John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs
Ian Leslie
Some highlights
“Although he had not been overwhelmed by their music, he fell for the young men themselves. ‘It was their charisma,5 the fact that when I was with them they gave me a sense of well-being, of being happy … I thought, “If they have this effect on me, they are going to have that effect on their audiences.””
“The critic Harold Bloom argued that we recognise ourselves in Shakespeare not just because he captured something eternal in human nature but 3because he wrought our very idea of what a person is – an introspective, self-fashioning individual.”
“Lennon and McCartney conceived of the pop song not just as a tune with words but as a way of processing overwhelming pain or joy, or both, and as a means of communication. ”
“A technical necessity resulted in the distinct and thrilling aesthetic effect of two men who share the same ‘I’ – the same consciousness. It became an expression of the group’s camaraderie that also evoked how two people can slip in and out of each other’s subjectivity: the way we internalise the voices of those we know and love. John and Paul played with its possibilities in ‘We Can Work It Out’ and, most spectacularly, ‘A Day in the Life’.”
“Both John and Paul were living up to Arthur Schopenhauer’s definition of genius: unlike talent, which hits a target nobody else can reach, genius hits a target nobody else can see.”
“Replying to a journalist who asked him, in 1966, how he felt about being known as ‘the cynical one’, John said, ‘I’m cynical about society, politics, newspapers, government. But I’m not cynical about life, love, goodness, death.’ ”
“What started so modestly, one human addressing another, culminates in this massed glory.”
“You always made me laugh – well, there are few things more cherishable in a friend than that.”