Have you ever wondered where words, song lyrics or poems come from?
The new book “The Lyrics’ takes you on a magical mystery tour around Paul McCartney’s 154 songs (whose birthday is 18th June 1942).
Paul is undoubtedly acknowledged as the greatest living song writer of his generation. Now aged 79, let’s revisit his work almost backwards. Over his vast career, he has been asked to write an autobiography, but says that the time was never quite right. So, his book features an eclectic mix of songs, drawings, photographs and poetry neatly presented in a 360 degree understanding of what inspires him. The book also includes items from his personal files.
The sad loss of his Mum, Mary, in October 1956 at the dreadfully young age of 47, when Paul was only 14 years old, was the inspiration for some of his early work including “Yesterday”, “I lost My Little Girl” and “Let it Be”.
As he recalls, “we were all going through difficult times” as the song goes and there didn’t seem to be any way out of the mess. Paul fell asleep, dreamt of his late Mum who did in fact come to him. A very interesting fact that we learn from the book is that The Beatles never played “Let It Be” at a concert. When Live Aid was planned in 1985, Paul agreed to perform and sang “Let It Be” for the first time on stage.
With the band members and the song, one great truth to emerge from the songs is about “Jojo”. In the song “Get Back”, we discover that “Jojo left his home in Tucson, Arizona. Having seen Lennon and McCartney test out many names to fit into the phrasing of the song. Does anyone know is Tucson even in Arizona, USA?
Finally, for Beatles fan and people that enjoy 20th century pop culture, the new series “The Beatles: Get Back” on Disney Plus is a seven hour odyssey. Viewers will be interested to see the band playing on the rooftop of Apple Corps HQ in Savile Row.
Producer Peter Jackson has poured over almost 60 hours of video footage to allow scholars of Liverpool’s finest access very rare footage. This will introduce a new generation to the “Fab Four” while continuing to fuel the many running debates as to what caused their breakup. It’s now over 50 years since The Beatles disbanded and thanks to this new series, some of the myths that surrounded them will finally be laid to rest.
