Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles is a look at the Beatles, the Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership, and McCartney's role in the avant-garde art scene in London in the late '60's. Miles was a part of that scene, of McCartney's social circle, and eventually, of Apple. In the '90's he interviewed McCartney for hours over a span of years for this book. You have to already know a lot about the Beatles, and want to know more, to appreciate it. The greatest benefit of it is in not so much setting the record straight, but giving light from another angle. The highlights for me were the parts about writing the songs; I had to grab my copy of the complete lyrics and regularly look at it as I read. It would be nice to have a copy of the Lennon interview in which he gave his take on who did what on each song, and be able to put them side by side. According to this book there is only a little disagreement between the two of them on two songs.
I could have done without the art parts, but they were probably the parts Miles enoyed the most; as I was slogging through the middle bit I was thinking that the 100 pages or so that were about the art scene and the Indica book store were probably a shortened version of the book he really wanted to write.
***if you are interested in the Beatles or McCartney.
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