Paul McCartney at 70
A certain Liverpudlian I'm quite fond of turns 70 today. Now I've written a lot of posts about him and his music before, but I can't let the day pass without making another. For a start, have the best summing up of Paul McCartney's life so far, both hilarious and touching, as given by Alec Baldwin two years ago when they were honouring him at the Kennedy Centre. (So much better when comedians do interviews with or summations about any of the former Beatles; biographers and rock journalists tend to either get in overawe or unfunny hostility.)
Aside from chortling over the funny bits, I love the phrase "he married rock'n roll to beauty".
I already did the greatest hits posts, so I tried to go with mostly (but not exclusively) lesser known songs this time. Mind you, "lesser known" in terms of Paul is relative expression. Still. Let's start with ye olde Beatles days, one of the songs that never were a single and didn't make it into the greatest hits collections and which I love dearly none the less, I've Just Seen A Face. It captures the rush of falling in love so welll, the breathlessness, and musically it's also one of the more obviously influenced by the skiffle John and Paul started out with in the 50s as teenagers. Considering this song more often than not shows up in Paul's concert repertoire through the decades, he seems to be particularly fond of it as well. Here he's singing it in the early 90s:
Falling in love is great, but staying in love is what's impressive. And tends to produce not so much songs. Paul was the last of the Beatles to get married, after spending most of the 60s in the way most rock stars did, with lots of one night stands and dramatic break ups. Nobody could have predicted then what followed, thirty years of happy monogamous marriage which even the most eager papparazzi weren't able to find evidence against, only ending when Linda died of cancer. The justly most famous Linda-inspired song is Maybe I'm Amazed (and while I'm not sure I agree with a critic who said Paul was never as openly vulnerable and honestly raw in another song, it certainly is remarkable for those qualities, and shows a more mature and rarely humble appreciation of love). But I also like the far less famous, quiet We Got Married from the late 80s, which you can listen to here:
It's from the album Flowers in the Dirt, which also has a charming song dedicated to his late father. Again, the most famous Jim-inspired song is another, When I'm 64, which was written as a present for Jim McCartney's 64th birthday. Put it there is less whimsical but full of affection and ease, and of course written by a man who was a father of four children himself at that time:
Danny Fields, not a Paul fan, nonetheless gives us a good glimpse of the McCartney parenting skills in action back when Fields was working with Linda on preparing a photo book in the mid-70s:
The book's art director was there, and in three hours we went through twenty-six boxes of slides, each holding 100 pictures. Stella and Mary amused themselves briefly by drawing with pens and markers and demanding a great deal of attention, most of which was supplied by Paul. Linda was looking at the pictures and, as if by prearrangement, left the parenting up to him. Amazingly, his attention to the work at hand was not distracted by his rambunctious two- and four-year-olds, who had the run of the room. He knew every picture, and often commented on the circumstances of their creation himself. It was Paul who organized the finding of the kids' shoes as they prepared to leave. 'Get your shoes on, you too mate, get your shoes on, where's your shoes?'
Or, as he put it to fellow rocker Chrissie Hynde when she interviewed him after Linda's death and asked why they didn't leave the kids at home when they toured:
We've met people who say, "Oh I like children, but I only like them when they get to be about three years old, when you can talk to them." Linda and I would look at each other and say, '"But don't you like them when they're little babies?" And they just gasp a little bit. I think it was just always such a mystery to us. I [come] from a very strong Liverpool family. And when Linda and I met, she was a single parent happening to get on with her life. So we just kind of pulled it together between us and just said, "Well you know, we'll just do it in a certain way." And we stuck to it. Just kept it very simple. We looked at issues and saw what seemed to be our instinctive reactions. Sometimes it can be against the grain. People will say, "No, you mustn't do that or no you can't do that." We said, "Well we're gonna do that and we hope we're right." And I think using our instincts like that, instead of what other people told us, was good because no one can tell you how to raise your kids. They are your kids. And this idea that babies are only good when they're three -- when James was really little I remember sitting on the sofa with him. He's just a baby and he was sitting with me like we were grown-ups and he was just sort of gaggling and going, "Ah goo, ah goo." So I just said, "Ah goo." Like agreeing with him in his language. He looked at me like, "You speak this language?" We're sitting there for hours just "ah goo." I just mimicked him because kids mimic their parents -- but its actually a lot of fun the other way around. Then I said, "Pa, Pa, Pa," and he'd just go, "Um, hum, Pa, Pa, Pa." They see you like using their words and it's oddly so exciting. From the second they were born to this day, I think you learn so much off kids -- if you're willing to be open and you don't close your mind and say, "Oh, I know how to be a parent." I always said to Lin that being a parent is the greatest ad-lib you're ever involved in. You make it up as you go along, you have no idea what the script is, you have no idea how these kids are going to turn out but if you're just with them a bit and listen to them a bit and let them talk to you instead of talking to them all the time, then natural things occur a bit more easily. We don't give them anything near the amount of credit they should have.
