The former Beatle has aged with dignity – but not too much of it – and 60 years after his first hit will be headlining Glastonbury
Photograph: Jane Bown/The ObserverPhotograph: Jane Bown/The Observerthat sums up the taken-for-granted brilliance of Paul McCartney. It’s another day in Twickenham studios, where McCartney is single-handedly wrestling the Beatles into recording a new album. John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr are at best semi-detached but McCartney is grafting away, writing from scratch songs good enough to make them believe in the band again.
, and embarked on yet another stadium tour. Next weekend he will headline Glastonbury for the second time, seven days after his 80Born in Liverpool in 1942, Jameslost his mother, Mary, when he was 14 – an experience that strengthened his bond with the similarly bereaved John Lennon. In 1957 McCartney joined Lennon’s skiffle band the Quarrymen, who evolved into the Beatles three years later.
It wasn’t easy to move on, but it is easy to forget just how unfashionable McCartney once was. After the Beatles imploded, Lennon did a great job of talking up his contribution and talking down Paul’s, and this lopsided view solidified with his murder in 1980.
McCartney’s emotional generosity defines his songwriting. While Lennon usually wrote in the first person, McCartney’s interest in other people and the quiet magic of everyday life is audible in the avuncular embrace of Hey Jude, the bustling street life of Penny Lane and the profound empathy of Eleanor Rigby. Lennon’s sense of humour was barbed and cryptic; McCartney’s beckons you into the joke.
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