64 Reasons to Celebrate Paul McCartney
December 8, 2020 11:12 PM Subscribe

"His finest work is undoubtedly frontloaded by the miraculous accident of The Beatles, but there are gems scattered throughout his career, right up to the present day. For sheer fecundity, I can’t, with the exception of Bob Dylan, think of any other songwriter who comes close. There are very few artists in history, in any field, who have produced so much work at a high level over such a span." -64 Reasons To Celebrate Paul McCartney.
posted by oneirodynia (84 comments total) 22 users marked this as a favorite

Given how much Wonderful Christmastime has been playing everywhere, this was a timely reminder that McCartney was actually a net good on balance. Just.
posted by Dysk at 12:09 AM on December 9, 2020 [21 favorites]

Please. If you're gonna hold that one bad song against the all the other great music he produced..... please.
posted by valkane at 12:11 AM on December 9, 2020 [5 favorites]

If you don't like that one Christmas song, here's some other non-Christmas songs that maybe will sit well with you:

Hey Jude

Yesterday

Two Of Us

When I'm 64
posted by valkane at 12:18 AM on December 9, 2020 [3 favorites]

...I did say reminder. He has done lots of fantastic things. I'd've picked Helter Skelteror Get Back from his Beatles years myself. He was always my favourite Beatle (I'm a bassist).

But if you've never worked retail in the UK, or somewhere with similarly repetitive and unavoidable workplace radio, you might not realise just how terrible a curse that song is.
posted by Dysk at 12:26 AM on December 9, 2020 [18 favorites]

Not sure what I want to say here, I was a huge Beatles fan as a kid so I feel I must say something, so i just think I will note how brilliant McCartney was for a sustained period of time, how I think perhaps some of the opprobrium directed at him came from the fact that it seemd so easy for him, and how odd to find this post on the 40th anniversary of Lennon's murder(I'm on the west Coast where it was still the 8th when I saw it).

That is all.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 12:27 AM on December 9, 2020 [5 favorites]

I like artist who seem to delight in trying new things, collaborating with others, and using their celebrity/power to humbly advance important causes. So, sure, I guess Paul McCartney is an OK guy.

I never liked the Beatles, but he always just seemed like a goofy guy having fun to me. I am very pro celebrating this.
posted by seraphine at 12:32 AM on December 9, 2020 [5 favorites]

He's also the guy that agreed to turn down after neighbours complained his practising was too loud in 2004 - he agreed to keep the noise in the millennium dome to a mere 92 decibels after apologising for upsetting a cat. That is both very rock'n'roll and very Nice Granddad at the same time.
posted by Dysk at 12:36 AM on December 9, 2020 [11 favorites]

Lots of people seem to be talking about the Beatles. Is this because of the Lennon anniversary?
posted by atoxyl at 12:39 AM on December 9, 2020

Yeah, it's the fact he's always contrasted with Lennon which hurts him most. Years after Lennon's death, you could still see graffiti on the London Underground reading "Chapman shot the wrong bloke" - and we all knew exactly who it had in mind.
posted by Paul Slade at 12:46 AM on December 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

When I was younger and still had my hair

Many years ago...

When I was sixty-four
posted by fairmettle at 12:47 AM on December 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

I don't know how McCartney III will sound, but I like how he only works on these numbered albums when his life is difficult (when one of his bands breaks up, or in enforced lockdown). It's like... he can't help but make music even when the world tries to stop him. That's so wonderful.
posted by sixohsix at 12:48 AM on December 9, 2020 [9 favorites]

The British comedian Sarah Millican chose McCartney's We All Stand Together (aka The Frog Song) as one of her picks for Desert Island Discs. This is what she said about it:

"When I married my husband Gary, when we were planning our wedding and thinking what could we pick that everybody would sing, he started playing this. I started to laugh and he said 'listen to the lyrics' and I started to cry. So we played this at our wedding and the whole congregation sang, including all the noises. We made sure all the noises were in the order of service as well and this is what we walked out of the wedding to".
posted by Paul Slade at 1:01 AM on December 9, 2020 [14 favorites]

He has done lots of fantastic things. I'd've picked Helter Skelteror Get Back from his Beatles years myself. He was always my favourite Beatle (I'm a bassist).

It’s “Eleanor Rigby.”

But yeah I suppose everyone already knows he’s a great bass player but man as a non-bass-player I don’t think about it too much and then I listen to a Beatles song and so many have absolutely killer basslines.
posted by atoxyl at 1:03 AM on December 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

I'd've picked Helter Skelteror Get Back from his Beatles years myself.