He seems to be doing well in the multiple grandfather department, too. In a recent profile of Stella McCartney by the New York Times, you get this passage: As Miller and Bailey clowned and laughed on the jump seat, Stella called her father to report our progress. Miller, who had already announced, “I want Granddad to sing ‘Back in the U.S.S.R.’!” then got on the phone, his freckled face beaming as he made his request. (Selenak: I hear you, Millar. Lots of people want Granddad to sing Back in in the USSR.(...) When the concert got going, Stella was on her feet, swaying and tossing her reddish blond hair and singing along. She has an excellent voice. She also inherited her father’s chubby-cheeked countenance and his self-armored ease. By contrast, Mary McCartney, Stella’s older sister and confidante, who came to the show with two of her sons and their young friends, seemed happy to remain seated most of the time. A photographer, Mary is darkly pretty and laid-back, but like her mother, Linda, she has no wish to master public life. Later, when I spoke to Laura Eastman Malcolm, Linda’s younger sister, she described a trip in the family’s station wagon: “Paul was driving, and Mary turns to me and in this disapproving tone says: ‘Do you like the fans? I’m sure you hate them!’ She was 8. Paul loves the fans. He can deal with them.” The implication is that Stella can also deal with public life. She says that, sure, the fans used to freak her out, too. “You’re like a little wall of defense,” she told me a few days later. “There’s dad, and you’re like this little wall in front, trying to spot who’s going to attack.” She laughed. “And then you grow up, and you realize he’s cool with it. He’s done it since he was 17.”
Indeed. He's also an old hand at the promoting game, which means when you ask the same question, you get repetitive answers, but as I said, go for the comedians, throw in some not routine questions, and it gets hilarious. Here he is being interviewed by Chris Evans (for Doctor Who fans: the first Mr. Billie Piper, small world, huh?) in 1997. Poor visual quality to begin with but correct at about 1 minute in, and some of the questions sent in by various British celebrities are a hoot. Watch out for the brotherly pimping of George's newest record while he's at it.
On to seriousness again. That interview was to promote the album Flaming Pie, and by then, the McCartney clan was very aware Linda was dying. Calico Songs on Flaming Pie is one of the last and very tender love songs for her. It's also, as I saw when surfing through YouTube, one of the most covered of the 90s McCartney songs, but here's the original:
What you also find on YouTube are unexpected gems like the original Band on the Run video. Which is remarkable because it's explicitly biographical and identifies the "band" in the title not with Wings, but with the Beatles. Bear in mind this was in 1973/74 which means the years of slagging it out in public and song were just barely over and reconciliation had begun, but everyone was still trying to distance themselves from the immediate Beatles past, so I'd love to know who made that video, which must have been okayed by Paul.
naraht, watch out for Unexpected!Brian Epstein in it.
My favourite description for that song, which features Paul's later Beatles and 70s penchant for melding disparate song together to a whole, hails from Peter Ames Carlin: LIsten and think hard about how inventive this 5 minute-plus rock suite really is. The modular structure; the abrupt shifts in tempo and sound; the way it's all constructed to fit a kind of impressionistic narrative about the joys, complications and endless opportunities for transcendence that go along with music and -- more than anything -- being in a rock 'n' roll band. Section by section, now: Stuck inside these four walls....lord, it's every dead-end room you've ever inhabited, at home, in school, at some crappy job you thought you'd never escape, and just when you least expect it, even at the height of fame. If I ever get out of here.... the guitars turn crunchy, the percussion cracks like a pistol shot as the dead-end becomes fame itself; e.g., straight-up memories of the Beatlemania days, the endless hours of being cooped up in dressing rooms while the world surged madly at their door. Then....that breathttaking symphonic leap up to the central verse and chorus of the song and the point where...The rain exploded with a mighty crash/as we fell into the sun.... and the band is back on the run, soaring above the clouds and far from the grasp of any number of antagonists: the sherrif, the county judge (who held a grudge), even the undertaker. The music soars. The voices call out ecstatically (Yeeeeah!) Four minutes in, and the album is way above the clouds.
