THE MELODY MAKER
Paul McCartney and the Songs That Changed the WorldBy Marcus J. Holloway
Length2h 27m
About this audiobook
He was born into an air raid. He is, as of this writing, still touring the world in his eighties. Everything in between is the most consequential single career in the history of popular music, and almost none of it happened the way the tidy version of the story usually tells it.
This is not another greatest-hits retrospective. This is the story of a fourteen year old boy who traded a trumpet for a left handed guitar in the weeks after his mother died, because a guitar let him sing while he played and a trumpet did not. It is the story of a band that got rejected by a major label with the words "guitar groups are on the way out," and came back within two years to reshape what a pop record could be. It is the story of a songwriting partnership so combustible that its two halves once traded open insults through dueling singles, and so genuinely loved that decades later, one of them would say, "we made up," about the man whose murder he would otherwise have spent the rest of his life mourning without ever having reconciled.
It is the story of what happened after the Beatles, when a grieving, disoriented young man built an entirely new band around his own wife, an inexperienced keyboardist the press mocked mercilessly, and watched it get robbed at knifepoint in Lagos, Nigeria, only to walk away from that disaster with one of the best selling albums of the decade. It is the story of two more devastating losses, a bitterly public divorce fought with the same legal team that handled a royal separation, and a second reinvention that turned an aging rock star into a knighted elder statesman, a Glastonbury headliner in his eighties, and, improbably, a still working recording artist releasing genuinely new material past the age when most careers in any field have long since ended.
Every date, quotation, and event in this book is drawn from the verifiable public record. No invented dialogue. No imagined scenes. No composite conversations dressed up as fact. The true story, assembled here in full chronological order for the first time, does not need embellishment, because a life this extensively documented, this repeatedly rebuilt from loss, and this still unfinished, is already more dramatic than fiction would dare to make it.
This is talent, examined honestly. This is persistence, measured across nine decades. This is the making, unmaking, and remaking of Paul McCartney.
Audiobook details
GenreOther, History
Length2 hrs 27 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
15CHAPTER 13: LINDA AND THE REBUILD
2FOREWORD
16CHAPTER 14: BAND ON THE RUN
3CHAPTER 1: LIVERPOOL, INTERRUPTED
17CHAPTER 15: THE LONG WIND DOWN OF WINGS
4CHAPTER 2: THE YEAR EVERYTHING BROKE
18CHAPTER 16: THE STORIES BEHIND THE SONGS
5CHAPTER 3: WOOLTON VILLAGE FETE
19CHAPTER 17: RECONCILIATION, INTERRUPTED
Show all chaptersShow less
6CHAPTER 4: HAMBURG’S FURNACE
20CHAPTER 18: GRIEF, AGAIN, AND REINVENTION
7CHAPTER 5: PLEASE PLEASE ME
21CHAPTER 19: THE ELDER STATESMAN
8CHAPTER 6: BEATLEMANIA AND THE AMERICAN INVASION
22CHAPTER 20: STILL NOODLING
9CHAPTER 7: RUBBER SOUL TO REVOLVER
23CHAPTER 21: INFLUENCE, MEASURED IN OTHER PEOPLE’S RECORDS
10CHAPTER 8: SGT. PEPPER AND THE CONCEPT
24CHAPTER 22: WHAT THE SONGS LEAVE BEHIND (CONCLUSION)
11CHAPTER 9: THE WHITE ALBUM AND A SONG FOR JULIAN
25APPENDIX A: SELECTED TIMELINE
12CHAPTER 10: CRACKS IN THE FOUNDATION
26APPENDIX B: SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY
13CHAPTER 11: LET IT BE, OR NOT
27APPENDIX C: A NOTE ON SOURCES
14CHAPTER 12: THE END OF THE BEATLES
More from Marcus J. Holloway
CHAPPELL ROAN BIOGRAPHYMarcus J. Holloway3h 25m$6.50 · $0.00
THE INFANTINO ERAMarcus J. Holloway2h 20m$6.50 · $0.00
THE TITHEMarcus J. Holloway4h 57m$6.50 · $0.00
ZEKE FROM CABIN CREEKMarcus J. Holloway3h 20m$6.50 · $0.00
THE VOLKOV DEBTMarcus J. Holloway2h 9m$6.50 · $0.00
