Beatles: Why John Lennon and Paul McCartney's partnership ended
It’s the greatest story often told. The Beatles are not just the most successful musical act of all time; they are perhaps the most analyzed, deconstructed and dissected entertainers since the dawn of recorded music.
We think we know everything, but author Ian Leslie proves otherwise. His new book, “John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs,” is, astonishingly, one of the few to offer a detailed narrative of John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s partnership. And it’s a revelation. Leslie gives a complete portrait of this remarkably fecund and frequently tortured creative partnership, which began in Liverpool in 1957 and ended in New York City on Dec. 8, 1980, with Lennon’s murder.
The basic facts of their first encounter are well known. They met in the summer of 1957 at a garden party in the Liverpool suburb of Woolton, where 17-year-old Lennon was performing with his skiffle band the Quarrymen. McCartney was there to scout Lennon, who was already establishing a reputation as a riveting stage performer. McCartney, 15, ginned up the courage to approach Lennon after his set; their bond was forged over a mutual passion for Little Richard and Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel.”
They took to songwriting with alacrity, driven by an urge to create their own material at a time when there was no precedent for a band to write its own songs. “It entailed the two of them educating each other in the art of songwriting and doing so from scratch,” Leslie writes. “And there was no division of labor.” One of their first joint compositions was “Love Me Do,” which was written in 1958, four years before the Beatles recorded it. All of their songs, whether fully realized or half-baked, were dutifully logged by McCartney into an exercise book he had swiped from school.
Source: latimes.com/Marc Weingarten