I misread that as "Helter Skeletor", and now have an image in my head of He Man's arch foe enjoying himself on a fairground slide.
posted by Paul Slade at 1:30 AM on December 9, 2020 [29 favorites]

My goto McCartney is the 1999 album 'Run Devil Run'. It was the first album he recorded after Linda's death. It's a collection of rock 'n' roll covers from his youth that all had a special connection, plus three of his own bops. Recorded in under a week, he called on a few friends, they headed into The Beatles Abbey Road studio, nobody was allowed to rehearse, they just pulled the lyrics out of a big envelope, jammed around it to their memories, and recorded each song in ninety minutes.

By the end of the week, the album was pretty much there. There's a manic energy, a rough and raw mix (they were pretty much presented as 'live' recordings), and just 'something' about the album. It also helps when your friends in the studio are David Gilmour, Mick Green Pete Wingfield, Geraint Watkins, and Ian Paice.

McCartney shared his "I'm in a dark place, I just need to play something for Linda" moment with us. And it utterly rocks.

By all means go find the album, but if you need some chills, YouTube has a recording of the (only?) gig with this crew running through the album at The Cavern Club.
posted by ewan at 4:46 AM on December 9, 2020 [13 favorites]

Mull of Kintyre, though, is a solid -32768, so he's still several bits away from positive redemption.

Unless you were a kid growing up in Scotland at the time and expected to trot it out at endless ropey school choir shows, you can't understand the depth of my contempt for that song.
posted by scruss at 5:33 AM on December 9, 2020 [9 favorites]

I can't be the only person on earth who likes Wonderful Christmastime but sometimes it feels that way.
posted by JanetLand at 5:33 AM on December 9, 2020 [19 favorites]

came here to defend wonderful christmastime, will fight all y’all who dismiss it.

paul isn’t the most talented person affiliated with the beatles – that’d be yoko, thank you very much – but he’s a damn fine musician and i’ve appreciated him more and more as i’ve gotten older.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 6:08 AM on December 9, 2020 [6 favorites]

I understand why people get obsessed with the Beatles, but they often bounce off me taste-wise, and McCartney's solo work even more so. But damn that guy is a talented bassist, a multi-faceted singer, and a prolific songwriter. And seems like a pretty decent fella, especially considering what generally seems to happen to people who get famous at that age.
posted by aspersioncast at 6:29 AM on December 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

The nut graf comes early:

He is still compared unfavourably to his most important creative partner. Lennon is soulful, deep, and radical; McCartney is shallow, trivial and bourgeois. That dualism, which took hold in 1970 and was reinforced by Lennon’s horribly premature death, still holds sway.

People, especially Americans, love that false dichotomy to death: the really creative one vs. the one who really just wants to make a buck. And while it's not necessarily always false--compare what Stan Lee did vs. what Jack Kirby did after their partnership broke up, to cite one popular example--it often elides a much more complex reality. This article gets at a lot of things that I didn't know about McCartney--that, for example, he recorded "I've Just Seen a Face", "I'm Down", and "Yesterday" in the same session--and I'm having a great time digging through it.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:45 AM on December 9, 2020 [5 favorites]

Helter Skeletor would be a great username.
posted by all about eevee at 7:01 AM on December 9, 2020 [6 favorites]

Highly recommended watching the Wings concert Rockshow on Prime. It made me realize that Wings was an experiment in live music, and most of their albums failed to capture the energy of those shows, which is why you’ll find them in dollar bins at the used record store. And if you have the chance to see Macca live, don’t pass it up.

I played the hell out of that album, Wings over America, when it was new and I was in jr. high. I think that Paul peaked around that time as a solo artist and while I've occasionally tried to listen to his newer works over the last 45 years, nothing's really stuck.
posted by octothorpe at 7:27 AM on December 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

Excuse me, I love Mull of Kintyre. Wonderful Christmas...is not wonderful, agreed. Anyway, to go beyond a few throwaways and false dichotomies, the man and his music are utterly amazing. Just the perfect voice but with endless different tones, the beautiful melodies, the showmanship, and yes the looks, and a pretty decent guy too. I haven't heard much of his solo work I like, but with the Beatles is one masterpiece after another.
posted by blue shadows at 7:31 AM on December 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

In defense of Mull of Kintyre: as a child of 5, when this song came on the radio it created a positively luminous moment in me. I hesitate to disparage a song that moves a young child, much as it sounds insipid to this much-enlightened and worldly intellect now.
posted by elkevelvet at 7:32 AM on December 9, 2020 [7 favorites]

For sheer fecundity, I can’t, with the exception of Bob Dylan, think of any other songwriter who comes close.

