Beatles: why the partnership of John Lennon and Paul McCartney ended

This is the best story often told. The Beatles are not only the most successful musical act of all time; They are perhaps the most analyzed artists, deconstructed and dissected since dawn of recorded music.

We think we know everything, but the author Ian Leslie proves the opposite. His new book, “John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs”, is surprisingly one of the few to offer a detailed account of the partnership of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. And it's a revelation. Leslie gave a complete portrait of this remarkably fruitful and frequently tortured creative partnership, which began in Liverpool in 1957 and ended in New York on December 8, 1980, with the murder of Lennon.

The basic facts of their first meeting are well known. They met in the summer of 1957 during a garden center in the suburbs of Liverpool in Woolton, where Lennon, 17, played with his skiffle group The Quarrymen. McCartney was there for Scout Lennon, who already established a reputation as a fascinating stadium interpreter. McCartney, 15, gave the courage to approach Lennon after his set; Their link was forged by a mutual passion for the “Heartbreak Hotel” by Little Richard and Elvis Presley.

They took the writing of songs with Alarcrity, motivated by a desire to create their own material at a time when there was no precedent for a group to write its own songs. “This involved the two who get into each other in the art of writing songs and do it from scratch,” writes Leslie. “And there was no labor division.” One of their first joint compositions was “Love Me Do”, which was written in 1958, four years before the Beatles recorded it. All their songs, whether they are fully done or half cooked, were conscientiously connected by McCartney in a book of exercises that he had slipped from school.

The first songs that fans know by Rote – “She Loves You” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand”, among others – came quickly, in a crazy tour of ideas linked to regular work ethics. Lennon and McCartney were so linked together that Leslie wrote a “double conscience” by which the pair alternate the voice on the same song, as in “A Hard Day's Night”, or wrapped them together in a confessional in the first person like “If I Fell”. This equipment has held very productive for four years, but there is a moment in all love stories when a partner is agitated and begins to withdraw. According to Leslie, this moment came in 1966, when McCartney wrote “yesterday” without any contribution from Lennon.

“Yesterday” looks like a change of balance of powers, “explains Leslie. “From the start, they were equal, and` `yesterday '' was not only a success, but the song that more artists covered only any other Beatles song. Paul even sang it on stage by himself when they played. And that sparked the insecurity of John.”

Another separation occurred in 1967 when Lennon, as well as George Harrison and Ringo Starr, left London in the suburbs while McCartney remained behind, soaking in the beautiful people from the city's artist. Leslie also writes on the use by Lennon of the LSD and the reluctance of McCartney to follow the plunge. “They did not live close to each other and the writing of songs did more work with fixed hours,” explains Leslie. But “while they were starting to separate, the songs were still amazing.”

An increase between partners has become a spur for Lennon to try stronger, McCartney responding in kind. When Lennon presented McCartney “Strawberry Fields Forever” to McCartney, a Woozy reverie without base based on his childhood, McCartney wrote his own memory play, “Penny Lane”. Lennon wrote “Imagine” a year after the Beatles rupture and thought he had finally exceeded McCartney. “When he played so that people get comments, the question he asked was,” Is it better than “yesterday?” “Said Leslie.

However, even if they rewritten the rules of pop music, the dynamics between the two began to decline, especially after the death of their manager Brian Epstein. When their flow of income was threatened by Epstein's brother, who wanted to sell 25% of the group's future profits to a group of merchant bankers, this sparked a legal battle with several components in which McCartney chose his brother-in-law John L. Eastman To represent it in legal proceedings, while the other three threw their share with the stroke Allen Klein. It was the beginning of the end, as was well documented.

But it was not quite finished. According to Leslie, there have been many social opportunities when Lennon and McCartney appreciated the company of the other after the Beatles rupture. Leslie writes that it was McCartney who helped negotiate a rapprochement between Lennon and his ex-wife, Yoko Ono, in 1974 during the “Lost Weekend” period in Los Angeles, visiting Lennon to her beach house in Santa Monica to deliver the news that wanted to go up. There was also a strange moment in 1975, when Lorne Michaels Offered $ 3,000 to the Beatles to meet on “Saturday Night Live”. McCartney visited Lennon in New York at the time and they briefly planned to shock the world by making it the Rockefeller Center, but the idea was abandoned.

“Despite their differences, there was always this feeling with John that perhaps one day, they could come together again,” explains Leslie. “John had the greatest admiration for the musicality and writing of Paul's songs, and there was always this mutual respect, even when they were fighting in court. There was this tacit dialogue between them, long after they stopped writing together.”