McCartney Times

Perhaps what the world doesn’t need is another Beatle biography, but when it landed on the SD desk this week one couldn’t help (as a card-carrying Fabs tragic) but cast at least a cursory glance at English author Philip Norman’s weighty (853 pages) new take on the life and times of Paul McCartney.Paul McCartney: The Biography, which hit stores this week, is the most extensive study so far of the songwriting craftsman, particularly his post-Beatles career, but as Norman points out in the prologue, it came as some surprise to him that McCartney would give his approval to such a tome. In 1981 Norman, a journalist at The Sunday Times in London, published Shout!, a bestselling biography of the Beatles that was considered the definitive telling of their story at the time. Not everyone was happy with it, though, least of all McCartney, who came a poor second to John Lennon, musically and otherwise, in Norman’s version of events. Macca, in his best Scouse accent no doubt, called the book Shite! from then on.

Source: Paul McCartney’s nod surprised biographer Philip Norman