Paul McCartney is 80. Really. A man who helped invent youth culture and the generation gap is now an octogenarian. And he’s still making decent albums and touring.
Who is the greatest, Lennon or McCartney? It’s almost a debate not worth having. The world was lucky that two such magnificent song writers coincided in the same city at the same time; together they would transform music and popular culture and leave us with songs that continue to defy time and span generations.
But if you push me – like really push me on this impossible question – I’m coming down on the side of Macca. Lennon was cooler, funnier, wilder and, in the Beatles era at least, arguably the more innovative. He died younger (exactly half Paul’s age now) in tragic and violent circumstances and that helped his legend. But McCartney just had tunes, he constructed melodies from nowhere that you felt had always been there – famously, even he thought the tune he woke up singing that became Yesterday was someone else’s, but he couldn’t remember who. There is an amazing sequence in the Get Back movie where they are struggling for material and he literally sits down and writes three timeless classics – Let It Be, The Long and Winding Road and Golden Slumbers in like a day. Their back catalogues are a close run thing, but among Paul’s greatest Beatles moments are many of music’s: Eleanor Rigby, Fool on The Hill, Hey Jude, For No-one, Get Back, Paperback Writer, She’s Leaving Home, Blackbird, Penny Lane, Here There and Everywhere, Back In The USSR are all his. And while much is made of the Lennon-McCartney partnership and the whole band chipped in to the process, they generally wrote solo after their earliest material. All those classics are Paul McCartney’s work.
There’s a view in some circles that Lennon’s post-Beatles output is better: I disagree. He wrote some absolute belters, the Imagine album is magnificent and Working Class Hero, Jealous Guy and Give Peace A Chance are all great. I like his last album, Double Fantasy, more than the critics who hastily revised their opinions after his death. And his death unquestionably impacts this debate – Paul continued to make records for another 40 years, so has much more material. People can point to the frog chorus and some of his more forgettable tunes in that period, but there’s a great body of McCartney work after the Beatles. The Ram album (also widely criticised at the time) has come to be seen as the template for indie pop, Live and Let Die is by far the best Bond theme and Band On The Run, Jet and Silly Love Songs are great. Calico Skies is as lovely a love song as you will ever hear. Maybe I’m Amazed is as good as anything he ever wrote. And if you want innvovation, have a listen to his experimental recordings as part of The Fireman. His collaborations with Elvis Costello and to a degree Michael Jackson unearthed some gems and recent material like Egypt Station and McCartney III are worthy of anything else in his canon. People can diss Mull of Kintyre and Ebony and Ivory if they wish, but they were hugely popular. Like I say, one thing Paul has always had is tunes.
McCartney the man passes the ‘would go for a pint with’ test too. He stayed in the UK to pay his taxes, sent his kids to local comps and has always come over as down to earth and essentially decent. We might have seen him closing one too many national jamborees, but that’s because he remains the godfather of modern British pop. When we lose him, his genius will be celebrated, indeed it is encouraging to see it increasingly celebrated now.
Without Paul McCartney, we would not have modern pop music as it is. So many of the tropes, both musical and behavioural, were created by the Beatles. For him to still be going strong at 80, still putting out fine and memorable tunes, is a tribute to a generational talent. Lennon was a generational talent too, Harrison is maybe the most underrated songwriter ever and Ringo was a fabulous drummer, We were lucky to have them all – but if I choose one, then with difficulty, I choose Paul.
Rory writes 