The New Yorker 2021 10-18

THENEWYORKER,OCTOBER18, 2021 49

trand Russell; and listening to Sun Ra,
John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, and John
Cage. There is also a tender account of
McCartney’s marriage to Linda East-
man and the grief he felt at her loss.
Popular music is an arena of parti-
sanship and posturing; your identity is
wrapped up in both what you love and
what you can’t stand. But the Beatles
historian Mark Lewisohn, who in 2013
published the first of a planned three-
volume biography, “The Beatles: All
These Years,” has established a reputa-
tion for Robert Caro-like research and
a disinclination to judge. Having lis-
tened to more than ninety hours of
audiotapes of the sessions at Twicken-
ham, Lewisohn, like Peter Jackson, takes
the view that the “Let It Be” documen-
tary exaggerated the discord at the stu-
dio; and that collaboration, exuberant

and vital, was at the heart of things. I

called Lewisohn, who lives just outside

London, and has managed to sustain a

generous view of all the Beatles. He

speaks respectfully of the McCartney

songbook of recent decades. There are

ups and downs, he allows, but Mc-

Cartney “has been dropping diamond

gifts into the world for sixty years now,

and that work will endure.”

The rock-critic establishment has

not been so generous. Jann Wenner

was a Lennon partisan and, for years,

Rolling Stone reflected that view. The

Village Voice critic Robert Christgau,

sometimes known as the dean of the

guild, once called “Red Rose Speed-

way,” McCartney’s 1973 album with his

new band Wings, “quite possibly the

worst album ever made by a rock and

roller of the first rank.” In truth, Mc-

Cartney often seems inclined to issue

everything that he has had occasion to

record, and much of it is undercooked

and sentimental. He sometimes joins

in the criticism. The song “Bip Bop,”

on “Wild Life,” the first Wings album,

from 1971, “just goes nowhere,” he once

said. “I cringe every time I hear it.” In

some cases, though, the critical recep-

tion has been revised upward over the

years, as with the album “Ram” or the

single “Arrow Through Me.”

Not a few peers will speak up for

McCartney, including his post-Beatles

work. “He can do it all,” Bob Dylan told

Rolling Stone, in 2007. “And he’s never

let up. He’s got the gift for melody, he’s

got the rhythm, and he can play any in-

strument. He can scream and shout as

good as anybody.... He’s just so damn

effortless. I just wish he’d quit!” Taylor

Swift has also noted the “seemingly ef-

fortless” quality of McCartney’s work.

“His melodies both confound you and

also feel like the most natural sounds

you’ve ever heard,” she told me. “Mostly,

what I’ve learned from Paul is that he

never fell out of love with music because

he never stopped creating it.”

When I asked Elvis Costello, who

has collaborated with McCartney, about

the highlights of the post-Beatles cata-

logue, he reeled off “Jenny Wren”—

“That’s just one melody that could stand

next to the greatest songs written while

Paul was in the Beatles”—as well as

“Every Night,” “Let Me Roll It,” and

“That Day Is Done.” He also cited “If

I Take You Home Tonight,” which Mc-

Cartney wrote for Costello’s wife, Diana

Krall. “Take a listen to that melody and

you will hear an indelible harmonic sig-

nature,” Costello said. And his own mem-

ories of working with McCartney speak

to an undimmed penchant for collabo-

rative creativity. “We were pulling words

and notes out of the air, finishing songs,

and recording them in his studio, down-

stairs, minutes later,” he told me, describ-

ing their work on the songs that ended

up on the album “Flowers in the Dirt.”

As a young man, Costello had a Len-

nonesque edge, and I wondered if that

informed their collaboration. “Paul Mc-

Cartney and John Lennon were teen-

age friends who went to outer space to-

gether,” Costello told me. “Nobody could

imagine themselves in that place.... If

he got the innocent line and I got the

CRESCENDO

THELIGHT 1

Three o’clock, about two hours of light left,

glorious on the ornamental pear,

some leaves grizzled dark red.

The large leaves of what we think is

mock orange—yellow again, as when they first

appeared—and will soon fall.

I’ll miss you so much when you’re gone.

I’d miss you if I looked away

or if a cloud covered the sun.

I miss this moment

as it goes on happening.

THELIGHT 2

That little tree,

leaves now grizzled

gold and dark

red, is past

all transaction—

stiff in crescendo,

praising no one.

The gold my people

razed the world for—

cashed out there.

—Rae Armantrout