*Starred Review* Norman first wrote about the Beatles in 1965 as a young reporter. Later, as a rock critic for a prestigious London newspaper, he had the opportunity to interview Paul McCartney at launches for his Wings' albums but declined, feeling the celebrated singer was a self-satisfied lightweight. Then, in 1981, he published Shout!, which placed John Lennon's talent well above Paul's. But here, with Paul's blessing, he gives McCartney his due. Norman offers a fully fleshed-out biography, and though he naturally refers back to previous works, he also comes up with some new sources, including a writer who assisted on one of Linda McCartney's cookbooks; McCartney's stepmother; Linda's brother, John Eastman; and Paul's lawyer, who has been around since the Beatles' breakup and has never spoken on the record. Still, even with new sources, the facts of McCartney's life are largely familiar by now, but what Norman gets so very right are the feelings behind the facts: the intense relationship between John and Paul, with its curves and angles; the normality that being a husband and father brought Paul; the improbability of being one of the most famous men in the world. The shelves are full of books about the Beatles, but fans will want to make room for this one.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2016 Booklist

Norman, following up on his bestselling biography of John Lennon (John Lennon: A Life), interviews hundreds of Paul McCartney's family, friends, and associates to draw the most complete picture of the former Beatle; however, the book's thoroughness renders it a tiresome march through scores of facts and familiar details that will appeal primarily to ardent McCartney fans. Proceeding in a year-by-year fashion, Norman ranges over McCartney's childhood; the death of his mother, which he later used as the basis of "Let It Be"; his early days with his mates-John and George-as the Quarrymen; and the Beatles' squalid living conditions in Hamburg. No stone is left unturned as Norman proceeds to the infamous last days of the Beatles, the early days of Wings, McCartney's marriage to musician and photographer Linda Eastman and the effect her death had on him, his short-lived and controversial marriage to model Heather Mills, and his relationship with his father. As Norman happily points out, while many stories of musical superstars end tragically, McCartney has enjoyed a prolonged era of happiness, especially since his 2011 marriage to trucking executive Nancy Shevell. Norman succeeds in drawing a familiar picture of a restless musician who's always seeking to make himself over again, and who still gets a thrill when he hears someone whistling one of his songs. Thanks to Norman's access to McCartney and his associates, this will become the musician's definitive and authoritative biography. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

FANS OF OLD WHITE GUY passive aggression will love the prologue to "Paul McCartney: The Life." As perhaps you've heard, McCartney has been famous since 1963, and in response to multiple biographies and decades of scrutiny he's made himself as reclusive as the corner mailbox. At 73, he plays his Beatles' hits joyfully and answers questions about John, Yoko, Linda and "Sgt. Pepper" without offense at the implication that his life peaked before the moon landing. His current "One on One" tour stops in Sioux Falls, S.D., Hershey, Pa., and quite possibly your living room. Philip Norman acknowledges all this yet insists that "this seemingly most open and approachable of all mega-celebrities is actually one of the most elusive." And at least in Norman's experience it's true. Norman is a prolific writer best known for "Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation" (1981), an indispensable history of the band that had one notable dissenter: a guy named McCartney. "Shout!" had a few too many snarky asides about Paul's money lust and a particularly cutting and unwarranted line about John's superior talent. McCartney was hurt, and made sure Norman knew about it by freezing him out. "Paul McCartney" opens with Norman's confession that, in hindsight, the offending passages in "Shout!" were fueled by a lifelong case of Paul envy: "All those years I'd spent wishing to be him had left me feeling in some obscure way that I needed to get my own back." This is weird territory. It gets weirder as Norman, also 73, details the very slow, very British détente that led to McCartney's tacit approval of the current book. The prologue is just a few cliché-clogged pages, but the messiness is tense and exciting. It teases a biography prepared to reckon with the lifetime of co-dependence between a thin-skinned icon and his covetous baby boomer fans. The book that follows is vastly more conventional. "Paul McCartney" is an 853-page cinder block of facts in which we learn that young Paul enjoyed condensed milk and every kind of meat except tongue. Early letters and school assignments are reprinted and mined for future irony. Cats are named. Later, there are lengthy sections about McCartney's sex life and drug preferences - but then, there are lengthy sections about everything. Real estate transactions, management squabbles, vegetarianism and seemingly every Wings rehearsal. Even Mum and Dad's daily inquiries about little Paul's poops get a mention. Norman's comprehensiveness is a bore, but he's a good interviewer, and the book is charming when he lets his Liverpool sources speak about the days before the Beatles were inevitable. Colin Hanton was the drummer for the Quarrymen, Lennon's first band, when McCartney arrived in July 1957 to audition: "He gave a great performance - showing off, really, but not in a bigheaded way.... You could see John thinking, 'Yes, you'll do.'" Iris Caldwell tells Norman that long before Paul discovered pot, he would wind down from local gigs with a special ritual: "Paul used to like my mum to comb his legs. He's quite hairy, and having his legs combed seemed to relax him. He'd say, 'Oo, Vi, give me legs a comb.'" COLLECTIVELY, THESE ACQUAINTANCES recall Paul as a sweet and focused adolescent, much more determined than his band mates. Whenever immaturity threatened the Beatles' future, it was usually McCartney who sacrificed his comfort and ego. "There was a pecking order," says Joe Flannery, who let the boys crash at his apartment. "John always had the couch while Paul made do with two armchairs pushed together." As the Beatles conquer the world and McCartney is hailed as a genius, Norman's weaknesses are exposed. He can tell you that "Hello, Goodbye" was invented on the spot when an executive asked how McCartney wrote a song, or that "Good Day Sunshine" was inspired by Ike and Tina Turner's "River Deep, Mountain High." He has a harder time describing music and its meaning. Once he compares Lennon and McCartney's harmonies to vinaigrette, another time to oil and vinegar. When the salad dressing bottle of metaphors runs dry, he reaches for puns. Of McCartney's contributions to the White Album, Norman writes, "Only in 'Blackbird' does his talent fully show its glossy wings and golden beak." Caw. The descriptions of McCartney's love life aren't much better ("His sexual antenna as keen as his cultural one, he could always tell in advance which one it would be"), but at least bad writing about sex still has sex going for it. Other biographers have noted Paul's infidelity during his engagement to the actress Jane Asher, but Norman uncovers a Bieber's-worth of girlfriends, groupies and pregnancy scares that Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager, became expert at hiding. At one point three different girlfriends were living at McCartney's bachelor mansion, until the arrival of Linda Eastman scattered the competition. When the Beatles dissolve and Paul sets off on a less consequential trajectory through vegetarian cookery, horseback riding and classical composition, Norman continues to spit out facts without discernment. He's just as interested in listing all the instruments McCartney played on his unmemorable 1993 solo album "Off the Ground" as in the details of the post-divorce P.R. strategy of Paul's second wife, Heather Mills. McCartney is admirably generous in his later years, but Norman can't bear to leave out a single act of kindness, including the time "he saw an elderly woman on the platform struggling with a heavy bag and insisted on carrying it for her." It's at this point you suspect the ancient offenses in "Shout!" have made the author too reverent. There's other evidence of overcompensation. Norman wrote a nuanced 2008 biography of John Lennon, but here John comes off as a farting, masturbating, Beluga-caviar-ordering infant. Comparing Lennon's and McCartney's reactions to the end of the Beatles, Norman even becomes cruel: "Unlike John, he did not turn himself over to some modish therapist, but toughed it out." "Paul McCartney" is full of things that happened to Paul McCartney, and through absurd fame and a few tragedies he appears to be an unusually decent man with few regrets. But facts aren't insight, and readers won't emerge with any real idea what it was like to have lived one of modernity's most amazing lives. At least in that sense Norman's subject remains elusive. JOSH TYRANGIEL is the creator of a forthcoming nightly news program for Vice and HBO. He's the former music critic at Time magazine.

