{"id":12175,"date":"2017-10-01T00:11:56","date_gmt":"2017-10-01T07:11:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/?p=12175"},"modified":"2017-11-03T12:54:47","modified_gmt":"2017-11-03T19:54:47","slug":"paul-and-me-and-ocean-beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/paul-and-me-and-ocean-beach\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul and Me (and Ocean Beach)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just finished Philip Norman\u2019s 818-page Paul McCartney The Life<\/em> and am starting to feel that my own life might have a serious deficiency insofar as excitement is concerned. And accomplishment, too. Yeah, and money. But there\u2019s one thing I have that Paul McCartney doesn\u2019t have and never will, no matter how hard he tries… and if I ever figure out what that one thing is, I promise you\u2019ll be among the first to know.<\/p>\n

In the meantime I\u2019m reminded of Andrew Weil\u2019s suggestion in The Natural Mind<\/em> that one should strive to identify similarities in objects and ideas rather than differences. In employing this more positive attitude, I am confronted with the revelation that Paul McCartney and I are indeed sharing some sort of cosmic bond:<\/p>\n

– He appears on many, many record albums. I own many, many record albums on which he appears.
\n– We both lost our mothers when we were quite young (although I had five more years with my mom than he had with his).
\n– Each of us had brothers (even though I had three and he only had one).
\n– As a teenager, Paul enjoyed the \u201cladies of the night\u201d in Hamburg. I enjoyed the ladies in Playboy<\/em> (and without getting the clap).
\n– Paul had an unfortunate, brief marriage to a psycho bitch. Aw, don\u2019t get me started…<\/p>\n

So even as the hairs on my arms continue to tingle, I realize Paul McCartney The Life<\/em> is such a breezy read for a book of such heft primarily because so much of the time it was as if I were reading about myself. The fact that I even had to pay for my copy of the book sorta pisses me off. Author Philip Norman deserves a piece of my mind; my attorneys shall be consulted.<\/p>\n

Anyway, since I pretty much lived the whole thing myself, there weren\u2019t a heck of a lot of surprises in the book. I needed to detach myself again and again in order to appreciate them. The first was a biggie, though, and right there in the foreward: Norman does some apologizing for his unwarranted, nasty treatment of me\u2013I mean Paul\u2013in his authoritative Beatles saga, Shout! The Beatles in their Generation<\/em>, first published in 1981. That pretty much tattoos a sizable asterisk on the legendary status of Shout!<\/em> as the finest Beatles biography yet written (although I\u2019ve always carried a torch for Hunter Davies\u2019 The Beatles<\/em>, which was among the first published and has been updated several times, in addition to the fact that it was entirely authorized from the start, and superbly written).<\/p>\n

The \u201cPaul is dead\u201d fad of \u201969-\u201970 is duly reported, but there is no mention of the competing popular fraud, which claimed that it was John, George, and Ringo who had all perished in a car crash and were replaced by some talented look-alikes around the time of Sgt. Pepper<\/em>. That Norman seemingly has no knowledge of this bizarre urban legend may be attributed to the fact that I just now made it up. But just you wait.<\/p>\n

Sure, the British public detested the Paul-directed Magical Mystery Tour<\/em> when it was first presented in December 1967 on British television in black and white and later rerun in color. I didn\u2019t catch up with it until around seven years later and was thrilled. Sure, it\u2019s scatterbrained, silly, and amateurish, but the songs are great and by gum, it\u2019s the Beatles! No, I\u2019ll never say the group wasn\u2019t immune from dropping some squishers on the sidewalk from time to time\u2013\u201cRevolution 9,\u201d \u201cYou Know My Name, Look Up The Number,\u201d \u201cMatchbox,\u201d and pretty much anything involving Yoko or Linda… but their track record is unmatched. Paul is adequately represented in my own scrupulously deliberated list of Five Favorite Beatles Songs (which I posed to you and about which haven\u2019t heard diddly from you a month later\u2013c\u2019mon, boys and girls! Get with the program!)<\/p>\n

