Paul McCartney’s biographer picks out the best work in a field that has often been marked by ‘leaden paragraphs overstuffed with show-offy facts’
Writing about the Beatles has saddled me with two heavy burdens. The first is that almost everyone considers themselves an expert on what the band’s publicist Derek Taylor called “the 20th century’s greatest romance”. I’ve noticed that many of these self-appointed sages hate to hear something about the subject that they don’t already know. My new biography of Paul McCartney was full of revelations about his life, in and after the Beatles, yet from many quarters still brought that resentful chorus of “nothing new here”.
The second, long-term burden is becoming classified as a “rock biographer”. In Britain, writing about rock music still isn’t really taken seriously – and, by and large, doesn’t deserve to be. In the US, by contrast, it’s taken far too seriously, with the earnest, plodding pair Greil Marcus and Peter Guralnick vying for supremacy in the field. To me, their combined surnames suggests a new verb, “to greilnick” – ie churn out leaden paragraphs overstuffed with show-offy facts, yet be unable to create a compelling narrative or convey character or atmosphere.
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