A biography of the multitalented musician, written with his "tacit approval." Unless you know nothing about Paul McCartney or think the Beatles were merely his first backup band before Wings, not much in this account from Norman (Mick Jagger, 2012, etc.)who has authored biographies of John Lennon, Buddy Holly, and Elton John, among otherswill come as news. However, though late to the party, Norman has a couple of things going for him. One is the subject's tacit approval, useful considering that McCartney has "constructed ramparts of privacy rivaled only by Bob Dylan." Another is the author's comprehensive grasp of the existing literature and his sense of what makes a good story. This book is full of good stories, few reflecting poorly on McCartney though sometimes calling his impulses into question, notably with respect to his latter-day marriage to Heather Mills and the mayhem it caused. Mills emerges as the villain of that particular piece, but not without careful evidence and dissection. Elsewhere, Norman repeats well-worn yarns, though sometimes in curious ways. His account of how an apparently throwaway line became the centerpiece of McCartney's song "Hey Jude" is flat, and his retelling of his subject's helpful hints on the financial benefits of music publishing lacks the sense of tragic inevitability that we all know lurks nearby. However, Norman has considerable strengths. He understands how complicated the business dealings underlying the Beatles' Apple Corps were and just how right McCartney was to sue to dissolve that partnership. He also reveals a few little-known facets of Sir Paul's daily life and interests, including archival talents that would rival any librarian's, as when Norman takes us to the scene of a "secret underfloor compartment" containing the Hofner bass Paul played at the Beatles' last performance. There's plenty on McCartney's post-Beatles career, of course, but the foursome remains the heart of interest, especially the long rivalry with Lennon. A worthy biography that doesn't approach the greatness of its subject. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Seven years after his comprehensive John Lennon biography, veteran music journalist Norman offers a similarly well-balanced and richly detailed portrait of Lennon's songwriting partner and pop culture icon Paul McCartney (b. 1942). While this title is not technically an authorized biography, Norman was given access to a variety of -McCartney's friends, musical partners, and family members, resulting in new insight into topics ranging from the musician's marriages and many other romantic relationships to the financial and emotional fallout from the Beatles' split to the sometimes startling contrast between -McCartney's sunny public persona and personal strife. The volume's first half follows his life up to the Beatles' 1970 breakup, mostly rehashing ground covered equally well in other works. Yet the second, more interesting section features an abundance of new and little-known content focusing on McCartney's post-Beatles music career and family life up through his 2011 third wedding and recent founding of a Liverpool music school. There is much to savor in this well-written, wide-ranging chronicle; unfortunately, the author skims over -McCartney's post-Beatles relationships with Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr and devotes far too many pages to the Heather Mills divorce scandal. -VERDICT Casual readers may find this too long and detailed, but serious fans interested in a fresh retelling of the story of the "cute Beatle" will appreciate Norman's thorough approach.-Douglas King, Univ. of South Carolina Lib., Columbia © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.