(Okay, for the record and for your edification\u2013and remember, this ain\u2019t to start any wars, it\u2019s just my painfully cut, five-faceted jewel\u2013in chronological order. My choices: \u201cPlease Please Me,\u201d \u201cYesterday,\u201d \u201cPenny Lane,\u201d \u201cAll You Need Is Love,\u201d and \u201cHere Comes the Sun.\u201d I\u2019ve gotta give Macca a special commendation for his harmony in the chorus of the fourth one\u2013outta nowhere and it is perfection.)<\/p>\n

Of course, Paul\u2019s done an amazing amount of work post-Beatles. A lot of it is very good, a bit of it is fantastic (Ram, certainly), and there\u2019s a good amount of dross that\u2019s still miles ahead of what most artists were putting out at the same time. I consider the songs he did with Michael Jackson to be his nadir, but their popularity screams that I must be nuts. (Was there ever really any question?) The man can\u2019t stop. He\u2019s music mad and he\u2019s money mad, if I\u2019m to believe what was shouted at me between the lines in Norman\u2019s biography.<\/p>\n

All artists (myself excluded) are bound to fall prey to their own egos from time to time and I think the standout instance in the McCartney saga still remains his 1984 cinematic dog pile, Give My Regards to Broad Street<\/em>. Norman excoriates this project in his book, making me want to revisit it so I could counter, \u201cOh come on, it\u2019s not that bad!\u201d Well, I can\u2019t. No way. I popped in my old VHS and tortured myself for the better part of 104 minutes. I think Paul just had the need to redo many of his greatest songs, thinking he could actually improve on them without the distraction of a certain trio of musicians… so Lo! Behold new versions of masterpieces such as \u201cHere, There and Everywhere\u201d and \u201cGood Day Sunshine\u201d and lots of others\u2013none, in their novelty, holding a patch on the originals.<\/p>\n

With Paul McCartney, it\u2019s easy to forgive his mistakes. Paul McCartney The Life<\/em> is the wonderful result of an immense amount of research, care, and admiration, all befitting a character of undeniable genius. The man has known terrible tragedy and supreme joy and has been embraced by the love of millions. What a life he\u2019s led and how inspiring has been his art!
\nEven if he\u2019s never had his very own column in the San Diego Troubadour. Ah-ha! Hey! That\u2019s it! My condolences, Sir Paul.<\/p>\n

*******************
\nI won\u2019t move on without wishing you all a splendid, safe Halloween before our next encounter. If you\u2019d care to make that encounter a bit sooner and in the flesh, then I\u2019ll suggest you head down to Ocean Beach on Friday and Saturday, October 6 and 7, for this year\u2019s OB Oktoberfest\u2013certainly the wildest Oktoberfest on the West Coast, year after year. It all takes place down near the pier and features live music from a lot of bands, contests with fabulous prizes, great food, and glorious grog for grownups. It\u2019s bratwurst and beer, bands and bikini\u2019d babes at the beach, and I\u2019ll be the MC and games host once again (and believe me, an honor like that shouldn\u2019t be so much damn fun, but it always is). Do come down, say hi, and have some memorably crazy fun!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just finished Philip Norman\u2019s 818-page Paul McCartney The Life and am starting to feel that my own life might have a serious deficiency insofar as excitement is concerned. And accomplishment, too. Yeah, and money. But there\u2019s one thing I have that Paul McCartney doesn\u2019t have and never will, no matter how hard he tries… and if I ever figure out what that one thing is, I promise you\u2019ll be among the first to know. In the meantime I\u2019m reminded of Andrew Weil\u2019s suggestion in The Natural Mind that one should strive to identify similarities in objects and ideas rather than differences. In employing this more positive attitude, I am confronted with the revelation that Paul McCartney and I are indeed sharing some sort of cosmic bond: – He appears on many, many record albums. I own many, many record albums on which he appears. – We both lost our mothers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hosing-down"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12175"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12176,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12175\/revisions\/12176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}