Rock n’roll could change the world. Maybe the idea died after Altamount. Maybe after John Lennon’s assassination. For a brief time, when the stolid placid Eisenhower years were uprooted by the cultural shifts of the civil rights movement, women’s movement, and intervention in Vietnam, the shift of youth culture could be vesper-like song titles like “All You Need is Love”, “Tomorrow Never Knows” and the creative mashup of the Abbey Road medley. Paul McCartney, from a schoolboy dreamer named Macca, to the driving force of rock’s most influential group “The Beatles” , has his life explored across the decades here. After exploring Paul’s biography in 800 pages, I feel more confident saying he did change the world.

From humble workclass beginnings in Liverpool with little more than sketchbooks and love of 50s pop stars, McCartney’s unlikely but ultimate destiny were sealed. With childhood exposure to piano, guitar, songwriting, and social graces, his dreams from a small pop outfit with the Quarrymen to the defining band of the generation seem like the ultimate lottery. Phillip Norman does an excellent job of analyzing the journey of these young men’s ambitions, sexual conquest, infighting, musicality and effect on the culture.

The second half, the post-Beatles years, is in some ways more riveting. With the demise of the Fab 4, and good relations, McCartney seems to chart his own pop music. Exploring experimental music, domestic life, another Top 40 rock band ‘Wings’, and nascent activism, the cheeky cherubic profile of a young rock star takes a turn more complex and rewarding. Pressures from expectation, loss of John Lennon, court battles, widowing, and demonstrate a steely resolve. We seem him in all his humanness, no longer facing hunger and survival, so much as relevancy, meaning and peace.

All and all, a very thought provoking biography. My only complaint is that we don’t capture Paul’s work from the past 6 years (time since the biography was published). A remarkable life and a remarkable man. Not without his blemishes or poor judgement, the biography rings as a true perspective. And yet, for all his success, he remains in the public eye a man of good conscience, humble, hard-working, kind, and without peer. Whether we call him a knight, a legend, or a Beatle, he is most certainly living life on terms we all strive for - with authenticity and charity towards all.