He’s been making headlines for some 60 years, going back to the days when The Beatles first exploded out of Liverpool and into our collective consciousness forever. Paul McCartney is, of course, a cultural phenomenon, and while the days of Beatlemania and Wings Across America (and beyond) are very much yesterday, he’s still major news in various ways.
Ahead of his Australian tour which kicks off in Adelaide this week, Tone Deaf takes a look at the many ways McCartney is still grabbing headlines in 2023.
Paul, Ringo And Dolly Score Big on the Billboard Charts
The first single from Rockstar, Dolly Parton’s forthcoming album of classic covers and duets is the iconic “Let It Be,” featuring McCartney and fellow surviving Beatle, Ringo Starr. According to Forbes, the McCartney/Starr-backed single debuted on three different Billboard charts upon the week of its release in early September – #22 on the ‘Digital Song Sales’ chart, #2 on the ‘Rock Digital Song Sales’ chart, and #15 on the ‘Country Digital Song Sales’ chart.
The song scored the top debut on both those genre lists and is only the eighth track in 27 years that McCartney and Starr have appeared on together.
Macca Joins The Stones
There’s a hotlist of guests on the forthcoming Rolling Stones album, Hackney Diamonds (Elton John, Lady Gaga, Stevie Wonder, and Bill Wyman among them) but no name shines brighter than Paul McCartney. He and John Lennon famously wrote and gifted The Rolling Stones their first single, “I Wanna Be Your Man” in 1963, and became great friends and friendly rivals afterwards.
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Hackney Diamonds producer Andrew Watt had also been working with McCartney around that time in Los Angeles, which piqued Mick Jagger’s interest and led to an invitation to the studio. “I’d sung with Paul before and I’d hung out with Paul a lot, but I’ve never played with him,” Jagger recently told US Rolling Stone.
“I didn’t know what song to do. Should we do “Depending on You,” like a ballad? Or something else? And Andy said, ‘Well, let’s try him on your punk song, on “Bite My Head Off”.” Paul seemed very happy to play in a band where he didn’t have all the responsibility; he was just the bass player. And he really rocked out. He fitted straight in. It was like we’d been playing with him for years. It was a really good feeling.”
In the same interview guitarist Ron Wood also confirmed McCartney’s enthusiasm. “Paul said to me, ‘Can you believe, here we are in the studio together?’” Wood revealed. “He said, ‘I have a dream come true: I’m playing with the Rolling Stones.'”
“Eyes Of The Storm” Exhibition Opens At The UK National Portrait Gallery
Earlier this year McCartney published Eyes of the Storm, a book of never-before-seen (and previously believed to be lost) photographs he had taken over a period of three months during the first explosion of Beatlemania in 1963-64, during which time they made their historic appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Complementing the book’s release is an exhibition of the same name at London’s National Portrait Gallery displaying over 250 unseen photographs of the Beatles and the whirlwind surrounding them captured on McCartney’s 35mm Pentax camera.
“Looking at these photographs, now decades after they were taken, I find there’s a sort of innocence about them,” McCartney said in a media statement.
“Everything was new to us at this point. But I like to think I wouldn’t take them any differently today. They now bring back so many stories, a flood of special memories, which is one of many reasons I love them all and know they will always fire my imagination.”
The collection of behind-the-scenes photographs covering hotel rooms, dressing rooms, car window shots of fans besieging them and various moments within the midst of it all has indeed been firing the imaginations of many.
“The convulsion set off by that short US trip is reflected in McCartney’s acquisition of colour film,” stated Richard Williams in his review in The Guardian. “Superficially, the results seem less ‘serious’ – like going from character studies to holiday snaps. But the switch reflects a deeper sense of how their world was changing, almost overnight, as they took everyone along with them for the ride of a lifetime.”
The Lost Bass Project
In 1969 after the Beatles finished filming the Get Back/Let It Be sessions and equipment was being stored away, McCartney’s iconic Höfner 500/1 Violin Bass disappeared. The historic instrument, bought by McCartney for £30 in Hamburg, Germany, in 1961, was soon to feature on classic singles such as “Twist And Shout”, “Love Me Do”, “She Loves You”, and many other key tracks from that point on in the Beatles catalogue. It is valued today at £10 million.
The loss of his favourite instrument has stung McCartney over the years and in recent times his pleas to the Höfner company to use their resources to locate it has resulted in The Lost Bass Project. Heading up the mission is Nick Wass, a former Höfner marketing manager, co-writer of the definitive book on the Höfner 500/1 Violin Bass, The Complete Violin Bass Story, and the world’s leading expert on McCartney’s missing bass. He is joined by acclaimed TV producers/documentarians Scott and Naomi Jones.
“Höfner’s hunch is that someone will come forward purely on good will, and whoever has it probably doesn’t even realise what it is they’ve got,” Scott Jones told the BBC.
“It would be nice if it could go on public display one day – and if the only way someone is going to come forward is to make some money from it, then so be it, because at least it would be found. But ultimately, we’re just doing this to get Paul his guitar back. We know via Nick and Höfner that it’s what he’s always wanted.”
AI Feel Fine
When McCartney announced that a late ‘70s John Lennon demo recording had been used to create a ‘new’ Beatles song with the assistance of AI, he perhaps didn’t know what he was unleashing.
“It was a demo that John had that we worked on, and we just finished it up, it’ll be released this year,” he said. “We were able to take John’s voice and get it pure through this AI, so then we could mix the record as you would normally do.”
AI continues to be a touchy subject in the creative sphere, so the casually delivered piece of information was met with uproar from many who believed that Lennon’s vocal and the song’s instrumentation was the AI contribution.
As reported in US Variety, McCartney saw fit to calm the waters with an explanation on X (formerly Twitter) just over a week later.
“Been great to see such an exciting response to our forthcoming Beatles project,” he wrote. “No one is more excited than us to be sharing something with you later in the year.
“We’ve seen some confusion and speculation about it. Seems to be a lot of guess work out there. Can’t say too much at this stage but to be clear, nothing has been artificially or synthetically created. It’s all real and we all play on it. We cleaned up some existing recordings – a process which has gone on for years.
“We hope you love it as much as we do. More news in due course.”
Paul McCartney 2023 Australian Tour
Ticket information via Frontier Touring
Wednesday 18 October (SOLD OUT)
Adelaide Entertainment Centre | Adelaide, SA
Lic. All Ages
Saturday 21 October (SOLD OUT)
Marvel Stadium, Melbourne, VIC
Lic. All Ages
Tuesday 24 October
McDonald Jones Stadium | Newcastle, NSW
Lic. All Ages
Friday 27 October
Allianz Stadium | Sydney, NSW
Lic. All Ages
Saturday, 28 October
Allianz Stadium | Sydney, NSW
Lic. All Ages
Wednesday 1 November
Suncorp Stadium | Brisbane, QLD
Lic. All Ages
Saturday 4 November
Heritage Bank Stadium | Gold Coast, QLD
Lic. All Ages
