“Chasing tomorrow - get ready to run...”
/
“On the day that I die, I’d like jokes to be told
And stories of old to be rolled out like carpets
And laid on while listening to stories of old...”
Well, it was 13 years ago this year, Paul McCartney sprung a second album in two years upon us - fresh from critical acclaim far from “Frog Song” mockery of the Eighties and Nineties.
And did so by inviting us to imagine...his dying, albeit in sombrely, richly resigned and inviting tones.
Now, here we are again, a rejuvenated Macca still standing - even in this far more dispiriting of times, splaying McCartney III upon a world in need of, well, any more McCartney.
Paul is live? Paul is loving living, it sounds, happily jamming and drumming and riffing and fiddling in his Sussex studio while others (present company inclusive) might have considered it a major feat to merely manage fixing a hole where the rain gets in.
Not that this is your stereotypically-blithe Fab Wacky Macca Thumbs Aloft. Just as on 2018’s seriously-ranging, alternately-deep-and-daffy Egypt Station, he can’t help but come across as a little more reflective than in the past - now he’s 78.
And yet the melodies keep on simply pouring from Paul.
