Paul thompson

My journey into researching The Beatles began long before 2019 when we (Phil McIntyre and myself) started writing this book on Paul McCartney and his creative practice. Growing up on Merseyside and playing in numerous bands, The Beatles were an almost constant presence in my life, both culturally and musically. But it wasn’t until I was completing my MA in Popular Music Studies at the University of Liverpool in 2009, that I had a chance encounter that would lead me down the path to studying creativity and bringing my love for The Beatles together.    

Colleagues here at Leeds Beckett University had managed to secure some funding for a visiting Professor from Australia to spend some with us time writing his new book ‘Creativity and Cultural Production: Issues for Media Practice’ (McIntyre, 2012).  Phillip McIntyre and I struck-up an immediate friendship and, as I was starting to sketch out ideas for my doctoral study, Phillip helped me to bring together my professional practice (as a recording engineer) and the study of creativity.    

I spent 4 years exploring the creative process of making a record from start to finish with a rock band, an engineer and a producer, which was a hugely enjoyable experience. After completing my PhD in 2015, Phillip and I continued to publish various articles together, collaborating on a number of projects for the Association for the Study on the Art of Record Production (ASARP) conferences. At the 2016 ASARP Conference, at the University of Aalborg in Denmark, Phillip and I delivered a paper entitled ‘Examining the Creation of ‘Paperback Writer’: The Flow of Ideas and Knowledge Between Contributing Creative Systems’. Later in 2017, we worked it into a journal article for one of the top journal articles in our field and waited for a response.   

In 2019, I published my first book ‘Creativity in the Recording Studio: Alternative Takes’, illustrating how creativity arises out of a system in action and showing this system in action during the central tasks of songwriting, performing, engineering and producing by drawing on examples from John Lennon, David Bowie, Tupac Shakur, Björk, Marta Salogni, Sylvia Massy and Rick Rubin. Later in 2019, we finally received word from the journal that they wouldn’t be publishing ‘Examining the Creation of ‘Paperback Writer’: The Flow of Ideas and Knowledge Between Contributing Creative Systems’ and so, Phillip decided that we could use this as a central element for a book on McCartney. Phillip had already published 'Paul McCartney and the creation of 'Yesterday': the systems model in operation' (2006) for Popular Music, and so we started sketching out a book that could bring the rest of Paul McCartney’s creative endeavours to life.   

‘Paul McCartney and His Creative Practice: The Beatles and Beyond’ (2021) offers some fresh insight into the creative practices of Paul McCartney over his extended career as a songwriter, record producer and performing musician. It frames its examination of McCartney’s work through the lens of the systems model of creativity, developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and combines this with the work of Pierre Bourdieu. This systems approach is built around the basic structures of idiosyncratic agents, like McCartney himself, and the choices he has made as a creative individual. It also locates his work within social fields and cultural domains, all crucial aspects of the creative system that McCartney continues to be immersed in. Using this tripartite system, the book includes analysis of McCartney’s creative collaborations with musicians, producers, artists and filmmakers and provides a critical analysis of the Romantic myth which forms a central tenet of popular music.    

Timing is everything, and one month after ‘Paul McCartney and His Creative Practice: The Beatles and Beyond’ was published in September 2021, McCartney himself (with poet and writer Paul Muldoon) released ‘Paul McCartney: The Lyrics’ (2021). ‘The Lyrics’ was framed as an intimate self-portrait where he traced his own life from boyhood to the present day through the lyrics to 154 iconic songs. Needless to say, McCartney’s own book has sold a few more copies than ours, but we designed the book to have both interdisciplinary appeal to students and scholars of the psychology of creativity, popular music, sociology and cultural studies, as well as Beatles enthusiasts.

In late 2021, we were invited to talk about the new book and all things Paul McCartney on ‘One Sweet Dream: Beatles podcast’ with Diana Erickson and you can listen again here: