The Lyrics: Paul McCartney. Rock’n’Roll music?
I haven’t been in the British Library (where I do historical research in case you were wondering) as much as usual this year, partly because its been shut for some of the time and partly while still living in Tottenham as usual I haven’t been there that much.
Anyway I’ve still been in every few weeks (usually a few times a week) and when there in early December was slightly surprised to see a large banner of Paul McCartney. The BL also has the National Sound Archive so its no stranger to music but even so. In fact the banner was advertising a free exhibition relating to McCartney’s new book The Lyrics. The exhibition is free and well worth a look btw- these things are always very well done at the BL.
The book which is weighty and costs £75 contains all of the lyrics written by McCartney from the Beatles through to Wings and his solo efforts. The Beatles thanks to the Peter Jackson film of Get Back have been much in the news recently.
There are a couple of points here. While the lyrics from the Wings period on are McCartney’s the Beatles are mostly officially recorded as Lennon and McCartney. Lennon cant really dispute it now but while I’m sure McCartney did write the lyrics to Hey Jude (for example) particularly the repeats at the end that go on and on and .. I’m not sure Lennon had no thoughts at all on the matter.
The book contains some back stories from McCartney about how lyrics for particular songs came to be written. The story of Mull of Kintyre is interesting but I’m afraid its still a dreadful dirge. This raises a wider point still (which the FT review focused on).
While there are some lyrics that do stand well alone-one thinks of Dylan for example (although not Wiggle,wiggle,wiggle) mostly they are written to be sung and work in that format. So McCartney’s lyrics on the page don’t for the most part add up to much. As songs I still love them, but then I’m old enough to remember them.
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