#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A Washington Post Notable Book
Excerpted in The New Yorker
From his early Liverpool days, through the historic decade of The Beatles, to Wings and his long solo career, The Lyrics pairs the definitive texts of 154 Paul McCartney songs with first-person commentaries on his life and music. Spanning two alphabetically arranged volumes, these commentaries reveal how the songs came to be and the people who inspired them: his devoted parents, Mary and Jim; his songwriting partner, John Lennon; his âGolden Earth Girl,â Linda Eastman; his wife, Nancy McCartney; and even Queen Elizabeth, among many others. Here are the origins of âLet It Be,â âLovely Rita,â âYesterday,â and âMull of Kintyre,â as well as McCartneyâs literary influences, including Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, and Alan Durband, his high-school English teacher.
With images from McCartneyâs personal archivesâhandwritten texts, paintings, and photographs, hundreds previously unseenâThe Lyrics, spanning sixty-four years, becomes the definitive literary and visual record of one of the greatest songwriters of all time.