Defending Paul McCartney can be a little challenging sometimes. There is something almost cosmically cheesy about him. His revisionist ego-trippin' (the "Let it Be...Naked" fiasco comes to mind) is indefensible and you can certainly understand why the other Beatles once chucked a brick through his window. Having said that, I think that Paul has been criminally underrated. Sometimes being well-adjusted and rather boring can hurt artists' reputations and I think that this has been the case with Paul. Well, except for "Rockestra." Bad move, Paul.
Man, that sucked

Anyway, back to my point... It seems unfitting that such a - well, there's no other way to put this - *dork* be considered a musical genius. We prefer our geniuses to be tortured (Lennon, Cobain), cranky and incomprehensible (Dylan, Van Morrison, Miles Davis), or fucking nuts (Brian Wilson, Syd Barrett, Captain Beefheart-Don Van Vliet). From the beginning, Paul never hesitated to secrete huge dollops of cheese into the public sphere. Paul has spent *way* too much of his life mincing around in a fucking bowler hat and this is before the Say, Say, Say video, let's put it that way.


Provolone, or camembert?

Paul can also come across as a calculating prick and a lazy airhead. All of these are valid criticisms.

Paul is still a musical genius. I am not talking about in terms of numbers of times his songs have been heard, or even in terms of influence. I am talking about pure songcraft. Pure melodic invention. He was one of the main reasons (along with heroic doses of LSD and Murray Wilson abuse) that Brian Wilson became Grizzly Adams and went into hibernation for much of the 70's. Wilson, arguably the greatest pop melodicist, himself, was intimidated by the relentless brilliance and output of the Beatles (of which Paul was the most productive member after 1965) and could not cope with trying to compete with them. Wilson said as much himself numerous times.


Before Sgt Pepper...


The Beach Boys, 1974

Let's leave out the Beatles (which, in a discussion about Paul McCartney, is like leaving out "Ulysses" when talking about James Joyce, but never mind). After the Beatles he made a number of really interesting records that combined a lo-fi (before the term was invented) sensibility with pop flourishes and arrangements that sounded like nothing that was going on at that time. The sheer number of ideas that are contained in these deceptively simple pop songs is staggering. Amazingly, Paul pretty much jettisoned (sorry for the pun) many of the staple Beatles-isms with his solo records. The structure, chords and use of backup vocals were very different, for example. I say that he has three or four albums after the Beatles that rank with anybody during the period. I'll see your "Sunflower" with "Ram," raise you "McCartney" and "Band on the Run" and ask you if anything that Dylan did in the 70's besides "Blood on the Tracks" is better than "Red Rose Speedway?" And you would rightly call me an idiot and we'd move on.

The point I am making is that Paul's musical legacy will probably only get the full respect he deserves when he is dead and gone. Future generations will just hear the music and not have to violently recoil from the memory of Paul prancing around with an oversized American flag singing that detestable "Freedom" song. For as much as Paul is a dick, he is a dick that wrote more great pop songs than anybody else.


I am looming over you all! Give me some veal!

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