@GrahamBoynton
WHEN PHILIP NORMAN set out to write his new biography of Paul McCartney, the last person he expected to cooperate was the ex-Beatle himself. In his 1981 best-selling book on the Beatles, Shout!, Norman had displayed a clear bias in favor of McCartney’s songwriting partner, John Lennon, even declaring on American TV at the time that “75 percent of the Beatles was Lennon.” McCartney read the book and publicly rechristened it Shite.
In the early, bitter post-Beatles years, a pro-Lennon/anti-McCartney prejudice was common among rock journalists, who generally saw Lennon as an edgy, charismatic genius and McCartney as a bland, pretty egomaniac who, in Lennon’s words, was writing “granny music.” But Norman’s assertion that McCartney was a bit player in the Beatles seemed extreme.