Paul McCartney disses the establishment…
I love Paul McCartney because, for a man who is theoretically one of the coolest human beings who has ever lived, he’s also kind of… uncool?
You’ll see what I mean if you check out this video of Paul and his band rehearsing for the opening ceremony of the Olympics (at the risk of spoiling it, after a verse and a chorus, somebody ‘pulls the plug’ in an ironic reenactment of the recent incident at Springsteen’s Hyde Park concert). Don’t get me wrong – I LOVE the fact that he’s done it (I was ranting about the whole affair myself only the other day), and the moment when the band act surprised at the power disappearing is really quite endearing, if strangely awkward. But it does strike me as a strangely adolescent sort of response when you consider McCartney’s stature. It’s the kind of thing a teenager might do to piss off their parents, you know? Yeah. You wanna ground me? Take away my pocket money? Fine. But I’m SO going to publish an ironic video about it on YouTube, and there’s nothing you can do about it and I wish I’d never been born (etc).
The Beatles are and always will be legends, but these days Paul McCartney has morphed wonderfully into a sort of cuddly, uncool mirror-image of his younger trend-setting self, a bit like your grandad wearing Nike Airs. And I personally think that’s quite nice.
I know there are certain Beatles ‘fans’ out there – the crazy Lennonists – who despise everything that Macca represents, calling him a sell-out and insisting that just because he doesn’t sit in bed all day protesting about world peace he’s somehow not a proper musician. But I think that’s poppycock. Macca is a national treasure and, as long as keeps on doing funny little quirky things like this, he will remain so for a long time.