While I'll happily celebrate Paul McCartney any day of the week, and in my old age I slightly prefer 'Wonderful Christmastime' to 'Happy Christmas (War is Over)', this claim seems a little overstated. James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, Joni Mitchell, and Prince (off the top of my head) are all at least close, and arguably more than that.

(Were one to make that argument, they might make it with the people at Rolling Stone, who listed Dylan, McCartney, and Lennon 1-2-3. They also think R. Kelly is a better songwriter than Marvin Gaye, though, so I'm not sure they're a reliable source here.)
posted by box at 7:59 AM on December 9, 2020 [3 favorites]

Please. If you're gonna hold that one bad song against the all the other great music he produced..... please.

more than one, I'm afraid. Including the one that gives this post its theme. Painful. Which doesn't mean I hate Sir Paul -- just get violent allergies to some of his stuff (or should I call it fluff?), particularly much of what happened post Beatle.

He is still compared unfavourably to his most important creative partner. Lennon is soulful, deep, and radical; McCartney is shallow, trivial and bourgeois. That dualism,

it's obviously not this simple, but that Lennon-McCartney contrast (yin-yang?) is what made them the undeniable fact of mostly brilliant culture that they still are -- The Beatles, that is. Either one of Lennon or McCartney on their own would likely have done great and interesting things (Paul would likely have sold more records, John would likely have inspired more cool), but if there's ever been a walking-talking-singing-songwriting example of the whole being magnitudes more than the sum of its parts -- it's those two. With Ringo and George stepping up to seal the deal.
posted by philip-random at 8:17 AM on December 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

If you enjoy Terry Gross and her interview style, her talks with him over the years are perfectly affable. LINK
posted by Caxton1476 at 8:23 AM on December 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

My doctrine on this is that Paul McCartney owes us nothing. However bad you think the bad ones are, the good stuff is so good that he's in the clear.

His most annoying songs are often in that class because they are so catchy and familiar. You might loathe the Frog Song/Wonderful Christmastime, but it's hate-playing in your head right now, isn't it?

The other way to look at it is that [McCartney song(s) you can't stand] are the price you pay for Hey Jude, Blackbird and the bass line to Hey Bulldog, just to pick three things from 1968.
posted by YoungStencil at 8:23 AM on December 9, 2020 [8 favorites]

For me, however treacly and horrible some of Macca's tunes got ("With a Little Luck," "Ebony and Ivory," "Silly Love Songs"), they are well-crafted songs, hooky af. And, as noted, his best are top of class for pop/rock. Inversely, with the exception of a few tunes, I never enjoyed John's post-Beatles work at all. But I remember being in J&R Records in NYC shortly after John's death, and someone riffling through LPs next to me made the same crack about the wrong Beatle getting shot. Which was standard celebrity-death humor, but, to my mind, then and particularly now, spectacularly wrong. And I've subsequently found the apotheosized **JOHN** and the endless reverent versions of "Imagine," a song I cannot stand, to be intolerable.

In short, go, Sir Paul! He'd even have been a cracking Tin Pan Alley tunesmith in the early part of the last century thanks to his unerring sense of melody, but also to his inventiveness even when working his equivalent of moon/June/spoon.
posted by the sobsister at 8:39 AM on December 9, 2020 [4 favorites]

I'll keep my opinions out of this thread, but my inner pedant has some issues with the article as presented. For example, #7: I don't really think the fact that the author has been a Beatles fan since he was 10 qualifies as a reason to celebrate Paul.

I'll go back to my hole now.
posted by booooooze at 8:40 AM on December 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

65. He wrote a song about Magneto, Titanium Man and the Crimson Dynamo
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:47 AM on December 9, 2020 [5 favorites]

My own $.02 is that John tended to create his music by drawing on his own feelings and experiences, and Paul tended to create his by drawing on his extensive knowledge of music and his awesome musicianship. It's an exaggeration to describe John as an artist and Paul as a craftsperson, but that's how I think of them.