"Being in a rock'n roll band". One of the consistant themes in articles about Paul McCartney is the question why he still does it: going on tour. Given he obviously doesn't need the money, and currently doesn't need to promote new albums, either (his latest was a nostalgia trip to the songs he grew up with which he doesn't play in concert). The answer to mem always seemed to be obvious: being in a rock'n roll band is what, other than composing, gives him the most joy. It's what he does, and he does it best, as you know if you've ever seen him perform live. Not on tv, where he can be ill at ease at times; live, on stage, doing three hours uninterrupted, something that makes decade younger people blanch. The lead guitarist of his current band who's been playing with him for almost a decade now, Rusty Anderson, gives a good description of what it's like to play with him these days here , though my favourite quote from Mr. Anderson on this matter hails from an earlier interview, here, where he comes up with this gem: Paul's funny. In a way, he's the private Englishman guy. In another way, he comes from the crazy, free love and drugs sixties, the exact opposite. It's cool, he's this weird combination of polar opposites.
And in that spirit,for my finale, here he's in the crazy sixties, on a certain rooftop, singing Get Back in what was to be the final performance of the Beatles in public:
And a relatively short time ago, on a rooftop yet again, singing Sing the Changes from his second Fireman album:
Let's finish with music and conversation. Paul, hanging out with Klaus Voormann for the later's 2008 record A Sideman's Journey. Klaus, who was the German student all those years ago who went to the Kaiserkeller and heard a British band he fell for, bringing his friend Astrid Kirchherr with him the next time, Klaus who later became a bass player in his own right and the artist who won the Emmy for his cover design of Revolver. Note for Germans: at the end, when Klaus speaks German, one still hears he's originally from Berlin - talk about enduring accents, given that the man spent most of his life abroad and then in Bavaria! Also I'm amused Paul can still recite (in German, and correctly) the phrase the police used when controlling everyone's IDs late in the Hamburg clubs.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/789107.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
Click to viewAside from chortling over the funny bits, I love the phrase "he married rock'n roll to beauty".
I already did the greatest hits posts, so I tried to go with mostly (but not exclusively) lesser known songs this time. Mind you, "lesser known" in terms of Paul is relative expression. Still. Let's start with ye olde Beatles days, one of the songs that never were a single and didn't make it into the greatest hits collections and which I love dearly none the less, I've Just Seen A Face. It captures the rush of falling in love so welll, the breathlessness, and musically it's also one of the more obviously influenced by the skiffle John and Paul started out with in the 50s as teenagers. Considering this song more often than not shows up in Paul's concert repertoire through the decades, he seems to be particularly fond of it as well. Here he's singing it in the early 90s:
Falling in love is great, but staying in love is what's impressive. And tends to produce not so much songs. Paul was the last of the Beatles to get married, after spending most of the 60s in the way most rock stars did, with lots of one night stands and dramatic break ups. Nobody could have predicted then what followed, thirty years of happy monogamous marriage which even the most eager papparazzi weren't able to find evidence against, only ending when Linda died of cancer. The justly most famous Linda-inspired song is Maybe I'm Amazed (and while I'm not sure I agree with a critic who said Paul was never as openly vulnerable and honestly raw in another song, it certainly is remarkable for those qualities, and shows a more mature and rarely humble appreciation of love). But I also like the far less famous, quiet We Got Married from the late 80s, which you can listen to here:
It's from the album Flowers in the Dirt, which also has a charming song dedicated to his late father. Again, the most famous Jim-inspired song is another, When I'm 64, which was written as a present for Jim McCartney's 64th birthday. Put it there is less whimsical but full of affection and ease, and of course written by a man who was a father of four children himself at that time:
Danny Fields, not a Paul fan, nonetheless gives us a good glimpse of the McCartney parenting skills in action back when Fields was working with Linda on preparing a photo book in the mid-70s:
The book's art director was there, and in three hours we went through twenty-six boxes of slides, each holding 100 pictures. Stella and Mary amused themselves briefly by drawing with pens and markers and demanding a great deal of attention, most of which was supplied by Paul. Linda was looking at the pictures and, as if by prearrangement, left the parenting up to him. Amazingly, his attention to the work at hand was not distracted by his rambunctious two- and four-year-olds, who had the run of the room. He knew every picture, and often commented on the circumstances of their creation himself. It was Paul who organized the finding of the kids' shoes as they prepared to leave. 'Get your shoes on, you too mate, get your shoes on, where's your shoes?'
Or, as he put it to fellow rocker Chrissie Hynde when she interviewed him after Linda's death and asked why they didn't leave the kids at home when they toured:
We've met people who say, "Oh I like children, but I only like them when they get to be about three years old, when you can talk to them." Linda and I would look at each other and say, '"But don't you like them when they're little babies?" And they just gasp a little bit. I think it was just always such a mystery to us. I [come] from a very strong Liverpool family. And when Linda and I met, she was a single parent happening to get on with her life. So we just kind of pulled it together between us and just said, "Well you know, we'll just do it in a certain way." And we stuck to it. Just kept it very simple. We looked at issues and saw what seemed to be our instinctive reactions. Sometimes it can be against the grain. People will say, "No, you mustn't do that or no you can't do that." We said, "Well we're gonna do that and we hope we're right." And I think using our instincts like that, instead of what other people told us, was good because no one can tell you how to raise your kids. They are your kids. And this idea that babies are only good when they're three -- when James was really little I remember sitting on the sofa with him. He's just a baby and he was sitting with me like we were grown-ups and he was just sort of gaggling and going, "Ah goo, ah goo." So I just said, "Ah goo." Like agreeing with him in his language. He looked at me like, "You speak this language?" We're sitting there for hours just "ah goo." I just mimicked him because kids mimic their parents -- but its actually a lot of fun the other way around. Then I said, "Pa, Pa, Pa," and he'd just go, "Um, hum, Pa, Pa, Pa." They see you like using their words and it's oddly so exciting. From the second they were born to this day, I think you learn so much off kids -- if you're willing to be open and you don't close your mind and say, "Oh, I know how to be a parent." I always said to Lin that being a parent is the greatest ad-lib you're ever involved in. You make it up as you go along, you have no idea what the script is, you have no idea how these kids are going to turn out but if you're just with them a bit and listen to them a bit and let them talk to you instead of talking to them all the time, then natural things occur a bit more easily. We don't give them anything near the amount of credit they should have.
He seems to be doing well in the multiple grandfather department, too. In a recent profile of Stella McCartney by the New York Times, you get this passage: As Miller and Bailey clowned and laughed on the jump seat, Stella called her father to report our progress. Miller, who had already announced, “I want Granddad to sing ‘Back in the U.S.S.R.’!” then got on the phone, his freckled face beaming as he made his request. (Selenak: I hear you, Millar. Lots of people want Granddad to sing Back in in the USSR.(...) When the concert got going, Stella was on her feet, swaying and tossing her reddish blond hair and singing along. She has an excellent voice. She also inherited her father’s chubby-cheeked countenance and his self-armored ease. By contrast, Mary McCartney, Stella’s older sister and confidante, who came to the show with two of her sons and their young friends, seemed happy to remain seated most of the time. A photographer, Mary is darkly pretty and laid-back, but like her mother, Linda, she has no wish to master public life. Later, when I spoke to Laura Eastman Malcolm, Linda’s younger sister, she described a trip in the family’s station wagon: “Paul was driving, and Mary turns to me and in this disapproving tone says: ‘Do you like the fans? I’m sure you hate them!’ She was 8. Paul loves the fans. He can deal with them.” The implication is that Stella can also deal with public life. She says that, sure, the fans used to freak her out, too. “You’re like a little wall of defense,” she told me a few days later. “There’s dad, and you’re like this little wall in front, trying to spot who’s going to attack.” She laughed. “And then you grow up, and you realize he’s cool with it. He’s done it since he was 17.”
