Paul McCartney

Solitary and withdrawn, with nothing to occupy me save my hopeless but, as far as I am concerned, indispensable little investigations, that is how I live; yet in my distant isolation I have not lost sight of my people, news often penetrates to me, and now and then I even let news of myself reach them.
(Franz Kafka trans. Willa & Edwin Muir, Investigations of a Dog)

I’m afraid I already found McCartney tedious even before my interest in rock music began to wane. I don’t have the technical expertise to comment on his competence per se, but I honestly can’t think of anything of his that I found interesting after the break-up of the Beatles. I generally agree with the cynical but memorable observation that the Beatles seem to be dying in the wrong order. Bad news for Ringo, I should think.

I always had the impression that money was top of McCartney’s agenda. Nothing particularly bad about that: “We’re only in it for the money” was a not entirely ironic album title by an altogether more interesting rock musician. But McCartney seems to lack the genuine interest in music that other commercially-motivated artists have. I seem to remember Ravi Shankar commenting on George Harrison’s deep and sincere interest in Indian classical music. Since the other three Beatles also went to Shankar for enlightenment we must assume he was less favourably impressed by their attitude.

I have come across some of McCartney’s “compositions” such as Standing Stone, Liverpool Oratorio and Ecce Cor Meum and found very little to like about them. But then, a) I didn’t expect to like them given my views on his pop work and, b) I tend not to like such stuff: I’d much rather listen to Soft Machine Six than to any of Karl Jenkins’s “classical” pieces and, when I went to the Royal Festival Hall performance of Chick Corea’s Piano Concerto, whilst I found the concerto tolerable, I was happier in the second part of the concert when he got down to what he’s really good at with his jazz ensemble.

The thing is, though, there has been no innovation in pop or rock music since the early seventies. Progressive rock took the rock template about as far as it could be taken. Everything that followed was just a variation on an existing style. John Lennon, in one of his very few perceptive comments, accurately described glam rock as “rockabilly with lipstick” (or something like that). And punk was nothing but a return to the demotic ethos of the skiffle days (anyone can play, you don’t actually have to be any good, attitude and enthusiasm matter over ability, blah, blah, woof woof.)

As to the Beatles, I think it’s fair to say they owe a large part of their reputation to George Martin, who gave their records a sophistication that they wouldn’t otherwise have had. Personally, I think he could have legitimately claimed a co-writer’s credit on a lot of their work. Just imagine what Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band would have sounded like without his input.

Tags: beatles, chick corea, eleanor rigby, george harrison, george martin, jazz, john lennon, karl jenkins, paul mccartney, pop, ravi shankar, ringo starr, rock, sergeant pepper