Finished

No. This blog is not finished and neither is its modest author. "Finished" refers to my reading of "John & Paul - A Love Story in Songs" by Ian Leslie.

I would not say that I was ever a rabid Beatles fan but the cultural significance of The Beatles phenomenon impacted on all who grew up in the three decades that followed World War II. You cannot deny that. Their very presence was symbolic of a changing world and many of their songs feature in our imaginary soundtrack for the nineteen sixties and seventies...

And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain,

Don't carry the world upon your shoulders.

For well you know that it's a fool who plays it cool

By making his world a little colder.

Ian Leslie is to be commended for crafting this intelligent and well-researched book. Though it honours the two leaders of The Beatles, it is never fawning nor sycophantic. He examines the evidence and presents a very believable thesis - that John and Paul's relationship was something akin to love.

That special bond had its ups and downs, its tears and its laughter but at the heart of it all was a unique chemistry that neither of them could ever resist even when circumstances and other people got in their way. They would always be the music-obsessed Liverpool lads who first met at the Woolton parish church garden party on July 7th, 1957.

Each chapter of the book focuses on a different song. I was very familiar with most of the songs but after the band's break up happened in 1970, I kind of lost touch with their music preferring singer-songwriters like Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, Donovan, Melanie Safka and the great Bob Dylan. So I had to use Google to search up several of the songs that Ian Leslie bases his final chapters upon.

Here are two extracts to give you a flavour of what I thought was a most enjoyable and insightful treatise:-

“In October, Yoko and John celebrated John's thirty-first birthday with friends, including Ringo, in a hotel room in Syracuse, New York, where Yoko had an exhibition. There is a tape of a rowdy singalong, led by John on an out-of-tune guitar. It includes a slightly drunk and maudlin rendition of 'Yesterday'. John gets the words wrong (‘now it looks as though I've lost my way'), and replaces ‘she’ with ‘he’: why he had to go, I don't know, he wouldn't say...”

&

“At one point in his 1981 conversation with Hunter Davies, McCartney said rather miserably, "I realise now we never got to the bottom of each other's souls." In the end, McCartney had to settle for not knowing, and not understanding. So do we all. What we can say for sure is that they loved each other, that through music they found a way to share this love with everyone in the world, and that in doing so they made the world an immeasurably better place. Because it was John; because it was Paul.”

And I feel sure that if The Beatles ever meant anything to you, you would also appreciate "John & Paul." You will learn a lot of things you never knew before.