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So as you can see I am fairly well advanced in this, my most recent audiobook experience, and yet another that proves that when it comes to me and audiobooks, it's all one big bedtime story (things like this - where I basically know the story already and only want a little remix or a few easter eggs - or crime fiction, which is similarly affirming, for some reason). 

I know you don't care but I'll just tell you, and I am the author of some pretty lazy, shitty opinionated twaddle which apparently at one time I allowed to go on the market with my name on and I probably thought 'this'll show 'em', but this has its fair share of that, full of schoolboys' pencil case bravado 'the best record he ever made', etc kind of stuff. The wikipedia entry on Sounes, which is unreliable reportage, claims that in an (unsourced) podcast Sounes conceded he had let his opinion of McCartney's music dominate this book and it does. That's one thing, but his opinions are so boring (and I note that his books have either been about true crime or white renegades of the 60s). 

Linda McCartney (79 years and 11 months old today except she died 25 years ago) doesn't need me to defend her by the way but Sounes is a prick about her (and Yoko) surprise surprise, and rather than have an interesting take on her, he has the same dull as ditchwater take on her as all the hoary musos who didn't understand why Paul McC didn't want to play with them but did want to play with her. However, Sounes does say that Linda had a good figure. 

So a lot jumps out at me from this but the thing that really shitted me the most was Sounes' description of the Maharishi as knowing which side of the pappadum his curry was on.* But I am sure there'll be more as I go. I was similarly surprised he said that Wild Life only had two good songs on it, as I assumed he would follow the tired line on this (eg that it has none). He gives Red Rose Speedway 3/5 as well which is surprising, because he clearly doesn't get Wings, generally speaking. 

On the plus side, he scrapes the sides of the barrel and actually does find a few people who no-one has spoken to yet from the late 60s/early 70s who have some kind of minor bystander stories to tell, though usually you end up thinking, there's a reason why these stories haven't been heard before. Fifty years on, let's be fair, people are mainly going to tell the story 'everyone knows' - with perhaps a tiny frisson of their own experience. I don't even really see the point of interviewing people decades later about things everyone knows about. 

Update: another thing about this particular production - the narrator's capacity with accents - well, there's nothing terrible about the accents I suppose at least they are fairly alright as accents (the Frank Ifield sucks a big turd in the mud). I dread Denny Laine's comments, of which there are many, because of the Birmingham accent, which is a bit of an abomination as executed here.

* The British tendency to typify people by the food they eat is as rank as the American tendency to describe people from 'foreign' countries by dint of the native animals. I don't know what kind of psychology this reveals but fuck both. 

Update final assessment: Look, I made to the end, so that's a thing. Once PMcC and LMcC became vegetarian (I really thought this happened earlier than the 80s but Sounes says nah) he cannot bear to avoid mentioning it constantly, it's like the man (Sounes) has a problem. Every time PMcC plays a show, he can't go on stage without 'sitting down to his usual vegetarian meal', etc. Heather Mills gets a lambasting of course and I suppose it's nice for Sounes to find a woman he can actually legitimately savage but I don't think it's necessary to non-ironically refer to her as a 'whore'. Well, anyway, I enjoyed the life, to the degree I would even listen to/read another PMcC biography, particularly one that was written by someone with some takes more interesting than the conventional ones (whether I agreed with them or not).