Publisher at The American Bystander
is Blogmom of Hey Dullblog. His novels and parodies have sold 1.25 million copies in 25 languages. He lives in Santa Monica, CA, and runs The American Bystander all-star print humor magazine.
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This man loved his wife. (I’m guessing he was promoting her cookbook.)
Adding this after I posted it: GodDAMN but Paul McCartney is charming. I don’t care if it’s all just a big hustle, I just love the guy. Let us take a moment to, once again, be thankful for the brilliant stroke of luck that was The Beatles: what are the odds that these four guys would all be from the same town, all be great musicians, and all be incredibly charismatic people?
Related posts:
Krall does Paul: McCartney cover on “Wallflower”
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Dullblog’s Top Posts of 2015
Paul Better Than John? Hell Has Frozen Over!
Paul McCartney and Dave Grohl
Paul McCartney: Screwed by life
Paul McCartney and Kanye West: “Only One”
Paul McCartney’s Essential Elements
McCartney and Starr on Orlando attack
Review: RAM (Paul McCartney Archive Collection)
McCartney, “New,” and “generic genius”: rebutting Ben Greenman
“Art of McCartney” tribute album mostly meh
Thanks Michael! That was so good!
I think Paul’s exuberance is one of the reasons he’s so loved. He seems to find joy in everything. Having seen him in concert 3 times, I can say that for each performance he was so energetic, and so happy to be there.
We love him, because he truly loves performing for us.
As for he and Linda, theirs is a love story for the ages. He seems to be such a devoted husband. That’s another reason women love him. Sigh. ❤️
Michael, do you really think Paul’s charm and exuberance is all a hustle?
Micheal, disregard my question. I get it.
I don’t think his charm is all a hustle; I do think it’s a mode of behavior that he learned very young, which has often masked his true feelings on a person or subject. Which is not to say that it’s false…just that Macca is very complicated, much more complicated than he first appears.
I agree.
I love this. Even if this is a hustle, my first thought is: you can see why John loved him. Usually in public-facing stuff, Paul is charming but more reserved. Here he is being downright goofy and self-effacing, clowning around and generally being more like Lennon’s public self. It’s not hard to imagine that this was the Paul John knew, which makes it all the more cruel for John to smear him the way he did in the seventies.
I’m not sure but I seem to recall Paul did this originally after Linda died, her cookbook he’s promoting “On Tour” was published I think about 6 months after her death. Which makes it even more sweet and lovely, knowing how much he was mourning her, that he was able to be so jolly in order to promote something that was important to her, after she was gone.
1. hahaha this is just not serious… from the ‘cooking’ perspective… but it is fun… and very much Paul like… Are you sure Michael this is sort of seriously connected with cooking and not something of having fun, making fun of, parody?
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2. I am not so much confused by your line:
… “I do think it’s a mode of behavior that he learned very young, which has often masked his true feelings on a person or subject. Which is not to say that it’s false…just that Macca is very complicated”…
Are we on the same page how we define feelings and emotions? With ‘true feelings’ people often mean emotions… ‘feelings’ without an adjective is what emotions are when thoughts are added… The good thing is that Paul the artist is very much able to express emotions and feelings… ever heard him screaming… that is as visceral as a pop musician can be… I have not ever seen any of the other Beatles see/hear do a thing like that… they show much more restraint or are unable to express themselves that way, embarrassment?
Having learned to see the positive side of life, act the positive in normal circumstances is quite a healthy attitude or learned coping behavior… is that complex? As far as I know it is something lots of people are capable of, but I admit many folks just can’t. Read some of the books by De Waal on primates and emotions…
From all we know, Paul is capable of experiencing emotions that are deeply disturbing and negative… he had his depressions and break down of confidence…
Haven’t you written yourself, Michael: “… you better believe they acted differently with each other, behind closed doors than what they showed the public” in 2016, https://www.heydullblog.com/paul-mccartney/paul-mccartneys-essential-elements/#comment-172786…
I feel some impatience that it is necessary to state Paul is hiding his true feelings, this sounds to me as nothing but parroting old observations… fitting the Lennono cliché but being sort of reserved doesn’t mean that person doesn’t show his/her feelings or emotions…
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On ‘feelings’ and ’emotions’ I guess my thinking is very much shaped by the early and latest work by Damasio and Sapolsky (Behave). The model of the latter book gives some insight into how we could observe and interpret or understand Lennon’s behavior.
