July 7, 2014
The 1970s were not kind to Sir Paul McCartney. Blamed for the breakup of The Beatles, critically savaged by rock critics for seemingly inconsequential LPs and silly love songs such as "Silly Love Songs," McCartney seemed as lost and obsolete as his fellow ex-Beatles by the decade's end. But accomplished rock journalist Doyle (The Glamour Chase) presents a solid, detailed, and, above all, honest reappraisal of McCartney's work that tells a compulsively readable tale "of a man living outside normal society and, for better or for worse, acting on his own tangential whims, during a chaotic and fascinating period of his life." Using material from numerous interviews with McCartney, as well as the major players in his career, Doyle is not afraid to be critical, such as his opinion for the sometimes mediocre work of Sir Paul's so-called "band" Wings: "McCartney was flanked by yes-men and, as a result, was isolated." But Doyle also makes a strong argument for the validity of much of McCartney's most maligned works, such as "Ram," which he sees as "something of a marvelâ¦the true successor to âAbbey Road,' in its baroque detail and flights of imagination, it was variously funny, daft, touching, and knowing."