Paul McCartney: A man for the ages turns 80 years of age.

“I’m in awe of Paul McCartney…..He can do it all and he’s never let up…. He’s got the gift for melody (and) rhythm. He can play any instrument. He can scream and shout as good as anybody and he can sing the ballad as good as anybody…And his melodies are…. effortless.… I’m in awe of him….because he’s just so damn effortless….Just everything and anything that comes out of his mouth is just framed in a melody.”         Bob Dylan (Rolling Stone Magazine, 2007).

As Dylan’s quote suggests, one needs a collage of adjectives to describe this multi-faceted musician.   He remains known first and foremost as a former Beatle, though the group disbanded when Paul McCartney was just 27 years-old.  Time marches on; Paul turns 80 on the 18^th of June.

Effortlessness.

James Paul McCartney exudes a sense of effortless along with a concomitant well-spring of grace.  He has handled the madness of overwhelming fame and a wealth of riches as well as anyone possible could.  Compare Elvis, Michael Jackson or an array of Hollywood personalities.  Nicknamed ‘Macca’ when a young, unknown middle-class Liverpudlian, he would be knighted by the Queen of England in 1997 for ‘services to music’.  

Sir Paul wears his title well, consistently displaying British composure and patience—the essence of grace—when fielding redundant, ad infinitum questions about the Beatles, responding with polite quips that sound neither irritated nor hackneyed.

Destined.

Even the ultra-talented need a break to reach the top.   Oblivion proves all too common for most artists.  Providence linked two young lads from Liverpool, their names coupled forever as the Lennon & McCartney song-writing, song-singing duo that powered the Beatles to unparalleled fame.  

Their axis confirmed the maxim that the best partnerships combine dissimilar talents.  Lennon, an edge-walking iconoclast and high-wire act needed to be reeled in; the tighter wound, grounded and disciplined McCartney needed slack.  Together, their lines proved taut and balanced.  

Voice.

Fate delivered two different yet complimentary vocal powers to the dynamic duo, which blended naturally in harmony.  Lennon’s high baritone contrasted with Paul’s silky voice, which broadened the band’s vocal variety.   Their harmonic voices chorused songs in different, but blended keys as heard in their duets ranging from the balladic If I Fell, to the celebratory Drive My Car.

Paul sang in a higher-pitched tenor with a mellifluous voice that proved a natural as a romantic balladeer.  His vocal range spanned up to four octaves that gave him a versatility to cover bluesy tunes to anthems, with power to spare to belt out straight rockers.

Musicianship.

McCartney manned the bass guitar when the Beatles’ neophyte bassist quit the band.   John and George refused to play the backing instrument so Paul took it up, which proved good fortune for the fledgling group.  Instead of plucking the bass in a pedestrian backbeat manner, ‘Macca’ gamboled the strings of his violin-shaped Hofner with panache, playing bouncy, creative rhythms that bolstered the group’s sound. His swampy bass line in Lennon’s Come Together or his fuzz bass in Harrison’s Think for Yourself, shows how collaborative the Beatles were for another’s song.  Paul’s bass and Ringo’s rock-solid drumming bedrocked the beat in Beatles’ music.

It was not always George’s lead guitar heard on Beatles tunes; McCartney proved more than capable as his ringing rifts reverberated in Taxman, Back in the USSR and Good Morning.  His acoustic pickings carry the tune in Blackbird, Mother’s Nature’s Son and in solo tunes in Calico Skies and Long Tailed Winter Bird. 

Paul’s bouncy finger-work on the keyboard work can be heard in his upbeat solo jam entitled 1985; or with the Beatles in Martha My Dear, or solemnly when playing piano on Let It Be or You Never Give Me Your Money.

The one-time Beatle even banged the drums in the Ballad of John and Yoko.  When asked if Ringo was the best rock ‘n roll drummer, Lennon quipped that ‘Ringo wasn’t even best drummer in the Beatles’. 

McCartney played all the instruments in his first solo album released in 1970, and remained the ultimate utility man playing whatever instrument suited his fancy throughout his musical career.  He repeated the musical feat playing as a ‘one man band’ in McCartney III released in 2020:

“I was living lockdown life on my farm with my family and I would go to my studio every day,” McCartney said in a statement.  He started each day by recording a particular instrument, and gradually layered it all together.  The album lists the following instruments:  electric and acoustic guitars, bass guitar, double bass, acoustic piano, harpsichord, mellotron, harmonium, Fender Rhodes, synthesizers, Wurlitzer electric piano, drums, percussion, recorder, producer.

Melodic.

In the case of Jacobellis v Ohio, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart wrote about the difficulty of trying to define illegal pornography, finally conceding: “I know it when I see it.”

Describing what makes good melody can be just as difficult, but it can be said:  “We know it when we hear it.”   McCartney has sold more records than anyone in history, based in large measure for his melodic gifts.

In his excellent article, Long Play: The Charmed Lives of Paul McCartney (New Yorker, April 18, 2016), Adam Gopnik wrote:

“A genius for melody is a strange, surprisingly isolated talent, and doesn’t have much to do with a broader musical gift for composition; Mozart certainly had it, Beethoven not so much. Irving Berlin could barely play the piano and when he did it was only in a single key (F-sharp sharp major: all the black keys), and yet he wrote hundreds of haunting tunes….André Previn, who could do anything musically as a pianist and a conductor, wrote scarcely a single memorable melody…. McCartney……has the gift (of melody) in absurd abundance.

