Profile
Macca closes in on eighty Aubrey Malone chronicles the life and times of Paul McCartney, the Peter Pan of Pop When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now, Will you still need me Will you still feed me, When I’m 64. It was way back in 1967 when Paul McCartney wrote these words. He was 25 then. 64 must have seemed ancient to him. Now it probably sounds like a whippersnapper. He will be eighty on June 18. John Lennon died at 40 in 1980 so it’s double figures on his old buddy. He hasn’t lost his hair but it’s a bit snowier. ‘Will you still feed me?’ I’m sure someone will. Paul could afford to have his dinner flown in from China any day of the week with all the money he has. His fortune was estimated at £730 million in 2015. Does he look 80? Okay, so he’s not going to be asked for an ID card to get a pint in a pub but he still has that baby face. What’s his secret - a relaxed temperament? Affability? An unwillingness to get ruffled no matter how many occasions inform against him? Maybe the surprise is that he’s still around at all after all. Eighty isn’t young for anyone, least of all someone who’s been stomping across the world for the past six decades. He may not have smoked as much pot as Bob Dylan, or drunk as much whiskey as any of the Rolling Stones but neither has he lived like a monk.
Paul was always the ‘nice’ Beatle, the most uncomplicated one. He never had Lennon’s street cred. If you look at interviews of the Fab Four today you’ll see Lennon being contentious, Ringo pulling faces, George looking intense and Paul well Paul being just there. He’s the type of guy you could bring home to your mother. In fact you could bring ‘Sir’ Paul home to the Queen Mother. It probably comes as no surprise to us to learn he sang in a church choir as a boy. The debates still go on about who was the real genius of the Beatles. Who was the best songwriter? Get out your notepads and compute whether Lennon or McCartney wrote the most Number 1s. Who had the most covers made of their compositions? (I believe there have been over 2000 of Yesterday - a McCartney song – so that ends that debate.). Is this what it’s about or does it go deeper? I think of Paul as a pop star and John as a
rock one. John looked more the business in the leather, didn’t he? Check out any footage of that time and you will see what I mean. Their first manager Brian Epstein cleaned them up just as if Colonel Parker cleaned Elvis Presley up. ‘Elvis died after he came out of the army,’ Lennon said. Maybe a bit of Lennon died after Epstein got hold of him. The Cavern was riotous. That to me was real Beatlemania. When they got into their smart suits and became uniform mop heads, they turned into the world’s first boyband. Especially with those banal lyrics about wanting to hold hands and telling us, all we needed was love. Later came the maturity with songs like Norwegian Wood, She’s Leaving Home, Eleanor Rigby, Lady Madonna, Hey Jude, etc. etc. By then the group that caused teenage girls to faint had all but disappeared. It must have been sad for Elvis to watch them on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1966. He Senior Times l March - April 2022 l www.seniortimes.ie 5
