Beatles biographies, analyses, and tell-alls, whether they be books or documentaries, are a cottage industry, one that could fill up a modest-sized library or an entire shelf on the average entertainment center. Paul McCartney is obviously a principal in all those retellings of Fab Four history, many of which end up contradicting each other about key details.
Only four people in the world could say for sure how it all happened, and only two are still with us. Focusing on the early days of his partnership with John Lennon, Paul McCartney tells his own side of the story in the 2013 song “Early Days,” which balances out its nostalgia with just a smidge of prickliness from the author.
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“Days” of Future Past
What a strange sensation it must be for Paul McCartney to experience so many people, the large percentage of them strangers, telling your life story. It’s part and parcel with being a celebrity of major magnitude, of course. But when you’re one of the four men who made up the biggest band in the history of music, you’re simply on a different level and ripe for more of those types of things.
McCartney has always amazed people with both the equanimity he displays in the face of all this and the ease with which he wears his immense celebrity. But the guy is a human being, so it’s natural for him to get his ire up once in a while when he hears, sees, or reads things that contradict the reality through which he lived.
More than a couple of his other band members, McCartney has never shied away from romanticizing his Beatles past. But as he explained in an interview (as reported by Beatles Bible), “Early Days” was also meant to let everybody know that, while he was aware of all the stuff being written and reported about the band, there’s only source that should be trusted:
“There were four people in the Beatles, so in the back of that van, in that Austin Princess, in that dressing room in Hamburg, in that dressing room anywhere in the world, there was just four of us. So those are the four people you got to talk to give you the real truth of what went on. So there is this feeling that you want to put the records straight.”
Exploring the “Early Days”
As he did in so many classic Beatles songs, McCartney begins the acoustic, folky “Early Days” with the chorus, and, as it turns out, some defiance: They can’t take it from me, if they try / I lived through those early days. It immediately surprises you a bit upon hearing it, a subversion of what we expect from the usually gregarious McCartney.
He then takes a few verses to go back to the time spent with John Lennon before they were famous (but definitely trying to get there). We would walk the city roads / Seeking someone who listen to the music, McCartney sings. It’s a telling detail—after all the success, those lean days still linger in his memory.
McCartney then does something interesting: He stops to send out a kind of prayer to everyone listening. May sweet memories of friends from the past / Always come to you, when you look for them. It’s clear he cherishes that time with Lennon, and goes back there in his mind often.
But it’s only a moment of benevolence before some of the confrontational thoughts come creeping back into his mind. Now everybody seems to have their own opinion / Who did this and who did that. Keep in mind this is a guy who has often had to defend his Beatles songwriting credits over the years. He continues, But as for me I don’t see how they can remember / When they weren’t where it was at.
With “Early Days,” Paul McCartney gives us a snapshot of a time about which millions of fans have wondered. But he also asserts his right to that story, giving any would-be contrarians pause about coming up with their own versions.
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