McCartney's success has long affronted rock aesthetes as proof that facile talent and showmanship trump soulfulness, an opinion that will be complicated, but not reversed, by this serviceable biography. Sandford, a music journalist and biographer of Kurt Cobain and other rock stars, considers McCartney the Beatles' true visionary, the driving force behind Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
and other artistic milestones and a perennially interesting pop innovator throughout his Wings period and recent solo efforts. In contrast, Sandford's unremittingly negative portrait of John Lennon paints the deep one as a musical philistine as well as a morose, spiteful personality, regularly drunk, stoned or strung out on heroin. Nonetheless, McCartney feels far less compelling than his music. He emerges as an ambitious, disciplined artist, a hardheaded businessman and "a genuinely nice, down-to-earth fellow," but his Mozartean gift for melody seems unrooted in any profundity of character. The author has trouble imparting an arc to his story, and the post-Beatles narrative devolves into a busy but aimless routine of record releases, tours, reunion rumors, minor marijuana busts and an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of lawsuits pitting various Beatles against each other and assorted managers, publishers, record companies, memorabilia vendors and copyright violators. Sandford offers more of a comprehensive chronicle than a coherent character study. (Feb. 1)
