A delightful, surprising treasure trove that no Beatles completist should miss.
Closing in on 80, the iconic musician looks back on a long career and reveals how his songs came about.
“The best comparison I can think of is an old snapshot album that’s been kept up in a dusty attic.” So writes McCartney of this gathering of his lyrics, which, though overall less poetic than Bob Dylan’s, still read well on the page. This is true even of his earliest songs: “Close your eyes and I’ll kiss you / Tomorrow I’ll miss you” pretty well says it all, but McCartney’s extensive commentary places it in the context of his life, his band’s trajectory (“The thing that strikes me about the ‘All My Loving’ recording is John’s guitar part; he’s playing the chords as triplets”), and the pop-music tradition generally. Studded with photographs and featuring an introduction by editor Muldoon, the book is a gold mine of Beatles lore and reminiscence. Among countless other intriguing bits, McCartney notes how Allen Ginsberg called “Eleanor Rigby” “a great poem.” While it’s well known that “Yesterday” started with the placeholder lyrics “Scrambled eggs,” it will come as news that “it was almost recorded as an electronic avant-garde song” until George Martin decided to add a string quartet and make a sad song even sadder. McCartney airs some dirty laundry—e.g., why John Lennon was so nasty to him after the Beatles’ breakup—but he allows that none of his musical backing afterward came close to his Beatles band mates. Even so, he includes plenty of Wings material, as well. Some of the omissions are odd (“I’m Looking Through You,” “Little Lamb Dragonfly”), while some of the songs are largely attributed to Lennon, notably “A Day in the Life” and “Ticket To Ride.” The odd curiosity aside, though, what emerges here is a portrait of a songwriter constantly searching for the elusive tune.
A delightful, surprising treasure trove that no Beatles completist should miss.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63149-256-3
Page Count: 960
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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