You see, as a Beatles fan, I fall more in to the "John" group than the "Weenie Paul" group. John was always the rocker of the two; Paul always seemed more rigid, more structured. Even when Paul was trying to rock, it always seemed like he was doing just that: trying, and just a little too hard. Rocking came naturally for John.
But I have to give credit where credit is due: Paul is pretty good. And that hurts to say.
As my loyal readership of 9 can attest, I hold silly grudges for ridiculous amounts of time. Like when that stoner sandwich artist yelled at me at Jimmy Johns 6 years ago...that whole organization can go to hell. I'm not entirely sure when my grudge against Paul took hold but I do know that it was some point in my childhood. I guess it all comes back to the grade school lunchroom mentality: you have to pick an absolute favorite and stick with it through hell and back. It's why I can still convince myself that Carlton Fisk was a better baseball player than Ryne Sandberg even though my brain tells me otherwise.
To be clear, Paul McCartney is not better than John Lennon. I am willing, however, to say that Paul was a fairly important member of The Beatles. I will even go as far to say that he is one of the top two most important members of The Beatles. He may have even been more talented. Whatever. He'll just never be as cool.
All of this soul searching happened because I was lucky enough to attend the Paul McCartney concert last night at Wrigley Field with my wife and my...let me get this right: Step-Mother-in-Law? Is that a thing? Krishni's step-mother. Holly Hannah was that a good show!
He ripped through 5 decades of music, sticking mostly to the Beatles (Yay!) while mixing in some Wings songs (Boooo!) and some more recent stuff (Meh). His 37 (!) song set list, by the numbers:
Beatles Songs: 23
Good Beatles Songs: 18
Wings Songs: 8
Good Wings Songs: 1
Middle-aged, shrieking women in attendance: 2,456,890 (citation needed)
It was an excellent show. He paid nice tributes to John, George and Jimi Hendrix and, oddly, he never once mentioned the name "Ringo". He looked good for his age (69):
And was ably backed by a pretty good touring band. Also, I'm pretty sure his guitarist was named "Larry Busey":
Incidentally, that drummer you see in the background is named Abe Laboriel, Jr. and he is awesome. I never thought you could find a drummer goofier than Ringo but that guy did it all. Super-fun drummer with unique fills, made orgasm faces while he, uh, beat the skins, and at one point, during the "Dance Tonight" number, stood up behind Paul and did the Macarena. I want to get hammered with this guy.
********************
I've always thought that John was the more important Beatle at the beginning but Paul was the dominant one at the end. Yoko gets an unfair amount of blame for breaking up The Beatles because what it really came down to was two otherworldly talents and egos colliding, each trying to mold and shape the band into wildly different forms. When the Beatles broke up, there was so much animosity within the band I figured everyone just kind of hated each other for a long time afterwards. I was shocked to learn only recently that John and Paul jammed quite a bit together after the break-up. In fact, they were watching Saturday Night Live together in 1976 when Lorne Michaels famously offered The Beatles a check for $3,000 to get back together on the show ("You divide it up any way you want. If you want to give less to Ringo, that's up to you.")
Obviously, time heals all wounds. Last night at Wrigley, Paul mugged for the crowd an awful lot. Krishni called it some serious "Rex Manning-Style" preening.
Obviously, time heals all wounds. Last night at Wrigley, Paul mugged for the crowd an awful lot. Krishni called it some serious "Rex Manning-Style" preening.
Paul's Brother from another Mother
Maybe Paul has earned that type of mugging. He is the only living Beatle that, you know, wrote songs and stuff*. And last night his tributes to John and George were lovely. I can confidently say that Paul's public persona is no longer that of the micromanaging asshole.
That's a compliment, right?
*Yes, yes, I know Ringo wrote two songs. But one was Octopus's Garden and the other can only be described as a "ho-down" song. Yee-ha.
********************
If you care, you can find the entire set list here.
