The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present PDF Download Free

Attributes of The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present PDF

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present PDF
A Washington Post Notable Book
Excerpted in The New Yorker

A work of unparalleled candor and splendorous beauty, The Lyrics celebrates the creative life and the musical genius of Paul McCartney through 154 of his most meaningful songs.
From his early Liverpool days, through the historic decade of The Beatles, to Wings and his long solo career, The Lyrics pairs the definitive texts of 154 Paul McCartney songs with first-person commentaries on his life and music. Spanning two alphabetically arranged volumes, these commentaries reveal how the songs came to be and the people who inspired them: his devoted parents, Mary and Jim; his songwriting partner, John Lennon; his “Golden Earth Girl,” Linda Eastman; his wife, Nancy McCartney; and even Queen Elizabeth, among many others. Here are the origins of “Let It Be,” “Lovely Rita,” “Yesterday,” and “Mull of Kintyre,” as well as McCartney’s literary influences, including Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, and Alan Durband, his high-school English teacher.

With images from McCartney’s personal archives―handwritten texts, paintings, and photographs, hundreds previously unseen―The Lyrics, spanning sixty-four years, becomes the definitive literary and visual record of one of the greatest songwriters of all time.

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Illustrations of The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present PDF

As difficult as innovation is today. The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present is a text that is present in the form of inspiration that will broaden the minds beyond what an artist or photographer can see. This is one of the masterpieces that is recommended by all the great artists to be changing their visualization of the world of today. In the minds of someone that truly appreciates what this text has to offer lies the secret of changing the way everyone lives in this world. Art is the most influential subject of today’s world and at all times has it been the foundation stone for change in this universe we live in. A must read and learn for all artist and especially photographers.

The Writers

Born in Liverpool in 1942, Paul McCartney was raised in the city and educated at the Liverpool Institute. Since writing his first song at fourteen, McCartney has dreamed and dared to be different. He lives in England.

Paul Muldoon is the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of fourteen full-length collections of poetry, including Howdie-Skelp.

Proportions of The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present PDF

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Liveright (November 2, 2021)
  Language ‏ : ‎ English
  Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 960 pages
  International Standard Book Number-10 ‏ : ‎ 163149256X
  International Standard Book Number-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1631492563
  Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.6 pounds
  Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.5 x 3.1 x 10.8 inches
  Best Sellers Rank: #1,850 in Books

Reviews From Customers

cl nottingham
Packaging issue not Sir Paul
November 3, 2021

I patiently waited since March to receive this magnificent book collection to have it delivered without packing or protection from the outside elements. Poor Quality Control not the product. But probably doesn’t care because no where to rate that😵‍💫
19

Patty
Nothing new or revealing.
November 3, 2021

Very disappointed with this purchase. Paul does not give any information that is not already available to the public. He said that there was no need to write an auto-biography because the lyrics to his songs were a running commentary on his life. What a bunch of bunk. Even when discussing his most personal songs, like Calico Skies (written when Linda was dying), he fails to disclose anything. I wish I had not wasted my money on this.
14

Nor’easter
Carry that Weight, Paul- You were a Beatle
November 3, 2021

This is a very different look back at Paul’s songs than I expected. Some of the Beatle’s big hits are represented, but there are many more obscure songs represented in these volumes like “Eat at Home”, “Cook of the House”,”On my Way to Work”, etc. It feels as if the Beatles era of Paul’s work is underplayed and under represented. This holds true for the photos as well. When I skimmed the volumes, it felt very post Beatles. It was actually difficult to find Beatles photos. We all understand that Paul was much more than a Beatle, but it was during that period of his life that he wrote his greatest and most well known songs, whether he likes it or not and that is his audiences primary interest as well. It seems that in the space of 960 pages, all of his well known Beatles songs should have been covered. I’m disappointed- this is the closest we will come to a McCartney memoir and it just doesn’t deliver. I’m sad for the sake of history, after all, Paul is undeniably, one of the greatest songwriters of all time and this is what we’re left with. I can understand now why the price of this title is dropping. This will not satisfy most Paul McCartney fans. I’ll probably return it.
14

Damaged
November 2, 2021

Purchased as a gift and it arrived with dented corners and damaged. It looks to be a great read but unfortunately will have to deal with a return.
13

Heather F
Beautiful. Can’t put the book down!
November 3, 2021

What stunning packaging. I was surprised how heavy it was when I received it! Photos are brilliant, and stories are mesmerizing. Definitely an amazing box of 5 years worth of work putting this incredible set of stories together. So worth the wait- I hope to see Paul in concert while he is still able to tour!

