I was watching Paul McCartney in concert on TV the other day. He was playing to a festival crowd -- maybe eighty-thousand strong. As he got the end of "Hey Jude," the crowd, many of whom had been years away from being born when "Hey Jude" was written, joined in, singing the "Na-naaa-na-nanana-naaaah," part and it occurred to me that success is a bizarre thing.
Imagine being Paul. Imagine being a guy whose name is recognized by virtually everyone in the civilized world who is over the age of fifteen. Imagine that out of those people, most, if not all, can name a song you wrote and a good number can probably sing one on the spot.
How do you
process that as an artist? If a crowd that size ever sang one of my songs, I'd crash to my knees and weep at the profundity. But Paul just kept playing. Why? Because he is used to being probably the best-known songwriter alive. I'm not saying he doesn't appreciate it
at all; it's just . . . for the love of baloney . . . how do you get
used to that?
