Faber Radio Presents:
John & Paul

Ian Leslie shares the 43 songs that sit at the heart of his new biography of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs.

As soon as I decided to write a book about the relationship between John Lennon and Paul McCartney, I knew I had to tell the story through songs.

John and Paul first connected to each other as teenagers via their shared passion for skiffle and rock and roll. They formed a close personal bond through spending hours at each other’s houses collaborating on songs and songwriting. They learned to play the songs they heard on the radio or from records, and they learned how to make their own, and these songs were full of emotion – love and desire, jealousy and joy. As teenagers, they were bursting with these feelings themselves, and so they learnt to put their feelings into the songs.

This was an age before therapy; before “talking it out”, and from those early days onwards, John and Paul were processing their strongest emotions through music. In songs, they communicated the feelings they couldn’t put into speech, including their feelings about each other, in a personal and creative dialogue that carried on throughout the Beatles’ career and beyond it. I believe it’s impossible to understand the musical evolution of the Beatles without understanding the evolution of John and Paul’s relationship – and vice versa. Hence John & Paul: A Love Story In Songs.