McCartney Times

“Paul McCartney: The Life” by Philip Norman (Little, Brown, 853 pages, $32)Behind the double thumbs-up, impish smile and round, half-moon eyes lies a Paul McCartney more complex than public perception lends itself to.As biographer Philip Norman writes in “Paul McCartney: The Life,” McCartney is more than just the “cute Beatle” thumping away on a left-handed violin-shaped bass or the elder statesman of rock who continues to sell out stadium concerts lasting more than three hours.McCartney is, in fact, a “workaholic and perfectionist who, despite his vast fame, has been underestimated by history and who, despite his undoubted genius, is in his own way as insecure and vulnerable as was his seeming total opposite, John Lennon.”That’s quite a turnaround from Norman, the author of several music biographies including the excellent “John Lennon: The Life.” Norman’s seminal 1981 biography of the Fab Four, “Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation,” was on the receiving end of criticism for its “over-glorification of Lennon and bias against McCartney,” notwithstanding his pronouncement that Lennon was “three-quarters of the Beatles.”If apology can take the form of biography, “Paul McCartney: The Life” is it and, thanks to “tacit approval” from McCartney to interview relatives and close friends, Norman delivers the most thorough and insightful biography of Paul McCartney to date.

Source: Another McCartney biography, but this one looks beyond those years with The Beatles;