Ian Leslie takes a fresh look at the Beatles in 'John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs'
During the pandemic, Ian Leslie wrote a Substack essay called “64 Reasons to Celebrate Paul McCartney,” arguing that despite his accomplishments, the ex-Beatle was underrated. But he didn’t delve much into McCartney’s relationship with John Lennon, writing, “I’m trying to keep this essay-length and that subject, inexhaustibly fascinating, is a book in itself.”
Inspired by this, Leslie went and wrote that book: “John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs.” Despite a seemingly endless parade of Beatles books, Leslie offers a fresh take, telling the story of the band through the duo’s relationship and the story of their relationship through the songs they were singing.
In a video interview from London, Leslie said most previous tomes recount the facts of the story without doing the music justice – “which is what this is all about and you can’t understand them without understanding the music” – or failed to explore the pair’s relationship “with depth or emotional intelligence.”
He was initially hesitant to pitch a book, since he wasn’t a music writer. Still, as a journalist, he’d written two books about human behavior that were relevant to understanding the Beatles’ genius: “Curious: the Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It” and “Conflicted: How Productive Disagreements Lead to Better Outcomes.”
“The idea of how curiosity leads to creativity and how you can have productive conflict was central to their music,” Leslie says. Even early on in Liverpool, “when they were kind of crap musicians, they already had the personalities” that would create this unparalleled future.
After his essay went viral, providing rave responses from musicians and music experts he could use to pitch a book, he realized “even though I didn’t really have music credentials, I’d invented my own credentials.”
Source: whittierdailynews.com/Stuart Miller