But Paul had the cojones to appear on stage, at the age of 70, with the surviving members of Nirvana. The result could have been hideously embarrassing - instead (in my opinion), it was awesome.
posted by tallmiddleagedgeek at 8:54 AM on December 9, 2020 [5 favorites]

Mull of Kintyre definitely a guilty pleasure over here. Hearing it as a kid, in Scotland, the chord changes alone made the hair on the back of my neck stand up (in a pleasant tingly way).

I think of Paul and John more as sweet and sour, they balanced each other pretty perfectly (it’s getting better all the time / can’t get no worse).

It seems to me that his solo efforts get criticised due to comparison with the Beatles body of work - and who can compete with that? If he was some singer / songwriter/ multi instrumentalist who emerged in 1970 opinions might be more balanced.
posted by ElasticParrot at 9:12 AM on December 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

Came in to point out the Nirvana reunion moment, was not disappointed.

Okay, look, yes, not every one of his songs was a hit. But then, not every one of Lou Gherig's swings was a hit, or Babe Ruth's swings was a hit either. I'm given to understand that the best batting average of all time is 0.3662 - and that's just barely over 30% of the time getting a hit out of all the times you were at bat. Would we say that of all of the songs Paul McCartney has ever written, that about 30% of them went on to be hits? Yes? Well there you go. "Wonderful Christmastime" and the like were just the times he struck out, but when he connected we get things like "Maybe I'm Amazed" or "Blackbird" or the like.

I'm personally partial to "Great Day" off Flaming Pie; I've gone very late-60s-folkie in my tastes as I age, and that hits me squarely in my relevant-to-my-interests.

(Although, George is still my favorite Beatle as I have more in common with him, including a shared birthday.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:49 AM on December 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

Two interviews both from NYT, a recent one with Paul McCartney (not sure what to make of it), and an old repeat with John Lennon (really helps me understand him better).
posted by blue shadows at 9:53 AM on December 9, 2020

Nope, sorry, I unreservedly love his stuff. I'm one of the weirdos that like Wings as much as, and sometimes better than, the Beatles. I used to have little to no opinion on the John/Paul thing, but over a number of years, I've def come down on one side.
posted by pseudophile at 9:59 AM on December 9, 2020 [4 favorites]

I wasn't expecting much more than a nostalgia trip when I saw McCartney in 2015, but, gosh, it was one of the best shows I've ever seen. The man played for three solid hours with barely more than a brief walk off the stage and back, looked fit as hell, and the charisma just rolled off him.

Of weird McCartney artefacts, my favorite is Thrillington.
posted by a Rrose by any other name at 10:06 AM on December 9, 2020 [8 favorites]

I'm not a true Beatles-phile, but whenever I see the argument about John and Paul (the article calls it the "visionary" vs. the "salesman") I think of Abbey Road.

The four Paul songs that close it -- "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window," "Golden Slumbers," "Carry That Weight" and "The End" -- are just a wonderful run of fun, creative musical genius. Maybe my favorite sequence of songs on any of their records. So I'm a Paul fan.

Plus my first couple of high school girlfriends said they went out with me because I looked like Paul. Sadly, I have not aged anywhere nearly as well as Sir McCartney. :)
posted by martin q blank at 10:25 AM on December 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

I'd always thought of myself as a Lennon guy until I noticed how I was rating Beatles songs in my iTunes library - Paul's songs tended to have more five star ratings from me - and subsequently realized that I had a dozen or more Macca solo tunes in my library but no Lennon tunes at all. I still love the idea of John Lennon.
posted by Joey Michaels at 10:25 AM on December 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

When I was young, I admired Lennon. Raw! In your face! Excellent!
Now I see Paul. Settled! Happy! Doing good!

Paul wins.
posted by storybored at 10:30 AM on December 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

I saw him headline the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury in 2004. We had no intention of seeing him but were crossing on our way from something else and were so fried we had to sit down, and then failed dismally in our attempts to move when he started. He was awesome. Wow he’s got the songs alright and he played them fiercely! Helter Skelter and Live And Let Die were a revelation live. Blackbird is my favourite Beatles song and was just sublime.I know it sounds crazy but I’d actually half forgotten he was in the Beatles, due to his massively popular gloop. Thumbs aloft, Macca! He’s an astonishing artist.
posted by tardigrade at 11:17 AM on December 9, 2020 [6 favorites]

"She Came in Through the Bathroom Window," "Golden Slumbers," "Carry That Weight" and "The End" -- are just a wonderful run of fun, creative musical genius. Maybe my favorite sequence of songs on any of their records. So I'm a Paul fan.

whereas I lean much more toward Come Together, She's So Heavy, Because. Just so much more going on under the hood as it were.

