The Paul people are out in force these days. A New Yorker profile, a book and a new documentary have put the Beatles, and particularly Paul, back in the papers. Not that they, or he, ever left.
I should admit a bias. I have the same first name as John, and being a man of straightforward loyalties I took him as my favourite early on. Even now I find him the most interesting of the four: vain, sardonic, nasty, boyish, thoughtful, wounded; bright-eyed and pugilistic and blessed with an undermining cleverness that left him bored by whatever he came across. The even-tempered Paul just doesn’t entrance me in quite the same way.
As of this year John Lennon has been dead for longer than he lived, and Paul McCartney, who will be 80 next June, has a short podcast series out, available on BBC Sounds. In gobbet-sized episodes, he explains how he wrote the songs.
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