Others objected to the apparent rewriting of history and McCartney's determination to be recognised as the Beatle who first embraced the avant-garde. Many Years from Now attracted criticism from some readers for its focus on songwriting credits and McCartney's attribution of percentages to determine the extent of his and Lennon's respective authorship of a Lennon–McCartney composition. Its popularity came at the end of a year of considerable professional success for McCartney, following his knighthood in January and the favourable response afforded his album Flaming Pie. McCartney promoted it on 12 October during an interview with Michael Parkinson on the BBC Radio 2 show Parkinson's Sunday Supplement. Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now was first published in the United Kingdom on 2 October 1997 by Secker & Warburg.

The publication was further delayed due to his wife Linda McCartney's deteriorating condition after she was diagnosed with breast cancer in late 1995. Their interviews coincided with McCartney reuniting with his former bandmates George Harrison and Ringo Starr to work on the Beatles Anthology project. Īccording to author Howard Sounes, the idea to write the memoir had been Miles', yet he had ' to let Paul vet the manuscript and, perhaps surprisingly, retain 75 per cent of the royalties, meaning it was really going to be Paul's book'. Of the 600-plus pages, just twenty focus on his life after the Beatles' break-up in 1970. The majority of Many Years from Now covers the Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership, the rise and fall of the Beatles, and McCartney's immersion in the vibrant arts scene of 1960s London. In this way, the book was an extension of McCartney's campaign to establish his legacy, particularly with regard to the Beatles' forays into the avant-garde, and followed statements he had made on the subject in a 1986 interview with Rolling Stone magazine and in the programme for his 1989–90 world tour. Irked at the reverence afforded John Lennon following the latter's murder in 1980, McCartney sought to alter the perception that Lennon had been the true creative leader of the Beatles. We're talking about a sequence of things that did all happen within a period. But the nice thing is, we don't have to be too faithful, because that's not what we're talking about.

So I'll give you it as I remember it, but I do admit, my thing does move around, jumps around a lot.

Paul McCartney by Barry Miles