I remember when rock was young,
as Elton John sang, so young that no one could even imagine a rock star being
over the age of 30. The very thought of someone that old still pumping out power
chords onstage would have seemed ludicrous to my generation. Speaking of “My Generation,” the
Who’s lyric “I hope I die before I get old” was our creed; and then, to the consternation
of us all, we got older, and today some of those early rockers (at least those
who didn’t die before they got old) are
still playing sold-out tours – like Sir Paul McCartney.
Macca needs – or should need – no
introduction to anyone who hasn’t been in a coma for the last fifty years. In
an industry in which careers come and go like shooting stars, the 72-year-old
has worked steadily for half a century and is currently on
tour again, putting on a nearly three-hour, 38-song show that covers hits
from his Beatles, Wings, and solo eras. What has sustained his success through those
decades, and what keeps him recording and rocking out at an age at which many men
are riding chair lifts,
is his relentless work ethic and creative urge.
McCartney’s manager Scott Rodger has
called him the hardest working artist he’s ever met, a reputation
Paul earned while still a Beatle. Journalist Rip Rense wrote, of the Beatles’
legendary Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts
Club Band album, that
absent McCartney’s obsessive work ethic,
there would have been no Pepper
at all. Paul was the guy pushing the others to come to the studio every day,
especially John, who probably would otherwise have been content to stay home,
tripping on LSD. Lennon acknowledged –complained, really – that Paul rang him
up at home incessantly, exhorting him to come to the studio and compose, sing,
record.
After the history-making group
broke up, it would have been easy, or certainly tempting, for McCartney and his
bandmates to sit back and rest on their laurels. Moving forward with solo
projects must have been a daunting prospect; after all, how do you top being a
Beatle? But Paul embraced the challenge and launched into solo work – a
self-titled album for which he wrote all the songs and performed all the
instruments and vocals (with some contributions from wife Linda), and which was
released even before the Beatles’ final album.
As it happens, I recently finished
reading Man on the Run: Paul McCartney in the 1970s
by Tom Doyle, published late last year. Numerous times throughout the book,
Doyle notes how obsessively driven McCartney was/is to work, create, rehearse,
move forward. He quotes session musician Laurence Juber as saying, “It was hard
to get Paul not to work… It took a lot for Paul to call the session off and
say, ‘I just don’t feel up to it.’” McCartney himself barely even views it as
work: “I like to record and not have to feel like it’s too much work. I hate to
think, ‘I’m going to work now… I’m going to grind out some music.’”
In a Japanese jail after Customs
caught him entering the country with a bag of marijuana, Paul was still
thinking about work, according to Doyle. Even the day of John Lennon’s murder,
a shocked McCartney, never very good at openly expressing his emotions, went to
the studio for a scheduled session, explaining later to the curious press that “I
have hidden myself in my work today.” It was only afterward, at home, that Paul
allowed himself to break down.
McCartney’s commitment to work and
creativity led him to release two dozen post-Beatles pop-rock albums (among
other musical projects) and to amass a jaw-dropping pile of awards and
achievements best summed up by his Guinness
World Records title, “the Most Successful Composer and Recording Artist
of All Time.”
(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 7/31/14)
