. It will give you an idea of the format and content. You won’t be disappointed.

Beatles Box of Vision – Revisited

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There’s no doubt there are some very generous souls in the Beatle collecting community and we’ve recently been the recipient of such generosity. In a tidy-up and down-sizing of his collection one beatlesblog reader found he had two copies of the 2009 release Beatles Box of Vision and, very kindly, decided to pass one of them along to us. And a welcome addition it is as we didn’t have this treasure in the collection.

The Beatles Box of Vision was the brainchild of former Capitol Records Executive Vice President/Chief Operating Officer and Beatle fanatic, Jonathan Polk.

Timed to coincide with the 2009 release of the Beatles stereo CD remasters, Box of Vision was a sumptuous way to store all that officially reissued CD catalogue – and more. Its storage section could contain every release from Please Please Me right up to the then-current Love, including Past Masters 1 & 2; the ‘best of’ albums 1962-1966 and 1967-1970; Live at the BBC; Anthology 1, 2 and 3; the Yellow Submarine Songtrack; the 1 compilation; and even Let It Be…Naked.

Box of Vision is large and impressively constructed. It comes shipped in a protective white cardboard outer (that is really worth keeping):

On the rear of this protective box is printed information about the contents:

When you open this white outer box the first thing you see inside is the large, well-protected, very good quality Box of Vision box. This initially looks like it might be designed to hold LPs instead of CDs because it is of LP-like proportions:

Taking it out reveals this still striking Robert Freeman image on the front cover of of what is a black linen covered storage box:

The box is deep and has the core collection LP spines printed along its edges :

As mentioned, the box is beautifully made. It is hinged on the left, opens like a large clam shell. It is designed to store, organise and display your Beatle CD collection. It contains two high quality books plus a set of plastic sleeves. The first thing you see when you open it up is a slim, soft cover book called The Beatles Catalography.

Then comes a series of 4 plastic storage sleeves – each of which can hold 8 CDs plus their booklets (4 on the front, 4 on the back of each sleeve). These have black and white images at each slot to show which CD goes where:

Then at the back of the box is an impressive cloth-bound hard back book containing all the full-sized artwork for every release. This is embossed on the front in shiny black lettering that simply says The Beatles:

Each box is numbered. This one is #1369:

Even the rear of the box has a nice detail:

Let’s look first at The Beatles Catalography book:

This is a guidebook to the unique history of Beatle releases. It details their UK and US catalogue in a side-by-side presentation so that you can immediately see the differences between the two countries, both in the artwork and the track listings:

Then comes the hefty, cloth-bound book The Beatles with high quality images of all the artwork associated with every official Beatle release in the UK to 2009.

Where that artwork extends to posters, special inserts or booklets these too are reproduced. For example, the story picture book stapled inside the Magical Mystery Tour LP is reproduced in full:

When you get to the 1 album an image of the poster is reproduced:

Likewise the booklet that came with the Let It Be…Naked LP:

The rear covers of each album are also faithfully reproduced:

Where did the name ‘Box of Vision’ come from?

At the time Jonathan Polk told The Houston Chronicle that title is from a song by Tom Russell. “The gist of the song is a father wishing he could give his child a box with all the things he would like her to experience in her life. I thought it was a good fit as I had envisioned this as a way to give a young fan the context to appreciate the history and chronology of the Beatles catalog, and what they were able to accomplish, in a much deeper way than as simply a bunch of hit songs.”

At the time you could order Box of Vision through the official Beatles site, or through a dedicated Box of Vision site – but that sadly is now long gone.

The Beatle/Apple connection – and the incredible quality of the images reproduced in both the books accompanying the storage box – very clearly hints at the close involvement the Beatles camp must have had with this project. They obviously supported the initiative fully, and it shows.

Here’s a YouTube ‘unboxing’ video from the time:

There was also a John Lennon Box of Vision released a year later in 2010, as well as a Bob Dylan Archive in 2011 – both done in a similar style to the The Beatles Box of Vision.

Thank you so much to reader Michael who very generously gifted us the Beatles Box of Vision.

Thanks also to Marc who read our article about The Beatles Box Of Vision and writes: “After it was released the Box Of Vision website had a PDF download containing corrections for three pages in Catalography book: one for the Let It Be/Let It Be…Naked page, and two of the Song/Album Reference pages.” Marc has made that PDF available. He hopes this is useful for others who may have missed it at the time. You can download those pages here:

catalographyrevise6bDownload

McCartney’s ‘The Lyrics’ Wins British Book Award

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Paul McCartney, no stranger to the odd prestigious award, has just won another.

His book The Lyrics:1956 to the Present has taken out the award for Best Non-Fiction Lifestyle book in the 2022 British Book Awards (otherwise known as The Nibbies):

Strangely Sir Paul’s acceptance speech (pre-recorded and played to the audience at the awards ceremony) could not be included in the YouTube clip.

