JOHN & PAUL: A LOVE STORY IN SONGS by IAN LESLIE

The seriously afflicted Beatle fan might not expect to find much new in any more biographies.

However this insightful and interesting biography-cum-psychological study of the band's protagonists takes such an interesting and probing slant on the relationship between Lennon and McCartney that it does force a rethink of how those two came together to sometimes create one songwriting personality.

And how at other times they used their very different personalities to push each other in new and rewarding directions, sometimes through collaboration and at other times through wilful differentiation.

Leslie's premise is that the Beatles' story has become entrenched in received and accepted narratives, something exaggerated by the canonisation of Lennon after his death as the peace activist and more intellectual and creative of the pair. He says we need to step back and look at the source material which is before us, hiding in plain sight: the songs.

Although he writes the Lennon-McCartney story – Harrison and Starr barely mentioned, bit players in the creative nexus of the band – he draws down into using songs as examples of how their distinct and collective personalities made for such inventive art.

He starts before the band became famous looking at, among other songs, McCartney's I Lost My Little Girl (which McCartney considered his first proper song) and how Lennon answered soon afterwards with Hello Little Girl. Each was prompting the other to create.

From there on they became unstoppable and unique: songwriting teams until them had one the lyricist, the other the writer of the melody.

Lennon and McCartney were both interchangeably and that is where they became a separate, collective personality. Symbolically they agreed immediately to share the ownership of each other's song: Lennon-McCartney.

Pushing out from that premise Leslie looks at 40 other songs in chronological sequence (the last one being McCartney's Here Today written after Lennon's murder) and discusses how the songs were something akin to conversations between Lennon and McCartney, often saying things they would never bring up with each other in normal discussions.

Sometimes this stretches into pop psychology – the quotes from academic sources notwithstanding – but Leslie also doesn't shy away from the dirty business of business with regards to Apple, Klein, the Eastmans and the the band's break-up.

Linda McCartney and Yoko Ono also appear on the scene but sparingly and only when relevant to their spouses' careers, songs or temperament.

And inevitably as Lennon and McCartney grew apart there would be the sideways or snide comments – especially after the break-up – which made for wounds that would take years to heal.

The book really does become a discussion of a love story between two men who had much in common – big dreams, loss of their mothers, ruthless ambition, mutual respect, unquantifiable talent – but also as much which differentiated them and which increasingly eroded that collective persona they had for so many years.

There are some obvious examples of their songs among what Leslie has selected – the two-part We Can Work It Out, Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane as two sides of a single but also their personalities, A Day in the Life and so on.

But Leslie also drills down into how sometimes it was impossible to separate their voices as they exchanged the main vocal line when a higher register (McCartney) would take over from the lower (Lennon) in something like If I Fell.

He is as interesting on the music and the vocal intonation they brought as he is on the lyrics and the crucible in which their songs were created. It is not without its small errors which those seriously afflicted fans will spot (one Facebook contributed identified 57, mostly of slightly wrong dates and such), but that takes nothing away from the bigger canvas Ian Leslie paints.

His book has that desired effect of any book about music: it drives you back to the source material and you'll feel more informed after reading this when you listen again to Ticket to Ride, Getting Better, Yer Blues, Look At Me, Martha My Dear (surprisingly) and, in the context of the bitter feud between them, Lennon and McCartney getting together to knock out The Ballad of John and Yoko together.

Within days they'd be at each other's throats again.

But that too is the large subtext here: As witnessed when they sing Two of Us on that rooftop, they were in complete harmony and support when they made music together.

That they eventually ceased to do so – although the final solo songs show how much Lennon missed McCartney, often to the point of tears – was a pity.

But given their personalities developing in such different ways it was inevitable, as Leslie shows.

Sometimes the distance between them was too great to bridge and that alchemy which created a third songwriting persona made up of each, could no long work its magic.

These days there are scores, actually hundreds, of books about the Beatles, from what they wore and what they said to the equipment they used and the lyrics they wrote.

But there hasn't been one quite like this, a thoroughly readable yet thought-provoking look at a love story between two uniquely talented individuals who, by chance, met at a village fete in Liverpool and through songs, wit and their sometimes oppositional personalities took their music to the world and brought joy to millions.

Still do.

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JOHN & PAUL: A LOVE STORY IN SONGS by IAN LESLIE Faber, $38