16 April, 1973, saw the broadcast of Paul McCartney's television special, James Paul McCartney, on the ABC network in the US (and later in the UK, on 10 May). The show was a weird hotpotch of staged segments, live shows, promo videos and documentary footage. Savaged by critics at the time – ”McCartney has neither the personality nor the all-round versatility to carry such an hour-long program,” said one – today it stands as an interesting document of where McCartney was at, just three short years after the dissolution of The Beatles.
The Beatles split had sent McCartney into a fit of depression. Many of his contemporaries hadn’t made it out of the 60s: Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Beatles manager Brian Epstein, and Stuart Sutcliffe – the Beatles’ original bass player and the man who lent McCartney his bass when Paul considered taking over his spot – were all dead. Rock’n’roll excess, a burgeoning drug scene, and the stresses of fame had taken a heavy toll.