Though Abbey Road is the one Beatles album where it can be argued that George's two contributions win the day: Something and Here Comes The Sun. Hard to find anything at all wrong with in either of those.
posted by philip-random at 11:32 AM on December 9, 2020 [6 favorites]

Though Abbey Road is the one Beatles album where it can be argued that George's two contributions win the day: Something and Here Comes The Sun.

I'm still miffed about Frank Sinatra saying that "Something" was "his favorite Lennon/McCartney composition".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:25 PM on December 9, 2020 [3 favorites]

The four Paul songs that close it -- "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window," "Golden Slumbers," "Carry That Weight" and "The End" -- are just a wonderful run of fun, creative musical genius. Maybe my favorite sequence of songs on any of their records. So I'm a Paul fan.

Also wasn’t the very idea of the closing medley Paul? Well, Paul and George (Martin) and the engineers?

On the other hand, if I try to name my top five Beatles songs, I go in thinking it should be two John, two Paul and a George for fairness, but I keep ending up with three John. But possibly the most unfair thing John ever said about Paul is when he accused Paul of not putting in as much work on other people’s songs as he asked for his. Those tape loops on “Tomorrow Never Knows” (one of those top three John songs)? Paul McCartney.
posted by atoxyl at 12:26 PM on December 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

My favorite Carpool Karaoke is with Paul McCartney. This is also James Cordon's favorite. Paul McCartney is a mensch.
posted by bluesky43 at 12:54 PM on December 9, 2020 [3 favorites]

My mom has always been a Paul person. I heard Wings repeatedly when I was a kid. She must have watched Give My Regards to Broad Street a 1001 times. I'd count myself lucky if I were a tenth as talented as he's been for as long as he's been.

(Also, side note on the Nirvana clip - I always forget just how much of a physical drummer Grohl is. How does he not destroy his drum heads?)
posted by drewbage1847 at 12:57 PM on December 9, 2020 [3 favorites]

I'm extremely glad they all came together ... nor one of them could come close to the half of that.

The timing was perfect and, for that brief time together, they set a standard the world around them could reach for. A gift to them and to us all.
posted by Twang at 1:52 PM on December 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

Joke about cultural relevance now so dated that it is itself a joke about cultural relevance: 'Wait, Paul McCartney was in another band before Wings!?'
posted by bartleby at 2:13 PM on December 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

The version that I've heard/read (can't remember the context at all):

"Hey, do you remember the band that Paul McCartney was in before Wings?"

"What's Wings?"

(You could extend it further by having the comeback go, "Wings? Was he the mechanic?"
posted by Halloween Jack at 3:03 PM on December 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

And shit, I just remembered that 1969 Beatles rooftop concert exists and I gotta say, McCartney's comparatively square and laid-back vibe holds up pretty damn well.
posted by aspersioncast at 3:37 PM on December 9, 2020

A beautiful night for a McCartney thread... ever thankful to my parents for practically raising me on him, with the earliest memorable impression of his music being a tape of "Off the Ground", on the road.

Flaming Pie, though, is a masterpiece, with "Too Many People" being an occasional earworm.

Cheers
posted by JoeXIII007 at 3:53 PM on December 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

Coincidentally I just made a PaulMcCartney and/or Wings Spotify playlist and stopped in the early '80s. I was born in 1964 (two days before Capitol released "I Feel Fine"/"She’s a Woman") and was a huge fan in high school.

It felt weird that he's made 35 years of music I'm basically ignorant of. He's so talented and I like a lot of his post-Beatles stuff enough that he must've made some music I would like. It's different experiencing it contemporaneously instead of (what?) archaeologically.

John Lennon's death was tragic because he had just returned to music after taking a five-year break to raise Sean and he was making good music.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:45 PM on December 9, 2020

Another unabashed lover here of Wonderful Christmastime, Silly Love Songs, and all the songs the cool kids hate.

As far as the Beatles go, I have always identified more with John, but I don’t know how flattering that is to either of us. However, Paul’s the one I truly admire. He just gets on with it, y’know? He really seems to know himself.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:48 PM on December 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

So, sure, I guess Paul McCartney is an OK guy.

