In celebration of the great man's 80th birthday, we revisit our 2015 interview
This interview first appeared in the August 2015 issue of Esquire.
It's hard to get a sense, from the shaky video clip I see on his publicist Stuart Bell's phone later that day, of the number of people who greeted him at the airport .
"It's what I do," he told me, when I asked what kept him at it all after all these years. "It's my life."I am introduced to McCartney in a corridor backstage at the concert venue, on the afternoon of his arrival in the city. As expected, he is slim and spry, his handshake vigorous, his gaze direct, his movements swift and decisive; this is not a man who wants to be detained long, in a corridor or anywhere else.
It's difficult to write about McCartney without falling back on bland superlatives, trite truisms such as the one in the previous sentence. The Beatles CHANGED THE WORLD. McCartney is our GREATEST LIVING SONGWRITER. He's a LEGEND, an ICON, a ROCK GOD. Not that these aren't all correct, just that you've heard it all before, to the point where it loses any meaning. You know the history, too, or you'll remember it if I prompt you.
It's probably enough, then, to say that The Beatles were and will always remain the biggest pop group that this country – or any other – ever produced. And McCartney, with his good-blokeishness, his eagerness to please, appeared the least edgy of the four. He was civil, courteous, businesslike. Later, as the band broke apart and he took the lead in decision-making, an image of him as controlling, domineering even, began to take hold.
Whatever feelings you have about McCartney, conflicted, contradictory, or otherwise, before you file him away consider this.
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