As we celebrate Paul McCartney's 80th birthday, it is positively staggering to note the many ways in which he has eclipsed the norms and expectations of his genre. When the former Beatle first heard the raucous sounds of Elvis Presley in the mid-1950s, rock 'n' roll wasn't a profession. It was a scourge. A decade later, when the Who declared "I hope I die before I get old" in "My Generation," no self-respecting rocker set his sights on retirement, much less living into middle-age.
And yet McCartney abides. In the new century alone, he has released chart-topping LPs and played sold-out stadiums across the globe. By all rights, he should be marking time as a pensioner, renting a cottage in the Isle of Wight or some such thing. While he contemplated that very fate in "When I'm Sixty-Four," tending the garden and mending a fuse were never really his bag.
