I’m currently reading Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair’s The McCartney Legacy: Volume 1, 1969-1973 (and yes, I am planning on reading Volume 2, 1974-1980 when it comes out at the end of this year) and though it’s quite a long and heavy tome, it’s a rather easy read. Their aim was to write something similar to Mark Lewisohn’s Tune In. We fans may have heard the stories hundreds of times, but the unfolding of these historical moments is in an as it happens sort of way; we may know they’re coming, but they’re never revealed in an ‘and then This Famous Moment Happened!’ way.

I’m actually learning a lot in this book. There are moments I knew about, of course — the dissolution of The Beatles, McCartney’s severe dislike and distrust of Allen Klein, the snide back and forth between Paul and John, often via letters in music magazines, and so on — but I never really knew too much about the details of the post-Beatles lawsuits, why they’d happened and why Paul was so damned determined not to give up. Musically we see a lot of flailing, a lot of separate tracks glued together Abbey Road medley-style, and songs written for one project that end up elsewhere.

Paul is often seen as the most successful of the four ex-Beatles — or at least the most visible, given his penchant for rarely ever not working on music — but with this book, you really get a sense of how much desperate flailing went on during those early years. His first four albums may have been sellers but were not well liked by the critics at all. They were expecting More Flawless Beatle Magic, and he absolutely refused to go that route. A lot of the early Wings music is indeed meandering and homey. While that wasn’t what the critics wanted, it was what Paul needed at that point. It wouldn’t be until he lost two members of the original first lineup that he’d hit paydirt with Band On the Run and find his own solo style.