Last night on PBS' Great Performances: "Paul McCartney: Chaos and Creation at Abbey Road"
And you know I'm not a great Beatles fan. Check out my previous entries on music, for crying out loud, as much as I recognize their importance in setting the pillars of whatever we define today as "rock and roll" (and more indirectly showing us the path to stardom frenzy and celeb obsession), clearly the Liverpoolians and I ... u-uh. Not happening.
But then, last night happened. It's amazing how (some) good singers/performers improve with age and end up in greatness, like ... balsamic vinegar. Move it to increasingly smaller barrels and its texture and body and taste will skyrocket. Ageing vocalists may lose stamina, range and pitch but, oh, the SOUL they gain, in exchange for that. It's like Faust's pact, only reversed. They gain a soul (in their voice) instead of losing it.
So, Sir Paul has it. His voice, at times shaky, was cutting deep, incredibly moving, chromatic, versatile.
He showed how back in the day they used to overlap layers of recording to build a track, combining 3 tracks on a 4th.
He mesmerized the audience with a blues version of Lady Madonna, ***** !
And his guitar playing? Forget it. I never thought I'd write this, but Paul McCartney can play a mean-ass blues guitar (now, I don't know what James Blood Ulmer would say about it, I on my part was truly impressed)
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