“Beatles songs…sometimes….change from verse to chorus, to mark a change from affirmation to melancholy, as in “The Fool on the Hill”; sometimes it’s in the middle of a phrase, as in “Penny Lane,” to capture a mood of mixed sun and showers.  These are things that trained composers do by rote; McCartney did them by feel.”

The Beatles’ Here, There and Everywhere and I Will, and McCartney’s solo songs Dear Boy and Back Seat of My Car from the Ram album provide just a few examples.

Lyricist.

“Macca” can never escape The Beatles, though the band’s breakup occurred some two-thirds of Sir Paul’s life ago.  In the meantime, Lennon’s martyrdom created a penumbra over McCartney’s contribution to the Beatles.   If day-to-day living dulls one’s luster, death tends to enhance it. 

Lennon adherents found him edgier, and criticized some of McCartney’s work as being ‘too’ commercial citing occasional lapses into Silly Love Songs, which sold lots of records, but to some remains a ‘silly song’ for an iconic rock and roller.

Yet, during the Fab Four’s high-water mark beginning in the mid-1960s, many viewed Paul’s emergence as the virtuoso of the group.   He most certainly pushed the others to continue the amazing pace of their creative arc until they all opted to Let it Be as it were.

John revealed his inner self in his music and his life. Conversely, one could never imagine McCartney figuratively baring an inside view of himself, and certainly not literally as Lennon did on his nude picture with Yoko on the album cover of Two Virgins.

As written in The Generic Genius of Paul McCartney, the major compositional difference between the former music partners is that “Paul McCartney is now the way that he was Paul McCartney ten years ago, or thirty, generically exhorting listeners to action or reminding them of glory of love or sketching the outlines of a less pleasant emotion (fear, sadness, unregulated anger) without any real specifics.  On album after album, McCartney has been content to be a rock star seen from the outside rather than an artist seen from the inside.”  

Obla Di Obla Dab aside, Paul’s wordsmithery in Eleanor Rigby (a three verse narrative), For No One, Yesterday, Hey Jude, Blackbird certainly stand near par with John’s lyrical compositions.  His solo songs such as Maybe I’m Amazed and With a Little Luck were right on the mark.

In the end, comparisons of the two prove fruitless.  The duo missed each other’s harmony and balancing input.  Carrying the weight of creation alone proves difficult, even for someone as multi-talented as Paul McCartney.  His Back to the Egg album, with a four star front side and two star flip side, proves that.  

Nonetheless, over his 60-year career, this ‘effortless’ erstwhile Beatle remained creative and productive, providing listening pleasure for so many when the needle slid into his albums’ grooves. Striving for perfection–not perfection itself–remains perhaps Sir Paul’s most significant achievement.

Driven.

“Success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.”  Thomas Edison.   

When McCartney coaxed, cajoled and otherwise pushed his fame-worn mates to work up still another album at the end of their reign, a weary Lennon quipped:  “Oh, I get it.  You need a job.”   One could say that he found one.  Since the breakup, the persistent ex-Beatle generated a wealth of material, which includes:

• 26 studio albums;
• four compilation albums;
• nine live albums;
• 37 video albums;
• two extended plays;
• 111 singles;
• seven classical albums;
• five ectronica albums;
• 17 box sets;
• 79 music videos

The week before his 80th birthday, James Paul McCartney performed two live concerts at sold-out stadiums. It must be grand to love one’s work and continue to produce long after most of advancing age slowly trotted out to pasture.

Fortune.

The Beatlemania rocket to stratospheric fame and corresponding riches could have only occurred when the Beatles made the scene in the 1960’s.  A reincarnation of a similarly talented group could never harvest comparable record sales in today’s digital world with ‘free’ music available via satellite radio, Spotify and Pandora.  

Sir Paul’s reported net worth totals $1.2 billion, give or take $ 100 million.  Much of that fortune was gained (and retained) due to Sir Paul’s business acumen, which became manifest with his formation of MPL Communications in 1969. 

One of the world’s largest privately owned music publishers, MPL acquired other publishing companies, and now owns a range of copyrighted material covering nearly 100 years.  In addition, McCartney reached an accord with Sony/ATV Music Publishing regarding Beatles’ songs. That settlement provides for a 56 year “claw-back” of Paul’s ownership interests in Beatles music, beginning in 2018 with Love Me Do (released in 1962), and running yearly thereafter through 2026 on the 56th anniversary of the release date of the last Beatle song—the Long and Winding Road.  Indeed.

‘Macca’ found fortune when a tsunami tidal wave of fame came his way, but it took an expert to hang ten as long and consistently as Sir Paul has.  It all began with a serendipitous meeting with John Lennon of which Paul said:  “All these small coincidences had to happen to make the Beatles happen, and it does feel like some kind of magic. It’s one of the wonderful lessons about saying yes when life presents these opportunities to you. You never know where they might lead.”

The End.

The Abbey Road album climaxes with song entitled The End, with Ringo’s thundering drum solo followed by each of the others exchanging crisp, energetic guitar licks.  No one knows what ‘the end’ of real life holds for anyone, though it certainly will not be rollicking.  Yet, one suspects that Sir James Paul McCartney will live a long while yet, perhaps into his mid 90’s, with his mental faculties intact, and that he dies in his sleep with a lilting melody in his head.