Paul McCartney didn’t used to be cool. Even back in the Nineties, when the Beatles-indebted Britpop scene was in its pomp, “Macca” always seemed like a cheesy elder statesman. He was a bit dad jeans. A bit Alan Partridge. Both thumbs seemingly fixed permanently aloft. It was John Lennon, the band’s truculent rebel, who the Gallagher brothers deified and all the hip young bands wanted to imitate. Back then, Lennon’s “Imagine” seemed like a secular hymn, a sincere manifesto for a better world. These days it’s that song out-of-touch celebrities sing to show how out-of-touch they are.
If Lennon’s stock has fallen in the last three decades, McCartney’s has only risen. A passionate vegetarian who has long been vocal about the need to protect the planet, his inherent niceness is now lauded as a virtue. Most recently, his reputation has been further burnished by the release of Peter Jackson’s immersive Get Back documentary, which delighted Beatles fans by taking them inside the recording of the band’s final album, Let It Be, and made it crystal clear just how much of a driving force McCartney really was in the creation of that record, and in the band in general.
