Let It Be...

Paul McCartney has a new album out - The Boys of Dungeon Lane. Now aged 83, but looking great, the venerable ex-Beatle has been doing the publicity rounds and has been all over the podcast, You Tube and traditional media-spheres. Basking in interviewer acclaim, the Liverpool musical genius is as magnetic as he ever was when part of the Fab Four. Still putting out music - good old Paul.

And McCartney deserves all the praise.  Whatever he has done since the Beatles broke up in 1970 - 56 years ago! - and there has been so much of it, all the albums all the hits, he deserves the glory simply because he was once once part of the group that changed everything. Changed the music, changed the way we looked, changed the way we thought, changed society and the world. And all those songs we know and love are still being played endlessly on the radio, on today’s different media channels and in our heads.

Yes Paul deserves all the praise. But somehow around the edges of Beatle-world as it is experienced and relived today, it feels much of it is being heaped on him at the expense of the other three Beatles - George, Ringo and especially John.  Or if not at their expense, then somehow placing him above the other three as if he is in a higher separate Beatle plane.

A recent Kaleidoscope blog alludes to this - https://www.keithbradbrook.uk/post/the-beatles-all-for-one - when a new book on John and Paul’s musical partnership pulled no punches at making Paul the better of the two, and going further as if he was the ‘top’ Beatle. My view is that Paul and John were/are absolute musical geniuses, no question, but to infer one was better than the other - different yes, better no - is wrong and that above all The Beatles were all of them together, whoever wrote the songs. The Beatles were everything they were and are because of the four. In The Beatles’ Anthology TV films now updated and playing on Disney Plus the band members, all except John, George being alive at this point, all say this.

Now another recent book, and now out in paperback, consistently plays the same Paul, Paul, Paul trick. With A Little Help From Their Friends is by Stuart Maconie whom I really like - I have enjoyed his other books and media output and I admire his love of country walking, which I share. And I really enjoyed this book for the most part. It tells the story of The Beatles through the lives of 100 people they were influenced by, worked and played with from their first days to their split in 1970. A fascinating angle to look back on the huge Beatles history.

Stuart openly admits to his Paul bias towards the end of the book and I’m glad he does as it gives some basis to me on the many ways he hauls great gloss on whatever Paul was doing, thinking, creating while pouring colder water on George’s, Ringo’s and especially John’s antics. I think John is dissed a lot. Not long after The Beatles ‘made it’, for example, he says John is living a drug-induced life in the Shires somewhere while Paul is living an intensive art existence in Central London with all the great thinkers, writers and musicians of the day. This may be true but this is told as if therefore Paul was the major Beatles, the real (creative) power behind the Fab Four’s throne. Other examples of Paul yes, John no seem to pepper the book.

Perhaps because of Paul’s sheer longevity, that he is, unlike John or George, still here and pumping out music, still on our screens and our new media, that it ‘seems’ as if he has achieved relatively more than the other three Beatles and therefore is being applauded as the top Beatles and deserving the greater praise.  But what would John and George have produced in the years they have not been with us? What masterpieces could they have given us? Even Ringo has a new country album out now too.

Certainly in the decade after the Beatles split, until John's murder in 1980, Paul issued lots of great music. But John and George - from Imagine (John) to All Things Must Pass (George) - produced enormous productions and Ringo had big hits too.

The Beatles are utterly iconic and for all the ages. Their collective music, spirit and influence live on and will do always.  They are the Fab Four, not the Fab 3 and the Fabber 1. The Beatles should be praised together, as one entity, and in the Lennon-McCartney partnership - a sanctum of twin musical geniuses - don’t Glory Paul and diss John.

• Stuart Maconie’s With A Little Help From Their Friends is published by HarperCollins