HOW THE BEATLES KNEW

A heavily biographical work explores the origins of the Beatles’ art.

In her study of the Beatles’ lyrics and artistic development, Niccolini centers the heart of their genius’s origin in the London home of Margaret and Richard Asher and their children, which featured an “intellectual, cultured and liberal” family atmosphere. Both Paul McCartney and John Lennon “hung out and wrote songs” in the Ashers’ basement, probably perusing Richard’s extensive library of psychological writings. The author infuses her narrative with psychological shadings intended to inform the personal elements of the story. She often refers to what she calls McCartney’s “IFP,” his “identity fracture project,” the developing psychological “praxis” that gave birth to his songs. (IFP, Niccolini writes, is not a term McCartney himself would have used; “it is the name I assign to his artistic process.”) The Beatles’ songs are given rigorous, exhaustive deconstructions in these pages, with even minor works coming in for extensive analysis. “Here, There and Everywhere” is “basically a picture of loss of identity when in love, as it is traditionally understood in literature,” the author writes. “I suggest that in this song, Paul has again put an IFP idea: he is describing a scattered person with no basis, and one must point out that having no basis is the definition of schizophrenia.” She ranges her examination of the creative forces acting on the Beatles (mainly McCartney and Lennon) across all kinds of influences, from early musical factors to poets like Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, and Sylvia Plath, and the result is completely absorbing. Niccolini’s biographical approach is richly nuanced and refreshingly literary; every trace of possible inspiration is tracked down with sensitivity. The book is a must-have for any Beatles library.

A comprehensive and hugely rewarding look at the Beatles’ creativity.