Tags
In the wake of the Boxing Day Disaster, the British viewing public was out for blood. And so today Paul McCartney agreed to appear on David Frost’s TV show to try to explain himself.
Give Paul credit for being ready to step up and take the heat. In the same situation, I think most of us would have retreated to our Scottish estates and quietly stroked our sheepdogs while waiting for the whole thing to blow over. I am no defender of Magical Mystery Tour, but from the general tone of the response you would have thought The Beatles had killed and eaten the Queen, not just made a bad TV movie.
You can read a transcript of the interview here. Frost is mostly gentle with Paul, though he does ask questions like “Did you have … some point to get across at all when you did this?” Which is a very British way of saying “What the f**k were you thinking?”
Paul, for his part, is not terribly contrite. His basic attitude is “We tried something different, it didn’t work, we’ll do better next time.” And you can’t fault him for that.
In other news, today also saw the release of two albums of historic import: Bob Dylan’s John Wesley Harding and Leonard Cohen’s Songs of Leonard Cohen. Since there’s no real Beatles events of note during the rest of this year, I’ll get into those over the next few days.