Sir Paul McCartney “There's Nothing Stranger Than Celebrity”

Why, even after six decades, Sir Paul McCartney’s magical mystery tour rolls on into the next town

- By Danny Bowman

EVEN IN HIS very darkest moments, there’s always been something decidedly light-hearted about Sir Paul McCartney.

He is the iconic principal of popular music; he’s the man who’ll wink during a photoshoot or pull out a two-finger peace sign mid-interview. He’s the guy who’ll bob down the street humming or whistling a song by one of his favorite contemporaries— think John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson, Stevie Wonder; yet also modern “equals” such as Beck and St Vincent, and even new-wave soul/ dub experimentalists Khruangbin.

When tragedy and disappointment has come—the death of John Lennon in 1980, the sad passing of wife Linda who lost her battle against breast cancer in 1998, the very public collapse of his marriage to Heather Mills a decade later—it’s never been long before the singer, songwriter, producer and, let’s be frank, the godfather of the modern pop song, has rallied. Almost impossibly quickly he would be snapped loafing down the King’s Road in a pair of shabby cords, or back on the Radio City airwaves pushing a new solo project, or flitting between expressions of awe and bemusement on the front row of one of daughter Stella’s catwalk shows.