Two concerts lasting almost three hours in two days, in front of 80,000 people, at the age of 82. Paul McCartney is back in Paris for two highly anticipated evenings on Wednesday December 4 and Thursday December 5 at La Défense Arena.
The artist has spanned more than 60 years and is still making news with music, books and documentaries. franceinfo tried to uncover the secrets of success (and longevity) of Paul McCartney.
A sequence made a big impact: in 2018, TV host James Corden invited Paul McCartney in his famous sequence “Carpool Karaoke”quickly becoming one of the most watched on YouTube. Driving through Liverpool, he returns to familiar places.
Alone, James Corden ends up in a good old pub, asking customers to put music on the jukebox in the corner. Suddenly, the curtain opens: the former Beatles, in song and blood, appears in front of stunned customers, sometimes in tears. Paul McCartney as a simple singer back on his land, disarmingly simple, affable with the omnipresent crowds. We must see in this a certain reality as well as a cleverly maintained myth.
However, it was not won. The Beatles still remain the greatest of the groups, despite a rather brief history ending in 1970. The breakup was complicated, and the death of John Lennon in 1980 even more so. “What happened was that in 1988 it was Saint John. There was only one for John Lennon who had died eight years before,” explains Hervé Bourhis, screenwriter and designer, notably of the “Little Beatles Book”.
“There was a movie that came out, and Paul was really the nice guy who made nice songs for grandma and the real rocker was John who had an exciting life, who died young, he was Christ .”
Hervé Bourhisat franceinfo
“He has been active in music since 1957, Elvis had started three years before”recalls Hervé Bourhis, “it's a considerable, unique temporal spectrum. It's the only one of its generation with the Stones to still fill stadiums today.”
Since then, more than Ringo Starr, the other survivor, it is Paul McCartney who has become the living emblem of the Beatles, the sometimes criticized genius, author of some of the group's most beautiful songs. There is also business: not a year without a new documentary, a catalog bought by Disney. The last one, “Beatles '64” on the first American tour was released a few days ago, without forgetting a slew of reissues, unreleased tracks…
“There has never been any room for chance with Paul McCartney. The music has to be perfect, the songs have to be perfect. In the concerts, there are songs that we will no longer hear in France like Michelle In the United States there is necessarily All My Loving because it was the first song that Americans heard in 1964 on TV. All of this will be calculated down to the millimeter.”
At 82, he embarked on a new world tour adapted to each continent. All this made him, by far, the richest singer of his time. His genius still inspires all generations, almost all musicians.
“It’s very inspiring for all artists, this ability to maintain such integrity, such a level of performance and intensity even at the slightly advanced age of 82”notably advances Alex Kapranos, rock star and leader of the group Franz Ferdinand.
“He was always present in my life, my mother was obsessed with the Beatles, like my wife or my son who listens to them all the time. And then, when I started playing guitar, I played their songs before understanding that , since I couldn't play them well, I should write my own, to avoid being told that I played them badly.”
Alex Kapranosat franceinfo
Over the past ten years, McCartney has also released two very good solo albums. He plays with his image in interviews, in pubs, cultivates his simplicity by often taking the train or the metro, without any bodyguard… And then there are the songs: with the Beatles, with the Wings, solo . More than ever, Paul McCartney belongs to the world heritage.
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