“The McCartney Legacy: Volume 2: 1974 – 80” book published

Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair’s definitive exploration of Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles career commenced with “The McCartney Legacy: Volume 1: 1969-1973“, published in December 2022. This acclaimed work is widely regarded as the most authoritative account of Paul’s life and music following the breakup of the Fab Four.

The second instalment, covering the years 1974-1980, was released on December 10, 2024, by Dey Street Books.

The follow-up to The McCartney Legacy, Volume 1, the most complete work on the life and work of Paul McCartney ever published. Volume 2 continues to paint the portrait of one of the world’s greatest musicians, his work post-Beatles, and his life from 1974 to 1980.

By 1974 the Beatles were a distant memory, and Paul McCartney had already gone on to release a solo album and form a new band, Wings. By the end of the decade Wings would be the bestselling band of the 1970s. The McCartney Legacy, Vol. 2 begins in 1974 at the height of Wings popularity and the beginning of McCartney’s next chapter.

Picking up immediately after The McCartney Legacy, Volume 1, authors Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair have brought the same exhaustive research ethos to Volume 2 that made the first volume a critical success. Arguably the most authoritative text on the life of Paul McCartney, Volume 2 follows McCartney the man, establishing himself as a musician beyond Beatlemania and his legacy throughout the 20^th century through the present day.

From Authors of ‘The McCartney Legacy’ books on reluctant interviewees, Wings turnover, more – Goldmine Magazine, December 21, 2024:

GOLDMINE: Because of the success of your first book, did that help open doors for you this time, as far as getting access to interviews, information, etc.? Were there new challenges?

ALLAN KOZINN: It’s hard to say, because for the most part we researched both books at the same time, so we spoke with a lot of people who would not be quoted until Volume 2 before Volume 1 was published. But for both books, there were some interviewees who needed to be asked only once, and others who we had to persuade that we’re doing a serious biography.

ADRIAN SINCLAIR: We conducted a good number of the interviews for Volume 2 while we were writing Volume 1. But when I was building bridges with hard-to-reach interviewees — like Joe English, for example — Volume 1 certainly gave us more credibility as authors and authorities on Paul’s life and music. Joe knew that our approach to storytelling was balanced and fair rather than sensationalist.

GM: Following on from the previous question, how did you get Wings drummer Geoff Britton to open up to you and share his diaries? I’ve rarely heard him make any comment on his brief tenure with Wings.

AS: Before I made contact with Geoff in 2019, he had not sat for an in-depth interview with a journalist since 1977. He was deeply hurt by his sacking and found it difficult to revisit the past. I convinced him to meet with me at a café bar near where he lives in Spain and we really hit it off. That day we spoke for a couple of hours, and when we parted ways he confessed that our conversation had been hard but cathartic. Then, a few months later, the world went into lockdown and Geoff called me to say that he had found his 1974 and 1975 diaries. We went on to speak many times during the pandemic, walking through his time as Paul’s rhythm man almost day-by-day. I know this volume will not be an easy read for Geoff, but I hope that it offers him some form of closure.

GM: Which brings up another point; why was it so hard for Paul to keep a band together? Band members are constantly coming and going. Made me wonder why Paul didn’t just use session musicians.

AK: After The Beatles broke up, Paul’s first project, McCartney, was done on his own, and his follow-up, Ram, was done with studio players. But he had essentially come of age, musically and otherwise, as part of a band, and after those first two albums, he wanted to recapture that; to have a consistent, tight-knit group in which everyone was thoroughly familiar with the other players’ musicianship, with which he could tour and record. What he said he wanted, when he formed Wings, was a Beatles-like band of equals in which everyone contributed. But the reality was that he was always going to be the front man, partly because as a former Beatle he was naturally going to have the spotlight, but also temperamentally, he’s a guy who likes having things his way. That created clashes in the first iteration of Wings, where Henry McCullouch objected to having his solos dictated to him, and it led to some of the frustrations (along with copious amounts of drugs and alcohol) that led Jimmy McCulloch to act out, to the point where Paul had to fire him. But of course, there were other reasons players left as well. Joe English was homesick for America. Geoff Britton left after a few difficult recording sessions in which he was unable to produce the drum part that Paul had in mind, although there were also personality clashes between Geoff, Jimmy McCulloch and Denny Laine. With Wings’ final iteration, with Laurence Juber on guitar and Steve Holley on drums, he finally had a band that could do anything he threw at them, musically, and seemed happy to acknowledge that Paul was the boss. But by then he was getting tired of the pressures of leading a band. […]

GM: What makes Paul such a workaholic? He seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of energy, moving from his own albums to side projects to working with other artists…. Why this need to always be doing something?