DA BRATMarcus J. Holloway2h 30m$6.50 · $0.00
THE ALPHA'S CONTRACTMarcus J. Holloway3h 43m$6.50 · $0.00
WHAT THE DEEP KEEPSMarcus J. Holloway2h 54m$8.50 · $0.00
THE CORRECTIONMarcus J. Holloway4h 2m$6.50 · $0.00
Kylian MbappéMarcus J. Holloway1h 1m$5 · $0.00
THE INFILTRATORMarcus J. Holloway4h$6.50 · $0.00
MARKED BY THE ALPHAMarcus J. Holloway5h 35m$6.50 · $0.00
THORNFIELD HOLLOWMarcus J. Holloway3h 46m$6.50 · $0.00
JUDE BELLINGHAMMarcus J. Holloway3h 2m$6.50 · $0.00
THE ALLIANCEMarcus J. Holloway4h$6.50 · $0.00
The Holy Bible - 1 SamuelKing James2h 13m3 (1)$3 · $0.00
KJV Holy BibleBroadStreet Publishing Group LLC96h 16m$10 · $0.00
Book of ColossiansUnknown Author16m$8
The American Standard Bible — The Gospel of MatthewMatthew3h 56m$2 · $0.00
Everyday Chanakya | Time Management S01E08Radhakrishnan Pillai42m$4
Bad Fat Black GirlSesali Bowen6h 32m$24 · $0.00
The King James Audio Bible New Testament CompleteChristopher Glyn20h 2m5 (1)$12 · $0.00
Faiths CheckbookCharles Spurgeon12h 44m$11 · $0.00
Be Wild Be FreeAmber Fossey26m$7 · $0.00
Ten Things I Wish You Knew About Your Child's Mental HealthDr. Billy Garvey4h 53m$20 · $0.00
Designing Terry Pratchett’s DiscworldPaul Kidby3h 52m$20 · $0.00
The Chosen Book OneAmanda Jenkins, Kristen Hendricks, Dallas Jenkins3h 8m$10 · $0.00
The Lives of BrianBrian Johnson9h 45m$29 · $0.00
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the HorseCharlie Mackesy58m$11 · $0.00
Expository Thoughts on the Gospel of LukeJ.C. Ryle27h 13m$18 · $0.00
My First Beethoven AlbumNaxos1h 23m$6 · $0.00
CrossroadsKaleb Dahlgren7h 56m$26 · $0.00
Across the RiverKent Babb11h 40m$29 · $0.00
Brain Training for RidersAndrea Monsarrat Waldo5h 56m$19 · $0.00
My Effin' LifeGeddy Lee17h 11m5 (1)$40 · $0.00
The Two Swords of ChristRaymond Ibrahim15h 55m$30
Black AF HistoryMichael Harriot15h 43m5 (1)$33 · $0.00
The Gulag Archipelago Volume 3Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn21h 56m$46 · $0.00
The Redeemer’s ReturnArthur W. Pink13h 18m$20
The Happiest Man on EarthEddie Jaku3h 48m$7 · $0.00
MotherlandJulia Ioffe17h 52m$40 · $0.00
Where Cowards Go to DieBenjamin Sledge8h 42m$20 · $0.00
Frederick Douglass: All 3 Memoirs in One VolumeFrederick Douglass44h 9m$2 · $0.00
The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America (Annotated)Howard Irving Chapelle, Tappan Adney13h 10m$2 · $0.00
I've Been to the MountaintopMartin Luther King48m5 (1)$11 · $0.00
RevolutionariesSanjeev Sanyal11h 23m$29 · $0.00
We Crossed a Bridge and It TrembledWendy Pearlman6h$24 · $0.00
Unbroken Bonds of BattleJohnny Joey Jones8h 31m$8 · $0.00
The Daughter of AuschwitzTova Friedman, Malcolm Brabant7h 54m$26 · $0.00
Lily's PromiseLily Ebert, Dov Forman8h 54m$29 · $0.00
Saving My EnemyBob Welch9h 11m$20
On Democracies and Death CultsDouglas Murray10h 38m$29 · $0.00
Across the RiverKent Babb11h 40m$29 · $0.00
Balcony Over Jerusalem: A Middle East Memoir - Israel, Palestine and BeyondJohn Lyons12h 37m$33 · $0.00
The Fire Next TimeJames Baldwin2h 25m$15
You may also like
Buddhaland BrooklynRichard C. Morais9h 21m$20 · $0.00
That Deserves a WowChris Myers8h 54m$29 · $0.00
The Brightest SunAdrienne Benson12h 1m$25 · $0.00
That Kind of MotherRumaan Alam8h 13m$26 · $0.00
Yankee DoodleLoretta Welch59m$5 · $0.00
Bringing Home the BirkinMichael Tonello10h 14m$29 · $0.00
Beyond the PointClaire Gibson13h 52m$33 · $0.00
Dear FriendsLisa Greenwald6h 35m$24 · $0.00
The Second Chance StoreLauren Bravo13h 36m$33 · $0.00
The Fortunes of PhilippaAngela Brazil3h 44m$6 · $0.00
The Ten-Cent Boy and the Brooklyn DimeW. DeLaney7h$17
Yankee DoodleLoretta Welch1h 36m$14.10 · $0.00
The Breakdown LaneJacquelyn Mitchard12h 40m$33 · $0.00
On the Sweet SideAudrey Carlan9h 54m5 (1)$29 · $0.00
The Way AroundDavid Good8h 35m$26 · $0.00
You Go FirstErin Entrada Kelly4h 32m$20 · $0.00
Up IslandAnne Rivers Siddons6h 5m$24 · $0.00
Round the BendNevil Shute14h 19m$2 · $0.00
The Phoenix BallroomRuth Hogan9h 36m$29 · $0.00
Dixie KittenEva March Tappan1h 20m$2.30