8

Brandon
Beautiful!
November 3, 2021

This is a wonderful set and is likely the closest thing to an autobiography we’ll get from Paul. It’s well worth the $60 I paid. The reproductions are all beautiful and the foreword (written by Paul) is enough to get the eyes misty when you read about the impact his parents had on his life. And of course there are all kinds of tidbits about John sprinkled through the book. Get it while you can! This is a must-have for true fans.
6

MHayslip
A GREAT addition to any McCartney/Beatles fan collection!
November 3, 2021

I’m a HUGE McCartney/Beatles fan. Today, this collectible arrived. I’m so excited and am looking forward to reading both volumes cover to cover.
4

David Bower
Nothing Too Much Just Out Of Sight
November 11, 2021

This tremendous book has taken me a full week to read and experience cover to cover. What a joy it has been! It is a very candid book about Paul’s songwriting processes and the circumstances, relationships, cultures and philosophies that brought them to life. You will also learn a tremendous amount about Paul’s worlds, loves and inspirations. Nothing has been whitewashed, his various comments on Jane Asher and John Lennon were startling. As this never pretended to be an autobiography, selective parts of his public life have been omitted as he is of course entitled to do. Such a great book for a McCartney fan, it is at least as good as the Beatles’ Anthology, if not better due to the deeper dives.
2

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Top reviews from other countries
Robert ‘Bob’ Macespera
Many pictures; not that many lyrics
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 10, 2021

There was an initial surprise when we knew the title for these books: “The Lyrics”. McCartney is a composer, a master in creating melodies, and one of the best there’s been at that; but focusing in his lyrics seemed like an odd move. Then there’s the “completeness” of it: the “the” in the title; the pompous subtitle “1956 to the present”. The author’s message was clear: this is about me not as a “mere” composer of pop ballads, but as something more serious: a “writer”. It is also going to be something big, definite, major, over the top (McCartney tends to do that): this is the final book for all the many McCartney followers out there; look no more, this is it – almost 1,000 pages, it’ll be all here. And then the books were published, so at long last we were able to buy the set. And how good is it?

For starters the books set is big, and very, very heavy. Everything in it is grand: the format, the book case, the photos, the glossy pages. And then there’re the lyrics and McCartney’s elaboration on those, taking surprisingly little space (roughly a bit less than one fifth of all the pages). So the excessive format works, to these eyes, against the very core idea of “the lyrics”: we expected personal comments on how Paul McCartney grew and developed into one of the most important and talented musicians of the XX century. Yet he has wrapped his thoughts, almost buried those, in hundreds of photographs and a grandiose set of two books, as if afraid of presenting his bare comments or that mere words wouldn’t do it. We expected words about “The Lyrics”, and instead we got a mammoth album of larger than life photographs with some texts here and there. And this does not work, because we get full-pages photos of cars (and dogs and guitars and places and people and houses and pieces of clothing) that gave name or merely inspired some of Paul’s songs or are vaguely related to him at some point in his life – is that all necessary? The same can be said of the reproduction of hand-written lyrics. One or two of those look good and can complement well a book – dozens of pages of them (as there are in “The Lyrics”) is, beyond a curiosity, an excess that eventually adds up nothing to the set of books – much on the contrary, in the end it gets boring and seems more a page-filler.

Since the mid-2000s several musicians of McCartney’s generation and stature have written their autobiographies: Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Elton John, to name just a few well-known names. These books are all very good, sober and very well written documents of the golden era of rock music, and Dylan’s and Springsteen’s memoirs are exceptionally well written. Each and every one of those memoirs is a joy to read and all of them became deserved best-sellers. Yet McCartney seems to have tried to outdo them all by going bigger, as if a conventional autobiography was below him or as he needed more space to tell his story.

The inclusion of many Wings songs doesn’t help either – there are more songs of McCartney with Wings and solo than with the Beatles, and this reduces the book’s quality. It’s magnificent to read what took Paul to write ‘Yesterday’ or where he got the inspiration for “I Will”, “Hey Jude” or “For No One”. But, do we need to know what inspired him to compose minor songs post-1970, such as “Check my Machine”, his instrumental, and rather poor, song of “McCartney II”? (And by the way, a song whose lyrics are a mere repetition of the song’s title). Does the inane and justly forgotten “Magneto and the Titanium Man” deserve six pages in the book – or in any book at all? And same can be said of his comments on the late Linda. Paul McCartney has always considered her as an important member of his own band, Wings, and she wasn’t, at least in anything related to music. The late Mrs McCartney was, according to testimonies of all who knew her, a charming and lovely lady. Fair enough. But she was not a musician, even if she was keen to be photographed at keyboards (which she couldn’t play). In “The Lyrics” McCartney refers often to her as a worthy musician, which she wasn’t, and he even writes that Linda was a “pioneer female singer” and that she was very good at “clapping and doing harmonies” – lines obviously written by the devoted husband, not by the musician. And these comments, and the inclusion of minor songs allegedly co-written by Linda (“Cook of the House”) diminish considerably the quality of the book.

