One of my favourite books growing up was my dad’s copy of The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics. I spent hours flicking through images of an eyeless, trombone-mouthed golden man swallowing naked bodies, and a full-page, black-and-white comic strip by legendary psychedelic artist Rick Griffin. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t yet listened to most of the songs – the surreal visual riffs felt like dispatches from an undiscovered country. Later, the Beatles became my favourite band. I chain-listened to the albums, read endless books, watched the movies and recited Beatles’ lore to anyone within earshot. “Oh dear,” said my mum one morning, as I reeled off an account of how a 40-piece orchestra improvised the rising crescendo in A Day in the Life, “you’ve become a Beatles bore.”
Maybe I’m Amazed opens with John Harris’s 15-year-old son, James, ecstatically absorbed in a live performance by Paul McCartney, “so held in the moment that he is almost in an altered state”. Harris then loops back to before James’s birth, and tells the story of his son’s arrival, his preschool diagnosis of autism, and how his differences manifest as he grows up. James loves music – the Beatles chief among a rich buffet of bands and tracks he listens to, over and over – and so Harris divides the book into 10 chapters named after songs, each with a particular resonance.