AK: I think when you love what you do, you don’t really see it as work, even if you actually work quite hard at it. Writing and playing music — and to a lesser degree, paintings, sculptures and lately children’s books — is like breathing to him: he does it naturally, and it often seems as though he needs to do it to stay alive. And it’s something that he has never lost his curiosity about. He’s tried just about every style there is, including experimental and classical styles, and he’s shown an astonishing capacity for assimilating those styles into something that remains recognizably his own. During the period we cover in The McCartney Legacy, Volume. 2, he tries his hand at everything from strange soundscapes like “Morse Moose and the Grey Goose,” 1940s-style ballads like “My Baby’s Request” and master classes in vocal counterpoint like “Silly Love Songs” and “Daytime Nightime Suffering” to punk, in “Spin It On” and disco, in “Goodnight Tonight.”

GM: Your book makes the point that Paul is concerned with what the critics say when he releases a new record. But why? After all, records that the critics attack still go on to be big sellers. So why does he care?

AK: I think it’s because another aspect of his personality is that he wants people to love what he does. It’s not “art for art’s sake,” although I’m sure with certain things, he realizes that not everyone will sign on. I take your point; if the public loves it and buys it, why worry about critics. But the critics are the ones who are publicly saying what they think, and however successful a record might be, if you’ve taken several months or a year to make an album, and you have a handful of critics writing snarky takedowns, it’s going to hurt, because that becomes the public, historical record of the reaction to that work. And I think it’s just human nature. I taught music criticism at NYU for a decade, and at the end of every semester I’d read the students’ evaluations. Most were enthusiastic, but there’d be that one guy who wrote that the class was boring, and that was the one I’d obsess about. […]

GM: How did working on this book make you reevaluate Paul’s career during this time?

AK: This has been the most rewarding aspect of this project for me. I knew Paul’s work; I had all the albums and singles, and stacks of bootlegs, and by the time Adrian invited me to collaborate with him, I had interviewed Paul a few times and seen him in concert maybe a dozen times. And I had a tremendous amount of respect for him, but there were tracks I loved, tracks I didn’t like much, and tracks that just sort of washed over me when I played the albums. But in working on The McCartney Legacy, Adrian and I focused intently on every one of his recordings, tracing them from his demos, through various session outtakes and stages along the way, to the finished productions, so that we could show how (and in some cases why) he did what he did. And doing that has pointed up lots of ingenious twists that I hadn’t taken account of before; fascinating harmonic turns, inspired melodic ideas, interesting juxtapositions of instrumental color. For example, like everyone on the planet, I had heard “Silly Love Songs” a gazillion times, and to be honest, I had never really liked it much. But reading Paul’s handwritten lyrics, which include a structural schematic for the song, and focusing on its vocal counterpoint, which is pretty sophisticated, and its bassline, which is the kind of virtuoso line that he played with the Beatles, but less frequently with Wings, I came to regard it as a pretty extraordinary piece of work. And that kind of thing happened again and again (and again) as we’ve made our way through his catalogue.

AS: Since a large portion of each of our volumes is dedicated to examining and documenting every one of McCartney’s songs from demo to finished product, it has not only given me a deeper understanding of what makes him tick as a songwriter, musician and producer, but also a deeper appreciation of even the most obscure of album tracks and B-sides. Venus and Mars is the perfect showcase of McCartney’s songwriting brilliance, seamlessly switching between rock and roll (“Rock Show”), ballad (“Love in Song”), and cabaret (“You Gave Me The Answer”) on Side 1 of the LP. I knew he was a genius before we began writing these volumes, but when you study each musical brushstroke he has made under the microscope it gives you the feeling that there is something other-worldly about his talent!

GM: How many more volumes do you anticipate in the series?

AK: That remains to be seen, but we’re hoping to do three more, in which case Volume 3 would cover the 1980s, Volume 4 would be devoted to the 1990s, and the final volume would go from about 2000 on.

From Authors of ‘The McCartney Legacy’ books on reluctant interviewees, Wings turnover, more – Goldmine Magazine, December 21, 2024

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