Paul Du Noyer

This book has a horrible cover photo of Paul McCartney to start off with. It’s one of the worst photos of him I’ve ever seen. This may be in the running for the worst cover ever published. Not sure who OKed this. Anyway, the book starts off badly as well with a section on the subject of former recollection. Du Noyer says that other people don’t really know what the relationship between Paul and John Lennon was really like but they themselves. Well, that’s true but much of The Beatles early performances including travel to the gigs was documented. Everyone knew what they were doing, saying, and wearing. Not everything published in the news was true but even then, Americans knew that journalists weren’t infallible, and reporters got credit for fabulously untrue stories. The point is people who liked The Beatles followed them closely and could tell the basics of what was going on in Beatlemania. The book starts out with a swipe at fans who didn’t have the physical access to McCartney that Du Noyer has, so read this book. That’s not really a logical argument but that’s where Du Noyer starts. Putting that aside, anything on The Beatles is worth reading, this “Conversations with McCartney” included. This book leaves the vast majority of the text to McCartney and McCartney is fantastically personal and touches on almost every professional aspect of his life. This book was published in 2016 and McCartney was still touring in 2022. Du Noyer ends the book by saying he never knew what kind of songs McCartney sang. He didn’t know that the majority were love songs. How someone can say that is beyond comprehension. Apparently, he didn’t know the lyrics since all of Paul’s greatest songs revolve around love themes. So this book makes that abundantly clear with Paul’s own statements. Of course, the most famous interview of Paul was done for Saturday Night Live when it was still funny. Chris Farley interviewed Paul to bring down the house. Paul played it cool as the musical titan to amateur goof off Farley. Total TV classic. Among the infinite books on The Beatles, you should read this to learn how passionate about music Paul is and how he still reveres his bandmates from the original band that forced the world to change its mind about songwriting. If you don’t like The Beatles, don’t read this since everything revolves around their song titles, lyrics and oblique references to their music.
Index, Excellent B&W and Color Photos (Minus the Cover). 30 Chapters.… (mere)

An agreeable book for any John Lennon fan. It is slickly written and glossily presented, as befitting its author Paul Du Noyer, founding editor of the Mojo music magazine. But its glossiness betrays its lack of depth; there's not really much in here that serious fans won't already know - at least, not in the better songs, for do we really need any background information on album filler like 'Tight A$'? It's also rather brief in its discussion of each song; this is not the in-depth, new perspective critique found in works such as Ian MacDonald's amazing Beatles book Revolution in the Head. Decent but by-the-numbers reading.… (mere)