Over two dozen well-chosen photographs add an enriching visual dimension to a newly revised edition of The Day John Met Paul, a critically-acclaimed nonfiction Beatles book.
“The photos make this a brand new book,” said author Jim O’Donnell, who spent eight years doing research and interviews. “They draw the reader into the story and enliven the text.”
The book has just been released by Routledge, a division of 150-year-old London publisher Taylor and Francis. It had previously been published by Penguin and translated into several languages.
The Day John Met Paul is the factual, hour-by-hour account of the day in 1957 that John Lennon met Paul McCartney in Liverpool, England. The book has been widely praised—even by John Lennon’s bandmates—for its blend of accurate reporting and colorful storytelling.
The photos in the new edition enhance the atmospheric narrative with period-piece images from the Liverpool of the mid-1950s. The images include Strawberry Field and Penny Lane but also portray the overall cultural life of the city and the country.
“These mood-catching pictures really make this edition a different reading experience than the first edition,” said O’Donnell, who not only wrote the book but took some of the pictures. “The images dovetail very well with the writing on the facing pages and that makes the story even more vivid and more memorable. The reader becomes involved on a visual level as well as an intellectual one.”
Added O’Donnell: “What I’m especially pleased about is how the pictures actually show the truth of the text. They prove the text.
“For example, they show that Liverpool kids really were going crazy over rock ‘n’ roll in 1957. They were as crazy over early rock music as early 1960’s kids were crazy over the Beatles.
“The pictures also show that John and Paul’s Liverpool was recovering very slowly—this is 1957, after all—from Hitler’s bombing during World War II.”
O’Donnell is the author of three other rock music books and the editor of The Rock and Roll Journal, an online rock music magazine.