McCartney remained close to Julian, backing him and his mother (Cynthia died in 2015) in a legal battle to unlock money from the Lennon estate, a dispute that lasted well into the 1990s. In her memoir, Cynthia wrote about an emotional letter written to her by John in 1965, when he was away on tour in the US. In it, John talks about how much he misses her and Julian (then two years old), and how badly he feels about not seeing them. Much later, when Cynthia was down on her luck, she felt she had to sell the letter to make ends meet. It sold for a lot of money at auction, to an anonymous donor. Shortly afterwards a package arrived at Cynthia’s house: the letter, framed, with a note from Paul saying that it belonged to her and Julian.

posted by kirkaracha at 4:48 PM on December 9, 2020 [24 favorites]

My kid just learned to play Hey Jude, Imagine and Blackbird ( my favorite) on the piano. They were a big jump in her abilities but she stuck with it. She wants to know how to play but despises learning, so I would like to thank Paul for supporting her efforts.
posted by waving at 5:11 PM on December 9, 2020 [3 favorites]

I would give anything to hear a collaboration between Paul McCartney and Kevin Parker.
posted by panama joe at 8:12 PM on December 9, 2020

I can't be the only person on earth who likes Wonderful Christmastime but sometimes it feels that way.

You're not. I wouldn't say I love it, exactly, but I fail to grok the hate heaped on it. As I have said before, it's more or less exactly what you'd expect of McCartney futzing around with a synth in 1980. In the grand scheme of post-1970 McCartney songs, it's got more legs than "Let 'Em In" but is no "Band On The Run." If faced with a choice between listening to this or "So This Is Christmas" for an hour solid, it'd be a toss-up. I wouldn't be too thrilled either way, of course.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:26 PM on December 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

So I'm only up to #28 in this article, but I am filled with appreciation, for the article and for Paul. Way up there at #6 I was struck by this bit:

The thumbs-ups cheeriness is not false, but it is only a part of who he is - the part he is content for you to see. His former collaborator Denny Laine remarked, “I have never met anyone as good at hiding their true feelings as Paul.” While Lennon has been the subject of endless psychological analysis, McCartney has received far less attention, partly because he is generally uninterested in self-examination, or in being examined. Lennon fits our template for genius, but the thing about genius is that it has no template.

And I very much dig the observation that Paul IS ordinary, and LIKES being ordinary, and yet

He is, of course, one of the most un-ordinary individuals in history. When people acknowledge McCartney’s talent they usually mean his songwriting, which is not surprising, since he is as great or greater than any songwriter who ever lived. But it means we overlook what is a positively freakish array of gifts. Imagine if Cole Porter also sang like Frank Sinatra and played clarinet like Benny Goodman. If McCartney had never written a song he would be one of the great singers; if he had never written or sung he would be one of the great bassists – and that’s before we get on to his guitar, his piano, his drumming and his studio innovation.

I am realizing that I have failed to really appreciate McCartney, and I'm very glad for this opportunity to rectify that. He's amazing, and he's a mensch, and he's still happy to share his extraordinary talents with us, and I agree with Ian Leslie that that is worth celebrating.

Thank you so much for posting this, oneirodynia. I've greatly enjoyed the first third, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest.
posted by kristi at 9:17 PM on December 9, 2020 [8 favorites]

relevant bit from a 2014 article written by Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson, musing on The Beatles' formative Hamburg Days (their punk period as he puts it):

Having their time in Hamburg as part of their biography worked well for The Beatles. It was interesting that they had that pedigree of being a bit vulgar, and not just fresh-faced youths who bowed to the Queen at Royal Variety Performances. You had to somehow prove your mettle if you were going to have credibility, and Lennon took that on into future aspects of his career, the bad-biker clone ultimately replaced by what was perceived by many as a mad, dangerous hippie. He never lost that element of dissent.

You could argue that McCartney worked the hardest to distance himself from the prickliness of the Hamburg days to become a more wholesome performer, while Lennon strived to hold on to his venom. That combination was what always appealed to me, though; the velvet glove covering the iron fist is what made The Beatles work so well.
posted by philip-random at 9:37 PM on December 9, 2020

I very much enjoyed these two multipart YouTube documentaries:

Understanding Lennon/McCartney

McCartney
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:13 PM on December 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

Another favorite video is Paul charmingly making mashed potatoes.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:18 PM on December 9, 2020

The man cannot chop onions though, and should not be trusted with knife. How he didn't take a finger off doing that...
posted by Dysk at 10:29 PM on December 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