In the end, we’re left with just a handful of good texts and some original pictures, but only a few of each of those, and this does not seem to be enough to justify the cost or the expectation of the books-set. So after reading the books back-to-back we’re indeed missing something we hoped to get: the story of the Beatles through their work. And this could be found in the best book ever written on the Beatles songs (lyrics and music) and of their evolution along the glorious sixties, as well in popular music. This book is still, by and large, “Revolution in the Head”, by Ian MacDonald. This is an outstandingly well researched, unbiased and pitch-perfect analysis of the career of the band whose music is one of the peaks of contemporary art through a chronological analysis of each song the Beatles recorded. With “The Lyrics” we expected the same, but even better, because it’s written by one of the leaders and the main composer of the band from Liverpool. And we didn’t get it. Far from it.

What did we expect? Simple. If Paul would have only written something similar to MacDonalds’ book: a musical journey through the songs, showing his initiations and shockingly fast development as a composer; if he would have only published, say, 300 pages thickly packed with insights, revelations and facts on his inspiration and brilliant musical career; if he would have supported the text with just a handful of well selected and never-seen pictures to illustrate specific parts of the tale; if the song’s lyrics would have been presented chronologically, for the reader to see the composer’s outstanding evolution; if McCartney wouldn’t have tried so much to appear as “an author” by citing and almost comparing himself to giant contemporaries like Bertrand Russell or Harold Pinter; if Paul would have chosen for the book mostly Beatles songs, bookending those with a dozen pieces of his solo career, and relying heavily for these perhaps in his quite touching reflections on loss, friendship and growing old of the songs he composed for “Egypt Station” and “McCartney III”. That would have been the wonderful, priceless, unique book we eagerly waited for months.

But Paul McCartney hasn’t lived up to the expectation created with the announcement of the publishing of “The Lyrics”. He is one of the best composers of the last 100 years, without a doubt. But, because he fell one by one for the mistakes above noted, the book neither works as a personal memoir nor as a review of 50 years of composing and success nor as an insight into the rock scene of the last six decades nor, in the end, as anything in particular. Unfortunately, this set of books ended up being something closer to a bloated artifact, a showy, repetitive and unnecessarily enormous photo album with elongated captions; it’s an odd, unbalanced and in the end rather disappointing way to share a brilliant composer’s inspiration with the world.
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10

Quiverbow
In his own write
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 2, 2021

Sir James Paul McCartney, CH MBE, the greatest living songwriter, admits to never having kept diaries, which isn’t strictly true, as there are photos of brief entries, but he does have a rather extensive catalogue of songs (and I’m sure someone else will count how many he has written or co-authored). Stretching to nearly 900 pages, he has now decided the time is right to tell us how 154 of those tunes from his vast treasure trove came about.

Begun in August 2015 but not fully worked on until 2019, it’s presented in alphabetical order across two hardback volumes inside a slip case, each volume has it’s own dust jacket, but you can take those off and have two different covers. Inside you’ll find a plethora of photos (of which only a handful will have be seen by us), handwritten lyrics, mouth watering acetates and various other bits and pieces. Oh, and the songs and explanations how they came to be. Each one is four, six or eight pages, though ‘Yesterday’ is afforded ten, and the whole thing will keep you going for a while.

But don’t think all the pages are taken up with text, as some have a page devoted to a photo of a record or something like a handbill; ‘In Spite Of All The Danger’ being an example of having both sides of the acetate spread over two pages. But at least you can see all of it. Those songs that are in these volumes range from ‘I Lost My Little Girl’ from 1956 through to a trio of selections from ‘McCartney III’. Now, Beatles devotees will know about songs such as ‘Too Bad About Sorrows’ and other tunes he wrote back in the late 50s and [very] early 60s, but what about ‘Tell Me Who He Is’? A mere eight lines long, it was discovered hidden away in a notebook and is alleged to be an unrecorded Beatles song. (Well, that’s what MPL is claiming and who are we to doubt that?)

Expensive? Some might say it is but that’s for you to decide. Remember, anything Beatle related tends to carry a premium, though I can’t see many casual buyers forking out nearly £50 for this; it’s aimed at McCartney aficionados. And most of us will lap it up. It’s a shame he didn’t include everything he’s written but maybe that task would have been too big. The resulting book certainly would have been.

I wonder if Marjorie ever received a response from Paul for her fan letter on page 188?
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2

A. Stephens
Genius at work watch out
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 2, 2021

Got delivered 3 hours ago and up to page 170 before knocking it on the head for the night.
Great insights to songs so far
However I am amazed that the Beatles greatest song “A day in the life” has only one page about it and no mention of lennon.
Have a couple of pages fell out of my one?
Straight back into it in the morning
From one scouser to another scouser, I thank you sir
2

rilsk
This is far better than a biography book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 3, 2021

This is not just a book. It offers an amazing experience to travel through time, space and music. It’s worth every penny.
2

kian
Beautifully Crafted and put together
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 2, 2021

you can tell this was put together with alot of love. the structure holding the two books is incredibly sturdy and each books is meticulously put together. the content is an extremely entertaining read, only got it 4 hours ago and already through the first book. overall its 100% worth the price
1

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