@Rob, I believe that Paul feels emotions as much or more than any of us; I also believe that he often reserves the unmediated expression of those emotions for intimates in non-public settings, or sublimates them into his art. This is not exclusive to Paul — far from it — nor does it make him less honest. It shows the presence of healthy boundaries. It is how celebrities handled fame before the 1960s, by the creation of several personae: one public, one private, and others as needed.
What changed in the 1960s was the idea that a person could be famous and not have personae; there was just the one “honest” self, expressing opinions and emotions as if the public was an intimate. (Witness the Bag One lithographs.) This was flattering to fans, and fascinating to media outlets, but it wasn’t quite honest, nor did it prove ultimately very successful as a life strategy. IMHO, having such boundaries is probably the only way that a person can be famous and still retain any sense of self. But having boundaries doesn’t mean you don’t have the feelings, and choosing when and how you express those feelings is, to me, fundamental to maturity and psychological integration.
Rob, this was done as a little promo back in 1998(still fairly early days for internet video:)) for Linda’s posthumously published cookbook “On Tour”. Paul makes a brief mention of it at one point in the video.
Yes, I think that with McCartney’s charm, it’s a “both/and” situation. It’s fueled by genuinely felt emotions and is also a survival strategy. And I love this cooking demo so much!
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McCartney is pretty up front about the work he puts into presenting himself, especially in more recent years, when he’s talked about the distance he feels between the guy he is in private and being “Paul McCartney” in public. And he’s also written songs that are explicitly about ambivalence and the instability of the self, with “Somedays” being the one that comes immediately to my mind.
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My job involves giving public presentations, and I always feel that when I’m “onstage” I’m both sincere about what I’m saying and conscious of projecting specific aspects of my personality/experience. On a given day I may be tired or worried about something, but I know I need to get energy across, and so I do that. And it’s not “fake” — I’m giving a true representation of my convictions about my subject.
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I can’t begin to imagine what it’s like to do a show in front of tens of thousands of people who’ve paid to see you, or to be on “Carpool Karaoke.” Overall, I think McCartney’s done a fine job of finding a way to be “Paul McCartney” in public and to have a relatively private life as well.
Great comments Nancy! I really, really loved “Carpool Karaoke”, as did millions of others, because I think Paul was so genuine and relaxed.
When James Cordon was talking about “Let it Be”, and how much his grandfather had loved it, and James wished he was there, when Paul replied, “He is”, that was SO from his heart. It’s the moment everyone talked about, and made everyone cry.
With age and experiencing great losses in his life, I think Paul has mellowed and is more open.
I’m sorry, but I adore him.
I want to marry him.
Get in line.
Long time lurker. First time commenter.
Love this so much. What do you all reckon the others would do as a cooking demonstration?
I reckon Ringo would do chip butties.
George, maybe some Dahl and rice with pappadams.
John, I’m not sure. He went macrobiotic, but not convinced he actually liked it,
Great question, Marlo! I agree about Ringo’s and George’s likely preferences for a food demo. John’s are definitely harder to parse. I can see him doing something in Monty Python style, with which food being unimportant—I think of the spaghetti-shoveling scene in Magical Mystery Tour.
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John’s relationship with food seems the most complex. After a critic (a crazy one, IMO) called him “fat” in Help!, he was self-conscious about his weight. And as you say, for a while at least he was macrobiotic.
John would have done a bread baking segment for TV. He’d give an interesting talk about yeast while pounding the dough.
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If he were alive today, he might be a fan of the Great British Bake Off, perhaps even appearing as a guest judge.
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Nancy, that’s so great. John would so do something bizarre ala- spaghetti shovelling from MMT.
Now I’m getting half formed thoughts of the Erotic Lithographs and where that could go and I’m very sorry.
Sorry everyone ☹️☹️
https://youtu.be/QI7-xyue8H0
I LOVE this.
But his knife ‘skills’ are very frightening! I yelped at least twice.
I truly hope that the most troubling thing I ever hear about Paul McCartney is that he puts raw onions in with his mashed potatoes, because frankly, that’s concerning enough for me!