CAN'T BUY ME LOVE
The Beatles, Britain, and America
Harmony Books, New York Publisher
C Jonathan Gould 2007
Excerpts pages 323-326
"In his efforts to conform to this austerely autobiographical standard of "first-person music," however, Lennon came up against the very limitations that fiction was designed to overcome. Autobiographical writing places inordinate demands on the quality of a writer's experience. And while the cult of celebrity may be based on the person, that fame itself is an exaltation, exposing its beneficiaries to realms of experience and awareness of which ordinary people can only dream, the reality for John Lennon (no less than for other celebrities) had settled into something more mundane. John's increasingly insular existence in Weybridge did not abound in the sort of rich, evocative experiences that cried out to be turned into song. Nor was his nature especially introspective. Since childhood he had masked his sensitivities from himself and others behind an aggressive front, projecting the force of his personality ever outwards onto an appreciative audience that began with his friends and fellow Beatles and had no grown to include his fans, the press, and the public..... Until he took acid that is.....His own ethic of professionalism was such that he never considered performing or recording while under the influence of the drug....
'The first sign of the metamorphosis that was under way in the Beatles' music came on the group's first single of 1966, "Paperback Writer"..... Paul McCartney's "Paperback Writer," was a satire of pop ambition in the style of "Drive My Car," set like its predecessor in a musical context of relentless simplicity...Like it's budding author-narrator, "Paperback Writer," tries to make the most of its meager resources by heaping an elaborate arrangement on its simple harmonic frame....The mangled reference to "a novel by a man named Lear" sounds like a dig at Lennon, whose own paperback writing had drawn comparisons with Edward Lear. But the butt of the joke rests firmly with McCartney himself. He, after all, was the one who wrote the query letters back in the days of the Quarry men and the Silver Beatles, soliciting work for the band in his most affected grammar-school prose. And the tight fit between the singer and his character helps to drain the condescension from the song. When Paul exclaims the words "Paperback Writer," at the end of every verse, he brings the starry-eyed reverence to this dubious occupational title that almost stands up to the punning counterpoint of "Pay-per-back-er" (sung to the tune of Frere Jacques) that John and George (Harrison) provide."
