Beatles biographies, analyses, and tell-alls, whether they be books or documentaries, are a cottage industry, one that could fill up a modest-sized library or an entire shelf on the average entertainment center. Paul McCartney is obviously a principal in all those retellings of Fab Four history, many of which end up contradicting each other about key details.
Only four people in the world could say for sure how it all happened, and only two are still with us. Focusing on the early days of his partnership with John Lennon, Paul McCartney tells his own side of the story in the 2013 song “Early Days,” which balances out its nostalgia with just a smidge of prickliness from the author.
“Days” of Future Past
What a strange sensation it must be for Paul McCartney to experience so many people, the large percentage of them strangers, telling your life story. It’s part and parcel with being a celebrity of major magnitude, of course. But when you’re one of the four men who made up the biggest band in the history of music, you’re simply on a different level and ripe for more of those types of things.
McCartney has always amazed people with both the equanimity he displays in the face of all this and the ease with which he wears his immense celebrity. But the guy is a human being, so it’s natural for him to get his ire up once in a while when he hears, sees, or reads things that contradict the reality through which he lived.
McCartney, unlike some of his bandmates, has never shied away from romanticizing his Beatles background. But, as he noted in an interview (as cited by Beatles Bible), “Early Days” was also meant to let everyone know that, while he was aware of everything being written and reported about the band, there is only one source that should be trusted.
