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Yesterday man has a fab future

McCartney's Olympic performance may not have been his best but it's far too soon to write him off, says Barry Egan

By Barry Egan

Sunday August 05 2012

JUNE 2003. A bar in Munich. Paul McCartney is telling me a joke. "I can't believe I'm telling you this," begins the writer of such tender classics as Let It Be, Hey Jude and Yesterday.

"This guy walks into a pub. He's having a drink when he notices that the barman has a ferret on the bar. That's a bit unusual, he thinks, a ferret on the bar. 'That ferret, you see, gives the best bl** job in the whole world,' says the barman. 'Actually, I've got a couple more round the back. I'm selling them.'

"'I'll buy it off you,' he tells the barman and goes home to his wife.

"'You're a bit late home from the pub,' she says before spotting the creature under his arm. 'What's that doing in the house?'

"'It's a ferret. I've just bought it,' he says.

"'What do you me want me to do with that?' she asks.

"'Teach it to cook and f**k off'."

I suspect that is McCartney's attitude to some of the malicious media attacks on him in the aftermath of his (admittedly shaky) performance at the Olympics opening ceremony last weekend. Feck off.

The above also illustrates that the ex-Beatle has a sense of humour.

Somehow I doubt he is losing sleep reading that the Mail says his voice is shot and he is now embarrassing himself and should pack up his tent for good.

He has been written off before. He relishes reminding journalists how New York Times critic Richard Goldstein lambasted Sgt Pepper, one of the greatest collections of songs ever set to vinyl.

"We weren't worrying," McCartney once told me, "about what the pundits said."

I can't imagine he is worrying now. Nor will he be overly upset by the opinion of uniformed dolt Tony Hadley of Spandau fecking Ballet, who said he would have preferred to see One Direction play at the opening ceremony of the Olympics.

His voice clearly is not what it was, but that hardly means McCartney's career has reached the end of the long and winding road.

Bob Dylan's voice has been going for years (indeed his Live Aid performance with Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood in July 1985 was possibly the shakiest performance anyone has ever watched Dylan do) but no one has ever said Dylan should hang up his cowboy hat.

McCartney at 70 is perhaps not as cool as he thinks he is in his head, but, having seen him a good few times in concert over the years, it was just an off-night for him. But that doesn't mean that the man whose songs will echo down the ages is set for the nursing home.

I think certain critics think of McCartney as an easy target because of the perception of him as the emollient Mr Showbiz who wrote all the nice songs in the Beatles. Lest we forget he wrote Helter Skelter. "Charles Manson interpreted that Helter Skelter was something to to with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse," he once said.

"I was using the symbol of a helter skelter as a ride from the top to the bottom -- the rise and fall of the Roman Empire -- and this was the fall, the demise, the going down."

McCartney also wrote Give Ireland Back To The Irish in 1972. Neither of these songs are likely to be covered by One Direction any time soon.

It is ageist to suggest McCartney should stop at 70.

I am looking forward to a bit of age-appropriate and dark, self- analysis along with some introspective gloom as he gets older; sitting at home, examining all his yesterdays. Like the old blues singers of the Mississippi delta, who seem to get better as they age, I am looking forward to hearing what McCartney has to say about the world in his next few albums.

Every time I've met him over the years, he has always exuded that almost immature, boyish charm.

I suspect he never acts his age or possibly even thinks of himself as getting on a bit. He's like that Francis Bacon quote: "I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am."

All together now: let Paul be.

- Barry Egan