The McCartney Legacy: Volume 1: 1969 - 73

by Allan Kozinn, Adrian Sinclair

Overview

In this first of a groundbreaking multivolume set, THE MCCARTNEY LEGACY, VOL 1: 1969-73 captures the life of Paul McCartney in the years immediately following the dissolution of the Beatles, a period in which McCartney recreated himself as both a man and a musician. Informed by hundreds of interviews, extensive ground up research, and thousands of never-before-seen documents THE MCCARTNEY LEGACY, VOL 1 is an in depth, revealing exploration of McCartney’s creative and personal lives beyond the Beatles.

When Paul McCartney issued a press release in April 1970 announcing that the world’s most beloved band, the Beatles, had broken up no one could have predicted that McCartney himself would go on to have one of the most successful solo careers in music history. Yet in the years after the Fab Four disbanded, Paul McCartney became a legend in his own right. Now journalist and world-renowned Beatles’ historian Allan Kozinn and award-winning documentarian Adrian Sinclair chronicle in technicolor McCartney’s pivotal years from 1969 to 1973, as he recreated himself in the immediate aftermath of the Beatles breakup – a period when, newly married and with a growing family, he conquered depression and self-doubt, formed a new band, Wings, and recorded five epochal albums culminating in the triumphant smash, Band on the Run.

Part 1 of a multivolume set, THE MCCARTNEY LEGACY, VOL. 1 documents a pivotal moment in the life of a man whose legacy grows increasingly more relevant as his influence on music and pop culture remains as relevant as ever. It is the first truly comprehensive biography, and the most finely detailed exploration of McCartney’s creative life beyond the Beatles, ever undertaken.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063000704
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	12/13/2022
Pages:	720
Sales rank:	209,026
Product dimensions:	7.40(w) x 9.10(h) x 2.00(d)

About the Author

Allan Kozinn was a music critic and culture reporter for the New York Times from 1977 to 2014, where he wrote principally about classical music. In that capacity, he interviewed Paul McCartney several times, and saw him perform in a great variety of configurations and venues—from singing with a hand mic at the Lonestar Roadhouse, playing rock oldies at the Cavern, in Liverpool, and performing in small halls like the Ed Sullivan Theater and the Highline Ballroom, to full-scale concerts at Madison Square Garden and Yankee Stadium. He currently contributes regularly to the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and other publications. He has taught courses at the Juilliard School and New York University (including a course on the Beatles at the latter), and has written seven books, among them The Beatles—From the Cavern to the Rooftop (1995), Got That Something! How The Beatles’ ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ Changed Everything (2013), The New York Times Essential Guide—Classical Music (2004).

The principal researcher for the McCartney Legacy series, Adrian Sinclair studied film at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and served a traineeship with ITV in Yorkshire, England, where he learned his craft as a documentary film editor. He’s worked for almost every major broadcaster in the world, including the BBC, ITV, Sky, Channel 4, National Geographic, Discovery and MTV. As well as receiving recognition for his work from the Royal Television Society in England, Adrian’s 2010 documentary Stealing Shakespeare (BBC/Smithsonian) was Emmy shortlisted for Best Documentary. 

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 The Kintyre Mist 7

2 Rotten Apple 31

3 Playing with Himself 54

4 Enter Billy Martin 75

5 One Guy Standing there Shouting "I'm Leaving!" 103

6 Another Day, Another Dilemma 124

7 Working 9 to 5 150

8 Keep on Truckin 166

9 Back Across the Water 194

10 Of Beatles and Barristers 218

11 Battering Ram 254

12 Growing Wings 277

13 War is Over. If You Want It 305

14 Ireland, It's the Capital of Liverpool 337

15 Introducing … Rikki and the Red Streaks 351

16 Getting High and Jamming 376

17 Preparing for Liftoff 401

18 "Chantez a Bit If you know Les Mots" 427

19 From the Autobahn to the Red Rose Speedway 454

20 Romeo, Romeo 482

21 Double Vision 507

22 Five of them Came Up Illegal 529

23 Dustin Off the Cobwebs 553

24 "How Dare You Inconvenience Us" 583

25 Step Softly, This Town is Jinxed 608

26 Restless Momentum 628

27 The King of Pop 657

Acknowledgments 673

Illustrations 676

Bibliography 677

Selected Discography 679

Selected Videography 681

Concert Tours 683

Notes 685

Editorial Reviews

"Volume 1 of The McCartney Legacy by Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair, arrives like a well-planned encore a year after the publication of The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present by Paul McCartney. Influenced by the methods of Mark Lewisohn, the exacting Beatles historian currently at work on the second volume of a trilogy about the group (the first was 900 pages, and that was an abridgment)... in a way The McCartney Legacy out-Lewisohns Lewisohn, taking almost 700 pages to cover only five years." — The New York Times Book Review

“This is the comprehensive, painstaking, dazzling and definitive chronicle of rock’s strangest story: how Paul McCartney refused to go quietly after the Beatles, and how he kept his genius moving forward into another day. An amazing, inspiring trip.”
— Rob Sheffield, author of Dreaming the Beatles

“No maybe – I’m plain amazed at this real reveal of Paul McCartney with his decades of artful creativity. Through these pages is the accurate biography of a universal explorer.”
— Mark Lewisohn, world renowned Beatles expert

"Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair's The McCartney Legacy: Volume 1, 1969-73 is a triumph... their masterful study of the artist's spectacular rise from the ashes of the Beatles, Kozinn and Sinclair bring McCartney's comeback story vividly to life." — Salon

"Anybody in the future who wants to know anything about the subject will find the information here. Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair, a former New York Times music critic and a documentary maker respectively, have entirely succeeded in the task they set themselves — to find out and inform the reader of everything there is to know about the life of Paul McCartney between 1969 and 1973." — The Times (UK)

"If the devil is in the detail the The McCartney Legacy is positively satanic." — The Mail on Sunday Book Review

"Setting the story between The Beatles’ demise and 1973 offers Kozinn and Sinclair a compelling redemptive narrative arc... Choosing to tell their story without foreknowledge, the authors allow it to unfold as if it’s happening in real time and without looking ahead to the outcome of any particular actions. It’s an often breathless and riveting read." — Reader's Digest

"One thing that really sets this book apart is Kozinn and Sinclair’s unprecedented amount of detail on every single Paul McCartney solo recording session: dates, places, songs worked on, remembrances from those in the room, and lots of equipment detail." — Houston Press Book Review

"A gold mine for avid fans." — Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

12/01/2022

Former New York Times music critic Kozinn (The Beatles: From the Cavern to the Rooftop) and Sinclair, a film documentarian, expertly chronicle the life and music of Paul McCartney beyond the Beatles. In the first half, they deal with the acrimonious split of the Fab Four over business affairs, which pitted McCartney and his manager/father-in-law Lee Eastman against the other three Beatles, who favored the aggressive but somewhat disreputable entrepreneur Allen Klein. They also recount the creative process behind McCartney's two solo efforts—1970's McCartney and 1971's Ram—and his pastoral life with his new wife, Linda. In the final sections, Kozinn and Sinclair document in painstaking detail the formation, recordings, and touring of the band Wings, which produced the 1973 commercial blockbuster and McCartney's most well-known, post-Beatles album, Band on the Run. VERDICT Meticulously researching the topic and writing in a lively, conversational style, the coauthors have delivered the definitive work about the immediate post-Beatles times of Paul McCartney. It is likely to be too detailed for general readers but represents a treasure trove of information for Beatlemaniacs.—Dr. Dave Szatmary

Library Journal

2022-10-11
A fulsome biography set during a crucial period of the iconic musician’s life.

Drawing on hundreds of interviews, theirs and others, Kozinn and Sinclair create a thorough narrative seeking to show a “deeper sense of how (and why) McCartney…created the music of the period we cover.” Covering five years in more than 700 pages, the book is extremely detail-laden, probably more than some readers will want. The authors begin at the end, with the dissolution of the Beatles in 1969, something McCartney didn’t want but John Lennon did. McCartney said he “really was done in for the first time in my life.” He was also worried about the fate of Apple Records, which put him up against the others and contributed mightily to the band’s breakup. As things fell apart, McCartney was living on his Scottish farm, writing and recording songs with his own equipment. Kozinn and Sinclair include numerous informational callouts—“Recording Sessions”—throughout the book alongside deep dives into the composition of the songs, giving insights into McCartney’s creative process. The authors also explore how Linda Eastman helped McCartney in many ways and how he composed a song about her, “Maybe I’m Amazed,” for a solo, reboot album he was working on, McCartney, which the authors see as a counterpoint to Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Wedding Album. The authors devote a lot of space to record-business machinations and legal matters. They describe how McCartney hand-picked musicians to record with as he released a single and worked on a new album, Ram, which received tepid reviews. They chronicle the formation of Wings with Linda and Wild Life, another album, which George Harrison viciously panned as “crummy.” Volume 1 ends with the highly successful Band on the Run album. To be continued.

A gold mine for avid fans.

Kirkus Reviews

Golden Voice narrator Simon Vance performs this biography with sonority and dramatic range. Its account of Paul McCartney's life during the four years after the Beatles' breakup is full of personal and professional details that humanize his outsized celebrity. Through exhaustive research and access to many who knew him, this work covers a lot of ground while staying in touch with the ambitious and occasionally depressed Liverpool lad who longed to be known as himself rather than Paul the Beatle. While Vance's interpretations are invariably in tune with the authors' writing, some listeners might wish for more sensitivity to the dramatic shifts associated with McCartney's incredible drive and moodiness--the powerful forces that repeatedly roiled his interactions and make his initial post-Beatle years so compelling. T.W. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

APRIL 2023 - AudioFile

Golden Voice narrator Simon Vance performs this biography with sonority and dramatic range. Its account of Paul McCartney's life during the four years after the Beatles' breakup is full of personal and professional details that humanize his outsized celebrity. Through exhaustive research and access to many who knew him, this work covers a lot of ground while staying in touch with the ambitious and occasionally depressed Liverpool lad who longed to be known as himself rather than Paul the Beatle. While Vance's interpretations are invariably in tune with the authors' writing, some listeners might wish for more sensitivity to the dramatic shifts associated with McCartney's incredible drive and moodiness--the powerful forces that repeatedly roiled his interactions and make his initial post-Beatle years so compelling. T.W. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

APRIL 2023 - AudioFile