each of The Beatles were clearly miserable around that time, and it saddened me that the people who brought us some great music, (IMO), that generations of people are still enjoying weren't happy.
That IS the story. It's so sad, but especially for Paul at the time, it's impossible to separate the critical response to his early solo stuff, including from fans, from the feeling that he'd committed the unforgivable sin of
not being John Lennon. Places like Rolling Stone were so completely in John's thrall that Paul couldn't get a kind word out of them for much of anything (with the odd exception of Red Rose Speedway, which really doesn't hold up, imo). It really took until the last few years before people started talking about Ram as a masterpiece, which it is...
...and I'll be the first to admit that not all of his early solo stuff was! And Paul would be second in line, I think. Crawling out of an alcohol-fueled tailspin at the loss of his oldest and closest friends, and (functionally) the entire world turning on him after (perhaps overly) lionizing him for half his life was HARD. And he was still in his 20s while he was going through most of it! (He turns 30 just as this volume comes to a close.)
I do get that it's not all a fun read, and I mentioned above that the tension was so powerfully communicated that MY stomach was knots for a week. I won't spoil the Nigeria stuff for folks who haven't gotten there yet, but as much as I thought I knew about the making of Band On The Run (I've probably watched half a dozen making-of documentaries, including some official ones, plus read about it in other bios),
I had no idea how much physical peril they were in, and how often.
The legal heat that he got for his drug use was also NOT fun and games. It's why he couldn't come to the US to meet with the other three face-to-face and resolve all this. They'd all decamped here, but US government was adamant about keeping Paul out, and was simultaneously trying to deport John of course. So he couldn't come to the US, and Lennon couldn't leave, knowing he'd never get back in. Yeah, things changed later, but it took several changes of administration, the death of J. Edgar Hoover, and Lennon getting his green card before any of it really changed. I'm really looking forward to the next volume, which will include Paul and John reconciling (in 1974, with May Pang opening the door), and the beginning of his conquering America a second time.
The years covered in this volume were packed with dark, dark days and very little light. I remain amazed that Paul got through it at all, AND managed to create a handful of classics that people will care about for generations.
You can definitely skip some of the worst parts to focus on the writing and recording stuff, but even that is tough. His band didn't trust him, they were grotesquely underpaid while Paul's money was locked up (Apple wasn't paying him ANY royalties during these years), and audiences were just not at all sure to do with him yet. He wasn't playing a note of Beatles music, and there wasn't much of a show to put on with what the band had in hand yet. You can feel the tide start to turn as 1973 rolls around, as Band on the Run follows the non-album single Live and Let Die, but man, it's a
haul to get there, no doubt.