McCARTNEY, by Christopher Sandford (Century, £17.99): MUSIC journalist Christopher Sandford is a proven biographer having written well-received biographies of Kurt Cobain, Mick Jagger and now ex-Beatle Sir Paul McCartney.

Somewhat curiously, Sandford begins with McCartney's 1980 arrest in Tokyo for possession of pot and then returns to Merseyside to put flesh on his home life. He describes how Paul's father, Jim, was himself a gifted musician capable of captivating audiences and explains how this talent for entertainment transmitted to his son.

From there, the author adopts a more conservative approach as he charts the well-documented development of The Beatles from Paul's early work and his burgeoning relationship with John Lennon, to the gigs at the Cavern club, the infamous tour of Hamburg and onwards to the torrent of hit singles and screaming fans.

Though Sandford places some emphasis on Macca's drug habits and womanising, he is obviously a huge McCartney fan. He challenges the popular view that Lennon was the deep thinking, creative member of the band and McCartney merely a cute, talented musician with a savvy business brain.

Persuasively, he writes of McCartney's innovativeness and experimentation with techniques such as tape loops, and describes how, in 1966, John Cage and electro-acoustic Italian 'professor' Luciano Berio heavily influenced McCartney, thus laying the foundations for 'concept' music that blossomed into Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The biography benefits from the co-operation of many of McCartney's friends, family and fellow rock stars such as Brian Wilson, Elvis Costello, Phil Spector and John Peel and as the first biography of its subject in ten years, Sandford's work is valuable in bringing the story up to date.

There is analysis of his controversial second marriage to Heather Mills and fresh discussion of his frosty relationship with Yoko Ono. However, that apart, and perhaps unsurprisingly given the subject, there is relatively little in the way of new material.

James Carr

THE MODFATHER by David Lines (Heinemann (£10.99)

THIS is a book about a boy, David Lines and about a man Paul Weller, who was not only a musical idol to Lines but also a personal icon and talisman who helped him to survive the rough and turbulent years of adolescence.

Weller wrote the songs that made the Jam famous but they were lived by Lines who found in Weller's music a liferaft that helped him to cope with such things as watching his father battling with cancer.

The adolescent Lines lived his teenage years day by day and Weller song by song, and even though I was never really struck on Jam, his memoirs do take me back in time to a period when music was indeed an intrinsic part of my life and not just a branch of the entertainment. This is one magnificent obsession that we can all tune into.

BONO: In The Name of Love by Mick Wall (Deutsch £17.99)

THIS unofficial biography of the Rock icon turned Rock conscience touches all the right subjects in terms of his upbringing in Dublin - a Catholic dad and a Protestant mother who died when he was 14; the formation of U2 and the eventual world status of the group - but it fails to get right under the skin.

You do get a strong sense of the intensity and creativity of the man but the private person is still locked away behind those shades.

Steve Craggs

Published: 14/02/2006