Author Who Annoyed McCartney Will Write His Biography

Philip Norman, a prolific biographer whose  “Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation” is considered by many to be among the most absorbing and comprehensive biographies of the group, and whose “John Lennon - The Life” was widely admired, has been signed by Little, Brown and Company to write a biography of Paul McCartney.

The book, which is due in 2015, is being written with what Mr. Norman described in an e-mail as Mr. McCartney’s “tacit approval.”

“He is not directly co-operating,” Mr. Norman wrote, “but not objecting to my interviewing close friends, colleagues, etc.”

In a way, Mr. McCartney’s consent to the project suggests the extent to which his relationship with Mr. Norman has warmed in recent years. When “Shout!” was published Mr. McCartney disdained it, partly because it advanced some unusual theories, including one in which Brian Epstein’s death, which was ruled as accidental, was actually the result of a murder plot. Mr. Norman toned down that discussion in subsequent editions of the book.

Mr. McCartney also objected that Mr. Norman treated him as subsidiary to Lennon, and came to believe that his book set a pattern in which Lennon was portrayed as the superior songwriter and the Beatles’ idea man, rather than an equal collaborator. But when Mr. Norman was working on his Lennon biography - which at first had the approval of Yoko Ono, though she later rescinded it in the belief that Mr. Norman was portraying Lennon unfairly - Mr. McCartney agreed to answer questions by e-mail.

“Yes,” Mr. Norman said in his e-mail, “I was accused of being anti-Paul in ‘Shout!’ and I did afterwards feel that I’d been unfair to him. I tried to make amends in the Lennon biography but even so, I didn’t expect to receive this approval (which came very quickly).”

Mr. Norman is also the author of “Sympathy for the Devil: The Rolling Stones Story,” “Elton John,” “Rave On: The Biography of Buddy Holly” and “Mick Jagger.”