Like, how you can all that display of inefficient danger "charming" boggles my mind. Just start by halving the onion! Then slice one way and then the other with tge flat face against a chopping board, not by holding the onion awkwardly in your hand! Also Christ alive, curl your fingers back Macca - you need to keep them for your job!
posted by Dysk at 10:32 PM on December 9, 2020

The Frog Chorus does have that wonderful (if schmaltzy) lyric and a melody lesser songwriters would kill for (and the Rupert the Bear video is beautiful, too). I think it’s one of those things that people hate because they like to hate things. I mean. I prefer Helter Skelter but I’m always struck by how much better The Frog Chorus is than it should be.
posted by Grangousier at 3:43 AM on December 10, 2020 [3 favorites]

I'm a huge fan of Ram which like the previous McCartney album contains a lot of Beatles material but Ram is just fun: Too Many People, Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey are great pieces.

The Frog Chorus strikes me as a piece of music that Chopin never got around to writing so McCartney filled the gap and then added some marching band flourishes into it.

I remember some interview in which the thing that baffled Paul is he was sure Waterfalls was going to be a enormous hit and it wasn't. Oddly it has a similar melody line to TLC's later enormous hit: Waterfalls
posted by vacapinta at 6:01 AM on December 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

> You're not. I wouldn't say I love it, exactly, but I fail to grok the hate heaped on it. As I have said before, it's more or less exactly what you'd expect of McCartney futzing around with a synth in 1980.

see and that's the thing that's so great about it. most christmas songs allude to christmas cheer, refer to christmas cheer, but wonderful christmastime actually enacts christmas cheer. it is the sound of getting a cool toy for christmas and then goofing around with it with your friends and family.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 6:25 AM on December 10, 2020 [6 favorites]

wonderful christmastime actually enacts christmas cheer. it is the sound of getting a cool toy for christmas and then goofing around with it with your friends and family.

To get pedantic for a second - I think this is more what "whee I got a Casio for Christmas, let's fool around with it" sounds like.

But speaking of SNL, I always thought this was cute - Paul was the musical guest one night, on the same night Adam Sandler was singing "Red Hooded Sweatshirt" during Weekend Update, and Paul agreed to do a guest appearance just to sing "dipdipdip!" in the middle of it.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:46 AM on December 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

like, that song has bonhomie like nobody's business. and that's a thing the world needs.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 6:46 AM on December 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

I'm firmly in the "I actually like Wonderful Christmastime" camp. And I generally don't like Christmas music.

Like a lot of others, his later stuff hasn't grabbed me and I haven't kept up. The last McCartney album I really loved was Flowers in the Dirt, and I managed to see him on that tour in 1989. I took an Amtrak from St. Louis to Chicago, slept on a dorm room floor and got to see the show from some of the worst seats I've ever had for a concert.

You know what? It was magical and one of the best concerts of my life. The man has an inhuman amount of charisma and charm. When he talked between songs it really felt like he was talking to you directly, or at least that's how I felt. I've seen many, many, many shows since and damn few performers can connect with people like that in a small venue - much less an arena setting.
posted by jzb at 6:52 AM on December 10, 2020 [3 favorites]

paraphrase: "John was tough with a sensitive side, and I was sensitive with a tough side, so we were well matched." (exact quote somewhere in the Philip Norman book)
posted by ovvl at 7:34 AM on December 10, 2020 [2 favorites]

It makes total sense, of course, that Paul McCartney singing "Hey Jude" was the capper on London's 2012 Olypic Opening ceremony; it's quite a thing to watch, too, with the camera periodically panning down amid all the athletes to catch people from a myriad different countries all gleefully singing "naaaaaaa-na-na-nananana, Hey Jude...."

But that wasn't the ONLY thing Paul sang. Just before "Hey Jude" was the torch lighting ceremony - which, if you haven't seen it, is kind of quite a thing in and of itself. Instead of one famous renowned past athlete lighting it, they had a team of past athletes each nominate one juvenile athlete, and the older athletes passed the torches to the younger ones and the younger ones were the ones who did a lap around the stadium and then lit the torch. And once that was going, then there was a huge fireworks display, to the tune of Pink Floyd's "Eclipse", and then right when that ended - the lights went up on Paul McCartney at a piano, singing "The End". They didn't segue from that into "Hey Jude" right away, and I was thinking for a few seconds that "holy crap, they brought Paul in just for that one song, that is a baller move."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:35 PM on December 10, 2020 [2 favorites]

Having their time in Hamburg as part of their biography worked well for The Beatles. It was interesting that they had that pedigree of being a bit vulgar, and not just fresh-faced youths who bowed to the Queen at Royal Variety Performances.

