Allan Kozinn

Much like the literal day-to-day movements of the Beatles in Mark Lewisohn's excellent TUNE IN book about their rise (ending in 1962), this second volume follows McCartney and his inner circle on a virtual day-to-day forensic accounting of their activities.

So, fair warning...though I assume anyone looking at this volume has already experienced the first one...you really need to be a major Beatles/McCartney fanatic to push through 800 pages of detail that can be sometimes a touch dry (I'm show more thinking about the listing of some of the chord progressions, or the overdub details here).

But overall, it does paint an interesting and, to my mind, more nuanced version of McCartney than I've read up to now. I've always known that Paul is a bit of a control freak and that there's time when he can trade his musical genius—or maybe, more accurately, he can, at times, mistake a silly little ditty as something that's musically genius.

But this volume in particular, as it runs through the rise and fall of Wings 2.0 as well as 3.0, and you get the small comments that have so much impact when they start to add up, in regard to McCartney defending his increasingly terrible lyric writing, or his bandmates tying themselves in knots to pay homage to the guy who basically tells them exactly how he wants things played (not always, but the majority of the time)...it shows how he really needed that equally genius musical peer to push him harder.

McCartney, when with the Beatles, was in constant competition with both Lennon as well as Brian Wilson. (Lennon, for his part, competed with McCartney and Dylan). In all cases, it pushed McCartney to be better both musically and lyrically.

In this book, we see him in far less of a competitive role and far more in an observational mode. Disco's hot right now? Let's try a disco song. Punk's getting big? Let's try some punk influences. The Mills Brothers want a song? Here's something from that era. It feels like he's given up on greatness and settled for homage. 1974 to 1980 feels like the years where McCartney relaxed.

After all, this is the period where he put out the worst Christmas song of all time. I was also shocked at another song that I hadn't heard. I had no idea he'd written the title song for the 1978 film, SAME TIME, NEXT YEAR, starring Alan Alda and Ellen Burnstyn. I'd never noticed the song attached to any of his collections, but come on! His movie songs were usually pretty good? SPIES LIKE US? LIVE AND LET DIE? So I googled this one and listened to it on YouTube. Once.

Never again. It's utterly awful, and they were right to not include it in the film.

For all of that, it's still a really interesting, deep view into where McCartney was, who he was with, and what was pushing him to create what he created.

And, while we all know how the story ends (well at least until the early days of 2025), I love that they ended the book on a cliffhanger. show less

Gotta say, after having read literally hundreds of books about either the Beatles as a group, or the individual members, or peripheral personalities (Epstein, George Martin, Sutcliffe, Best), I'd finally reached the point where I decided, no more. There's nothing new to be learned.

Yeah, well, first it was Mark Lewisohn with his utterly incredible Tune In, Part 1 and Tune In, Part 2 (if you're a Beatles fan, don't settle for the single book, get the full 1700+ page story in all its glory), show more who decided to prove me wrong.

And now Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair are doing the same with this monster. Almost 700 pages for four years of McCartney's post-Beatle life? Hell yes, sign me up.

The level of detail, and the stories that finally settle some of the myths around McCartney and Wings, and the honesty to which they deal with Linda's contributions, make this a fantastic read.

They don't shy away from some of the headscratching decisions Paul made (and continues to make) on things like his Mary Had a Little Lamb and other songs that are simply terrible, but that he seems to love. It's a fair and balanced approach.

Overall, despite digging into a virtually day-to-day accounting of Paul and Linda's movements and activities, I was never bored. Loved this book, and eagerly await the next volumes. show less

Very comprehensive look at the cute Beatle dealing with the collapse of his old band and trying to rebuild his career with Wings.
One depressing thing I’m reminded of is that no matter how famous or successful you are, the money people will still keep you on a tight leash. In this case McCartney wanted to release Wings’s album Red Rose Speedway as a double album but EMI said no. Even Paul McCartney—from The Beatles!—was not powerful enough to get his way. Remember this.

The audiobook of this was like a warm blanket which told me everything I could possibly want to know about Paul & Linda's daily activities from the years 1969-1973. I can't wait for volume 2.