Indeed. He's also an old hand at the promoting game, which means when you ask the same question, you get repetitive answers, but as I said, go for the comedians, throw in some not routine questions, and it gets hilarious. Here he is being interviewed by Chris Evans (for Doctor Who fans: the first Mr. Billie Piper, small world, huh?) in 1997. Poor visual quality to begin with but correct at about 1 minute in, and some of the questions sent in by various British celebrities are a hoot. Watch out for the brotherly pimping of George's newest record while he's at it.
On to seriousness again. That interview was to promote the album Flaming Pie, and by then, the McCartney clan was very aware Linda was dying. Calico Songs on Flaming Pie is one of the last and very tender love songs for her. It's also, as I saw when surfing through YouTube, one of the most covered of the 90s McCartney songs, but here's the original:
What you also find on YouTube are unexpected gems like the original Band on the Run video. Which is remarkable because it's explicitly biographical and identifies the "band" in the title not with Wings, but with the Beatles. Bear in mind this was in 1973/74 which means the years of slagging it out in public and song were just barely over and reconciliation had begun, but everyone was still trying to distance themselves from the immediate Beatles past, so I'd love to know who made that video, which must have been okayed by Paul.
naraht, watch out for Unexpected!Brian Epstein in it.
My favourite description for that song, which features Paul's later Beatles and 70s penchant for melding disparate song together to a whole, hails from Peter Ames Carlin: LIsten and think hard about how inventive this 5 minute-plus rock suite really is. The modular structure; the abrupt shifts in tempo and sound; the way it's all constructed to fit a kind of impressionistic narrative about the joys, complications and endless opportunities for transcendence that go along with music and -- more than anything -- being in a rock 'n' roll band. Section by section, now: Stuck inside these four walls....lord, it's every dead-end room you've ever inhabited, at home, in school, at some crappy job you thought you'd never escape, and just when you least expect it, even at the height of fame. If I ever get out of here.... the guitars turn crunchy, the percussion cracks like a pistol shot as the dead-end becomes fame itself; e.g., straight-up memories of the Beatlemania days, the endless hours of being cooped up in dressing rooms while the world surged madly at their door. Then....that breathttaking symphonic leap up to the central verse and chorus of the song and the point where...The rain exploded with a mighty crash/as we fell into the sun.... and the band is back on the run, soaring above the clouds and far from the grasp of any number of antagonists: the sherrif, the county judge (who held a grudge), even the undertaker. The music soars. The voices call out ecstatically (Yeeeeah!) Four minutes in, and the album is way above the clouds.
"Being in a rock'n roll band". One of the consistant themes in articles about Paul McCartney is the question why he still does it: going on tour. Given he obviously doesn't need the money, and currently doesn't need to promote new albums, either (his latest was a nostalgia trip to the songs he grew up with which he doesn't play in concert). The answer to mem always seemed to be obvious: being in a rock'n roll band is what, other than composing, gives him the most joy. It's what he does, and he does it best, as you know if you've ever seen him perform live. Not on tv, where he can be ill at ease at times; live, on stage, doing three hours uninterrupted, something that makes decade younger people blanch. The lead guitarist of his current band who's been playing with him for almost a decade now, Rusty Anderson, gives a good description of what it's like to play with him these days here , though my favourite quote from Mr. Anderson on this matter hails from an earlier interview, here, where he comes up with this gem: Paul's funny. In a way, he's the private Englishman guy. In another way, he comes from the crazy, free love and drugs sixties, the exact opposite. It's cool, he's this weird combination of polar opposites.
And in that spirit,for my finale, here he's in the crazy sixties, on a certain rooftop, singing Get Back in what was to be the final performance of the Beatles in public:
And a relatively short time ago, on a rooftop yet again, singing Sing the Changes from his second Fireman album:
Let's finish with music and conversation. Paul, hanging out with Klaus Voormann for the later's 2008 record A Sideman's Journey. Klaus, who was the German student all those years ago who went to the Kaiserkeller and heard a British band he fell for, bringing his friend Astrid Kirchherr with him the next time, Klaus who later became a bass player in his own right and the artist who won the Emmy for his cover design of Revolver. Note for Germans: at the end, when Klaus speaks German, one still hears he's originally from Berlin - talk about enduring accents, given that the man spent most of his life abroad and then in Bavaria! Also I'm amused Paul can still recite (in German, and correctly) the phrase the police used when controlling everyone's IDs late in the Hamburg clubs.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/789107.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.