![]() ![]() ![]() Photograph: Val Wilmer/Redfernsĭon Letts – filmmaker, 6 Music presenter – is here doing some filming and has still got a little more to do. ‘John was the middle-class guy in the band’: McCartney and Lennon backstage at the Astoria in 1963. A genuine windmill, on a hill looking out to sea, with several small outbuildings close by containing McCartney's studio and rehearsal space. We arrive at Hastings, where a tousle-haired lady named Louise is waiting in a small, very dirty red car – there's mud all over it it's like it's been basted – to drive the 20 minutes to Sir Paul's recording studio, Hogg Hill Mill. Not necessarily by me, but that's the general air. Whereas I feel as though I'm going to interview the NHS or the BBC, some well-loved British institution that inspires immense gratitude for past glories but is considered exasperating in its current form. ![]() Every other country would be proud to claim the 71-year-old McCartney as their own, to celebrate him as an actual living legend who changed the world through his talent. Such Macca fatigue seems peculiarly British – our national sense of cool is so nuanced as to be completely baffling to the rest of the world. There was sniping after his Olympics opening ceremony miscue (a massive bell rang, he couldn't hear and started singing a couple of bars off from the backing track), and when he played the Queen's Diamond Jubilee concert, he chose "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" to finish, which caused eyes to roll. We love him, but he will keep showing us up at parties. Meanwhile at home there's a tendency to regard Sir Paul like an embarrassing uncle. Abroad he is revered: one recent Italian review described going to a McCartney concert as being on a cultural par with visiting the Louvre. It's noticeable, though, that his recent accolades have tended to come from outside Britain. Live, he's performed in front of 400,000 people in Kiev, 300,000 in Quebec, 400,000 in Mexico City… actually, he's been on a world tour since summer 2009, playing to enormous stadiums stuffed with joyful multitudes doing the la-la-la bit to "Hey Jude". Which doesn't sound like much, but the ceremony was packed with musicians from the Foo Fighters to Tony Bennett, all singing McCartney songs, and straight after, he went on to close the Grammys with the medley from Abbey Road. It's too tiring to list all Sir Paul has done in the past five years, but let's pick some highlights: two trips to the White House for prizes (Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, Kennedy Center Honor), off to Paris to get the Légion d'Honneur from François Hollande, as well as trousering a Brit in 2008 for Outstanding Contribution to Music and, last year, the MusiCares Person of the Year award. And you need that time: it takes up four and a half sides of A4, and only one eight-line paragraph is about the Beatles. Plenty of time to read his latest press release. T he road to Paul McCartney, if not long and winding, does involve a train ride to Hastings. ![]()
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