Here's the thing: as expressed here and by many people here and elsewhere, there's an expectation that rich people have to be better than the rest of us, and a feeling that we can endlessly slag them if they aren't. Is there some supposed income level (like a tax bracket) that, since McCartney has supposedly passed it, makes him ineligible to make a change to how history may remember him? Why is it go terribly important to others that he go to his grave with this issue unresolved? Could it possibly be more important that remote people get a sense of comfort from the mantra "Lennon/McCartney"? And similarly, we seem to be expecting a rich and famous person to say something profound or perhaps "less hollow" in a moment of grief. (I remember that, many years ago, when my best friend died, the first thing I said on the phone when I was told was "Holy shit!" Would I not have been allowed that expression had I been more famous?) Sure, as you say, you would have appreciated him saying something different -- but looking at this with reasonable compassion, one might allow him whatever expression he needed in that stunned moment. Here, again, is the expectation that just because someone is rich and famous, he is open to ridicule for being human. And that's the glass house: we all say things out of emotion and have personal issues that we might like to have changed. And each of us, compared to someone else, is rich and famous in some way.(Yes, we are: none of us, AFAIK, is living in a box on the street, and we all are writing words that are archived for international access, hopefully in perpetuity.) I doubt that any of us could live up to the level of constant scrutiny to which the famous are subjected. It's become all too common for people who have done a lifetime of good to be brought down by one statement or one incautious act. None of us is perfect; none of us can go our entire lives without some statement or action that could be amplified toward our destruction. To think that one can is either to be living an utterly unexamined life or to woefully underestimate the power of the overamplified razor-wire gossip fence that so much of our popular discourse has become. On Thu, 19 Dec 2002 16:55:33 +0000 "Kurt Gottschalk" <ecstasymule@hotmail.com> wrote:
McCartney has no problem with Lennon having primary authorship on the Lennon songs. He just wishes that the Lennon estate would have the grace to allow him primary authorship on the songs that he wrote.
which i understand. and again, i wish someone of his stature and success (financial and sometimes artistic) would have the good grace to leave it alone. he gets to be a beatle for life. that's more important than setting a record most everyone knows anyway straight.
As for the "What a drag" statement, imagine this scenario: You have just learned that your primary collaborator and best friend has been murdered. You receive a phone call from a journalist to inform you and get an instant reaction that is then splashed into worldwide headlines. What are the odds that the first words out of your mouth will be something profound?
wouldn't ask for something profound, but would have appreciated something that sounded a little less hollow.
Glass houses, again.
really? what does that mean? that celebrities are above reproach? what glass house do i live in and, for that matter, what stone did i throw? it's interesting to me how paul mccartney seems to be a raw nerve to a few people here. i haven't really criticized him, i don't think. i've just said that i wish someone in his position would be a bit more an ambassador for a time (and phenomenon) in rock, a little less petty. 'yesterday' is well enough documented as his song. i think it's shortsighted of him to not realize that he'll look like a graverobber if he starts messing with a phrase as key to rock history as 'lennon/mccartney'.
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