PositiveThe Guardian (UK)The lyrics you actually read are for the records you don’t know. The majority have lived inside us since we first heard them, in my case for almost 60 years ... Macca rarely resists an upmarket comparison. If one Paul is keen to point out that the intermediary of \'She Loves You\' is like the hero of LP Hartley’s novel The Go-Between, the other Paul is quite happy to agree he may have been influenced by it. In the same commentary, he’s forever reaching back to the England of his boyhood ... Neither lyrics nor commentary will be studied quite as closely as the pictures of Paul looking fabulous for more than 50 years, posing for pre-digital selfies with everyone from the Maharishi to Auntie Jin. In the end, we would as soon look at rock stars as listen to them, and this is as much a picture book as anything. The problem, which only strikes you on lifting the second weighty volume, is how are you supposed to actually read a thing like this? ... there’s no narrative arc to carry you along ... You might think the price tag means it’s aimed at the Christmas stockings of lifers like me. In fact it’s more likely to be picked up and pored over by that army of forty- and fiftysomethings who these days are Paul’s children. They don’t actually remember the Beatles but they can’t imagine a world without Paul McCartney. For them, the book’s absence of chronology will not be an impediment. For them, those thumbs remain aloft for a higher purpose. It’s why he’s here.
Craig Brown
PositiveThe New Statesman (UK)Even at 600-plus pages this is a condensed version of a uniquely fascinating story. It’s characterised by a nicely British dryness ... If you want a one-volume primer that explains the fuss and what it was all about, this does the job. It hits the appropriate notes of wonder, tragedy and, particularly in the Apple days, farce ... Brown’s book is a diverting reminder of seven years that will never be matched and what they did to the people who lived through them.
