THIS BOY

The shaping of two Liverpudlian rascals who grew up to be the most successful songwriting duo of all time.

Readers looking for concise views of the “youthquake” that rock-and-roll records and fashions from the U.S. set off in Great Britain and the evolution of the band that became the Beatles will be well served, but Cooper’s main focus stays foremost on the personalities and formative life experiences (rather than the music) of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. And of the two, it’s Lennon who shines brightest here—an “intense and clever” lad with a reputation as a “neighborhood bad boy” (“How naughty do you have to be to be expelled from kindergarten?”) who shuttled back and forth between his irresponsible but free-spirited birth mother and a stodgy, dependable aunt and brought deep wells of “wit, creativity, and confidence, with a streak of cruelty” to his personal relationships as well as to making and performing music. Paul comes off as rather bland in comparison, though the author does write of the “creative alchemy” (“creative and competitive in equal parts”) that occurred in the wake of their historic meeting at a church garden party in 1957. Both come alive here, and readers who see them as distant products of a vanished era will come away with fresh insight into how their characters, context, and times reflect on our own.

Illuminating reading for dreamers and doers already attuned to beats of their own.