I always thought it was funny that The Beatles started out way more punk than the Stones, who later were the bad boys to the cuddly moptop personas The Beatles adopted later.
posted by kirkaracha at 2:11 PM on December 10, 2020 [2 favorites]

I am looking forward to digging into these links and offer up a clip I found on youtube a while ago when I fell into a sudden late-life Paul McCartney obsession: Paul McCartney with family and friends at a Liverpool pub in 1973.

Thinking of Paul as a calculated salesman is so unfair, it actually seems as though he really can't stop himself making music, it just comes out for better or worse, and from the volume he's put out, it can't be all good. Not to mention that he's so famous it's doubtful anyone has ever reigned him in since he split with John. As much as I love him, I hate the songs Jet and Live and Let Die with a passion.

I don't like making it a contest, choose one or the other, but I do think people who look down on Paul are missing out.
posted by maggiemaggie at 7:54 PM on December 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

I watched Paul play live with the remaining members of Nirvana at the Hurricane Sandy benefit concert. I was at the Garden, on the floor. Paul blew the room away. People were being snide about oh no Paul and Nirvana this will be embarrassing because Paul is elderly and genial and not a big rocker and what are Grohl and Novosolic thinking... but all you need to do is see the Paul perform Helter Skelter live. The room was vibrating.

Cobain always was candid about how much the Beatles influenced him too so these ageist Nirvana fans who snarked on Paul need to sit the fuck down on this topic.

More later when I'm more awake.
posted by nayantara at 1:07 AM on December 11, 2020 [2 favorites]

I watched Paul play live with the remaining members of Nirvana at the Hurricane Sandy benefit concert. I was at the Garden, on the floor. Paul blew the room away. People were being snide about oh no Paul and Nirvana this will be embarrassing because Paul is elderly and genial and not a big rocker and what are Grohl and Novosolic thinking... but all you need to do is see the Paul perform Helter Skelter live.

Heh; there was a post on the blue at the time, which started with the announcement that Paul would be joining them, but then carrying through to a livewatch of the concert. You can see the exact same change in the thread - a lot of people scoffing about the matchup, and then a change to "holy crap it worked". Someone in the thread guessed at Paul's mindset during "Helter Skelter" - "y'all think I can't rock out? I fucking invented rocking out."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:33 AM on December 11, 2020 [3 favorites]

I remember my university music theory professor playing “Hey Jude” for us in class because it was the best example he could find of a IV/IV-IV-I sequence. Double plagal cadence. Taking it back to church by way of church.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:07 PM on December 11, 2020 [1 favorite]

I was lucky enough to win tickets to see Paul playing a live set in the middle of Hollywood Blvd before he went on the Kimmel show. I was about twenty feet from the stage, expecting maybe two songs, as we'd been told it was just going to be a short sound check, but he kept playing and playing and playing. Tons of tourists at Hollywood and Highland were rubbernecking, and I couldn't help wondering if they just thought this was a typical day in Hollywood. Anyway, it was unforgettable.
posted by OolooKitty at 4:11 PM on December 11, 2020 [3 favorites]

I love the song, and just have to point out that "Silly Love Songs" was written by a bass player.
posted by indexy at 9:13 PM on December 11, 2020

Been listening to Wings over America and watching some of the videos from Rock Show, which is from the same tour, and re-discovered that Wings was a kick-ass rock band and Paul was a very generous bandleader who let everyone get a chance in the spotlight. I'm also newly sad about Jimmy McCulloch who was a terrific lead guitarist and if he'd lived, he might be thought of as one of the great guitar heros. Watch his solo on Medicine Jar; he wasn't a bad singer either.
posted by octothorpe at 7:23 AM on December 12, 2020

Oh and Paul wrote a pretty kick-ass song about X-Men villains.
posted by octothorpe at 7:56 AM on December 12, 2020

Just want to chime in and agree with those above who've raved about seeing him in concert, especially recently. I'm (coincidentally) at this moment wearing a shirt from his 2017 tour. He played and sang non-stop for three hours to a sold-out Madison Square Garden, and worked the massive crowd of strangers like we were in a tiny intimate club with our closest friends.
posted by Devoidoid at 6:29 PM on December 13, 2020

Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime" is about friends practicing witchcraft but then someone walks in and they have to suddenly play it cool
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:25 PM on December 14, 2020

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