Paul McCartney emerged from lockdown, at least virtually, for two major events this week. He played a soulful rendition of Lady Madonna for the Global Citizen One World: Together At Home concert special. And he gave a sprawling hour-long interview to Howard Stern that revealed his deepest feelings toward fellow Beatles, and gave a sneak peak of his opinion of the forthcoming Peter Jackson Let It Be documentary scheduled to be released in the near future.
On his call with Howard Stern, McCartney told the audience that he was, like the rest of us, hunkered down at home. McCartney said he’s doing well living at his home in Sussex in the south of England. His daughter Mary and her children are there, though he’s away from wife Nancy, who was in New York when the overseas travel ban was implemented. McCartney said that the current crisis reminded him of growing up in England after World War II when everyone pulled together to help each other out after an existential crisis. McCartney was born in 1942.
The Beatle bassist went on to chastise the Chinese government and call for an end to the “wet markets” that are being identified as the possible starting point for the spread of the virus. McCartney is a longtime vegetarian and has long been outspoken about the inhumane treatment of animals. He had some harsh words for the presumed cause of the pandemic: “let's face it, come on—it's a little bit medieval eating bats.”
McCartney called on prominent figures in entertainment and government to encourage China to shut down the wet markets, saying that there are many cultural traditions that countries learned to forego on their path to modernity. McCartney didn’t agree with the excuse that the markets were part of the culture and couldn’t be changed. “It just doesn’t make any sense at all. They did slavery forever too and you know you've got to change things at some point.”
Radio and television personality Howard Stern interviewed Paul McCartney during the coronavirus ... [+]
Stern wondered about how The Beatles would have become the tight band that they did, famously honing their craft on the road for years before being “discovered,” if they were coming of age during the coronavirus pandemic. “Can you imagine what this would have been like if this were happening when you were starting out with The Beatles?” he asked. “Your whole life would have been put on hold. You would have never gotten started as musicians. All the clubs would be shut down. There would be no one to play music for.” McCartney agreed, saying that The Beatles would see occasional cancellations due to severe weather, like a hurricane, but never a challenge like the current crisis. He and his current band have had to cancel numerous dates and were unsure whether they would be able to play again this year.
Stern took the opportunity to present a “what if” scenario about The Beatles after the break-up. Could the band have persevered with just George and Ringo, and not John? But Paul was having none of it. “It’s like when a family breaks up. When families break up, it's to do with the emotion and the emotional pain. We'd been through too much and I think we were just fed up with the whole thing.”
Stern asked if the singer regretted not taking bandmate George Harrison’s talent as seriously as John Lennon’s. McCartney admitted that he might not have treated George like an equal creative partner in the band since he and Harrison had actually known each other before The Beatles. Despite the slight regret, he looks back fondly on his pre-Beatle times with Harrison. “There’s a beauty to it because George was my little mate in Liverpool. He was younger than me. We went to the same school and we used to get the same bus in the morning to school. So just the idea of knowing him before he was in The Beatles and then just the idea of kind of him and me hitchhiking around the country you know and the friendship that gets is very deep.”
The interview made some news for Beatle’s fans, as McCartney described his reaction to Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson’s early cut of the forthcoming Let it Be movie, featuring new footage culled from 54 hours of film that was shot in January 1969 as The Beatles worked on their last released album (though it was recorded before Abbey Road, which was released earlier). Beatle aficionados who are aware of the Michael Linsday-Hogg version, which features their famous rooftop concert, know that the vibe of that film was about a contentious group in the midst of a break-up. The reality, according to Paul, was quite the opposite, and he’s really happy that the record will finally be set straight: “we’re obviously having fun together. You can see we respect each other...it's a joy to see it unfold.”
Disney is set the release the film, but the release date, like that of every feature, is currently up in the air. Still, we can add a joyful new Beatles movie to the list of reasons to stay home and fight the coronavirus so that the pandemic can end and we can be, as Paul says “on our way back home.”
