Another Beatles book? (Eye-roll.) Honestly, do we need it? Yes we do, when it’s as revelatory as Ian Leslie’s John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs. If you think you know all you need to know about Lennon and McCartney, this analytically sharp, vaultingly written book will make you see and hear things you’ve missed, and send you straight back to that heady moment when everything they did, as Leslie puts it, “felt surprising and unignorable and fresh”.
Not a pop hagiographer, Leslie is on a mission to rescue Lennon and McCartney from what he thinks has been a tone-deaf stereotype, perpetuated in any number of biographies: John, the take-no-prisoners visionary, sardonic enemy of sentimentality, Paul the crooning balladeer, a pretty face delivering pretty songs; John nailed fast to rock ’n’ roll, Paul, scouser turned culture vulture, playing around with Bach soprano trumpets and iambic pentameter.