even in the opening images of “Get
Back,” Twickenham seemed less gloomy,
the Beatles more antic and engaged.
Gone was the funereal tone. “They put
some joy in!” Ringo Starr told me later.
“That was always my argument—we
were laughing and angry.” Jackson was
clearly in synch with McCartney’s hope
that the new documentary would alter
the narrative about his life and the final
days of perhaps the biggest popcultural
phenomenon of the twentieth century.
T
o retrieve the memories and sen
sations of the past, Proust relied
mainly on the taste of crumbly cakes
moistened with limeblossom tea. The
rest of humanity relies on songs. Songs
are emotionally charged and brief, so
we remember them whole: the melody,
the hook, the lyrics, where we were,
what we felt. And they are emotionally
adhesive, especially when they’re en
countered in our youth.
Even now I can remember riding in
a van, at five, six years of age, headed
to Yavneh Academy, in Paterson, New
Jersey, and listening to “She Loves You”
on someone’s transistor radio. The older
boys wore Beatle haircuts or acrylic
Beatle wigs. Neither option looked par
ticularly dashing with a yarmulke.
My father, an exceedingly quiet man,
found his deepest connection with me
through music. And, because he did me
the honor of listening to the Beatles, I
listened when he played records that he
said figured into what seemed so new:
Gilbert and Sullivan, English musichall
tunes, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Rod
gers and Hart, the jazz of the thirties
and forties, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly,
Little Richard. In the same spirit of ex
change, we watched Beatlemania take
shape on television—news footage from
Shea Stadium and airport press confer
ences. My father did not fail to men
tion that all the hysteria reminded him
of a skinny Italian American singer from
Hoboken. But this, he admitted, was
much bigger.
Some years later, I began to see how
music, and the stories of musicians, could
play an uncanny role in our lives. One
afternoon, I came home from my high
school to report that a friend of mine
was the son of a piano player. “He says
his father is someone named Teddy Wil
son,” I added.
I might as well have told my father
that my classmate’s father was the Prince
of Wales.
Wilson, my father explained, was the
most elegant pianist in jazz. He had
played with Billie Holiday, Louis Arm
strong, Lester Young. In the mid thirties,
he joined Benny Goodman, Lionel
Hampton, and Gene Krupa, forming a
swingera quartet that was as remark
able for its integration as it was for its
syncopated wildness. In 1973, my class
mate invited my father and me and some
friends to the opening of the Newport
Jazz Festival at Carnegie Hall, where the
old Goodman quartet was reuniting. We
were allowed backstage beforehand, shyly
watching as Teddy Wilson massaged his
hands and fingers and slowly rotated his
wrists. “I ask my fingers to do a lot,” he
said, “but these days they don’t always
answer in time.”O
ne afternoon this summer, I went
to meet McCartney at his mid
town office, a town house near the Zieg
feld Theatre. It was a hot Saturday, and
the Delta variant had broomed away
most of the tourists and weekend wan
derers. Although I was early, he was
there at the reception desk to greet me.
McCartney is seventynine, but—in
the way we’ve grown to expect of public performers with rigorous regimens
of selfcare—he is a notably youthful
version of it. There are now gray streaks
in his hair, though it’s still cut in a fash
ion that is at least Beatleadjacent. In
the elevator to the second floor, we went
through the ritual exchange of vaccine
assurances and peeled off our masks.
McCartney has slight pillows of jowl,
but he remains trim. Most mornings,
he said, he works out while watching
“American Pickers,” hosted for more
than twenty seasons by two guys, Mike
and Frank, roaming the country and
searching for junk and treasure. He
mimicked their line: “How much are
you going to want for that?”
No one in the public eye lacks van
ity, but McCartney is knowing about
it. We reached a large sitting room, and,
as he plopped down on the couch, a
hearing aid sprang out of his right ear.
He rolled his eyes and, with a complicit
smile, used his index finger to push the
wormy apparatus back in place. The
space is decorated with just a few me
mentos: a deluxe edition of “Ram,” his
second solo album; a small photograph
of McCartney and Nancy Shevell with
the Obamas taken the night he per
formed for them at the White House;
a brick from the rubble of Shea Stadium;
a striking portrait of Jimi Hendrix taken“Now you will be the accountant to the fishes.”