Here’s some more info on the other books that were on the shortlist.

The judges wrote that The Lyrics was: “A work of art”; “a unique piece of publishing”; and a book that “belongs in a museum, not just our bookshelves.” They praised the two-volume set as a “fantastic visual diary”, singling out the original hand-written lyrics.

The book was supported by a free exhibition at the British Library and McCartney in Conversation at the Southbank Royal Festival Hall.

Publishers Allen Lane coordinated a global launch, simultaneously in 11 languages, attaining extensive broadsheet and radio coverage. Plus the book was released in multiple translations.

McCartney ‘The Lyrics’ – How Many Translations?

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While looking around the web shopping for Paul McCartney’s fabulous new book The Lyrics, we stumbled across a couple of different translations, and it got us wondering how many countries were getting versions of the book in their own language?

There are of course two main English editions. The two most common of these are the US edition in the green outer box:

And there’s the UK edition – which has exactly the same content as the US, but externally is quite different in design:

Also worthy of mention is a third English language version of the book: the Limited Edition. This one is actually signed by Sir Paul. There have reportedly been just 175 copies made available worldwide, though as one reader points out there have been two different signed books with the number #95 sold on eBay. Each had a different publishing logo, raising doubt on the accuracy of “175 worldwide”. Maybe it is 175 in the US, and 175 in the UK. Either way, it comes in a distinctive bright orange box with blue lettering. The design inside is quite unique too – including the two volumes inside which are also in that distinctive orange binding:

Then we get onto the translations, and those we’ve been able to uncover (to date) all seem to have the same outer box and book binding as the US green version above.

Here is the German:

And the Dutch language edition:

Next up is the Spanish:

And close by (in terms of geography) there is the Portuguese:

There is a French language edition too, and it seems to come with an outer box re-design as well:

The Italian translation has only just been released (9 November). There aren’t any great images of how it is packaged yet – but we’ve asked one of the translators and can confirm that this is the cover:

As you can see, like the French edition, the Italians have gone for a white outer box. The translation has been done by Franco Zanetti and Luca Parasi, who is author of the highly regarded Paul McCartney reference book Recording Sessions (1969-2013).

A further confirmation that this is the way the Italian edition is presented are the images in this advertisement that the publishers, Rizzoli Libri, was running on Amazon:

And finally, two unexpected translations – one in Finnish:

And the other in Swedish (thanks to reader Ole for sending this one in). Interesting that the front covers of the two books inside appear to have the images and super-imposed lyrics used for the rear covers of the books in the rest of the world:

Is that all? Do you know of any others?

Let us know using the ‘Leave a Reply’ link below if you have any updates and we’ll publish them here.

Listen to McCartney Read from “The Lyrics”

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If you’re keen on hearing Paul McCartney actually reading from his new book The Lyrics, then you’ll be interested to learn that BBC Sounds in the UK has produced a short audio series called Paul McCartney: Inside the Songs.

The series features ten audio extracts from The Lyrics book, with the author himself reading aloud 10 of the entries.

Check out the Introduction here:

Then, follow the links here to listen to all ten episodes. They include songs like ‘All My Loving’, ‘Eleanor Rigby’, ‘Got to Get You into My Life’, right up to ‘Pretty Boys’ from last year’s McCartney III album.

The Lyrics spans McCartney’s career writing popular music from 1956 to the present. In it he talks about his life and song-writing through the prism of 154 key lyrics.

Host of Inside the Songs, John Wilson, also interviewed Paul McCartney extensively for an episode of the BBC series This Cultural Life. You can hear that interview in full here (or just click on the image below):

Paul McCartney – ‘Grandude’s Green Submarine’ Book and Audio Book

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Two new McCartney items to add to the collection today.

Paul McCartney has written another children’s book. It follows on from his Hey Grandude!, kids story released in 2019.

This one is Grandude’s Green Submarine and once again the story has been illustrated by the talentented Canadian artist, Kathryn Durst.

And, as with the previous title, there’s also a separate audio book on CD – with McCartney not only reading his story but also providing the original music. This is along similar lines to the Hey Grandude! audio book, but the music is different and its played by him and band member, Paul ‘Wix’ Wickens.

Firstly, here’s the book cover, front and rear. It’s a large-format hardback with a protective dust jacket:

Just like the Hey Grandude! book, if you take the dust jacket off, there’s a completely different cover design underneath, front and rear:

The design of the book is stylishly done and has lots of nice touches. Here are two pages from inside to give you a feel for the contents:

And this is the audio book CD, which has Paul himself reading the book. Penguin Books has once again packaged this up nicely in a gatefold cover with a decent booklet. The CD takes all the elements from the book and carries them through the whole design. Here’s the front cover:

And the rear:

They’ve gone to some trouble, making it a gatefold:

And here’s the booklet containing the credits (and two biographies):

(As usual, click on the images to see larger versions)