1964 came out a few months ago. Eyes of the Storm (Liburuak) is an elegant and interesting book of photographs taken by Paul McCartney in his twenties during the Beatles’ first major international tour in the early 60s. Imagine the emotions Paul, John, George and Ringo experienced during the explosion of Beatlemania: an unprecedented global phenomenon that made them the most popular band of all time overnight.
The naivety and sensitivity that McCartney’s old photographs exude fit perfectly with many of his early songs, where the innocence of youth and personal experiences are the main inspirations. “As we matured, we realized that we could take the composition in other directions, often to another level,” the musician emphasizes in Letras, a voluminous book in which he describes the motivations and conditions that gave life to a total of 161 songs. from different stages of his career: from the years before the Beatles to the present, including Wings.
«Some people, when they reach a certain age, like to look through their diaries to remember daily events of the past, but I don’t have those notebooks. “What I’ve got are hundreds of my songs,” McCartney admits in the foreword to that title – now out in soft cover, a single volume, with interpretations of seven new songs – and thinks it’s the closest he’ll ever come to his definitive autobiography. Song by song, the musician reveals that he and Lennon It offers, in the simplest form, plenty of personal details about the days when they sat down to shape ‘s ideas – “it was hard not to be amazed by John’s intelligence and wisdom” – and how the magic happened. “We wrote a song every day. We would meet at my house or John’s house . The usual two guitars. “Two notebooks, two pens.”
McCartney’s first composition, I lost my little girl, dates back to 1956, when her mother died. At the age of 14, young Paul had to absorb the blow as best he could. And he did this by writing a song. As he explains, “you don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to understand that the song is a very direct response to this terrible loss”. The frankness of his memoirs is constant throughout the volume, co-written with Irish poet and Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Muldoon; Thanks to this book, a privileged window is opened through which you can look at the seed and influence of timeless hymns such as Let it be and Yesterday. , Blackbird, Golden sleeps, A day in the life, Lady Madona, Hey Jude and Live and let die.
McCartney is the most famous composer of the 20th century, and traces of his works remain an inevitable source of inspiration for all musicians. In these pages he reveals much of his methodology, a formula always open to mystery. Because, as he explains, we know that “something is going to happen” once the first chords are established. “The act of writing a song is a unique experience, different from anything I’ve ever known. You need to be in a good mood and start with an open mind. “You have to trust your initial feelings because at first you don’t really know where you’re going.”
As well as transcription of all the lyrics, this volume also contains an extraordinary variety of material from McCartney’s personal archive (photographs, letters, handwritten drafts…), making it an extraordinary encyclopedia on how to make music. A real treasure for Beatles lovers and everyone who has dedicated or wants to dedicate their lives to the pentagram.