Paul McCartney recreates a duet with John Lennon at Glastonbury in 2022
Peter Jackson’s eight-hour documentary Get Back on the final days of the Beatles did more than revisit the past. It was also healing—for both fans and the surviving musicians.
The healing moment for me happened when I saw McCartney dancing with Lennon right there in Abbey Road Studios. This took place at the very moment when the Beatles were allegedly rupturing in acrimony and distrust.
The surviving film tells a different story.
Even at the end, these four musicians were deeply attuned to each other (that’s the right word in more than one sense), and shared happy moments of intimacy—just like a family.
They had gone through extraordinary experiences together, akin to comrades in war, that no outsider could possibly understand. Such ties are almost unbreakable.
So I wasn’t surprised when McCartney decided to borrow a film clip from 1970 and use it in live performance more than 50 years later. Seeing this rediscovered footage had psychically reunited him with his old mate.
You can feel it in the clip below. When I first saw it, tears came to my eyes. I’m not ashamed to admit that. But I wasn’t alone. When John Lennon appears on the screen, the audience responds audibly—not applause, or cheers, but just a deep, collective sigh of beatitude.
McCartney singing live in concert with a young John Lennon in 2022 is like an old couple coming together again after years of separation. It’s Yin embracing Yang. The Apollonian merges with the Dionysian. Opposites are reconciled.
So if you want some positive vibes in our troubled times, here it comes. Let everybody have a good year. Let everybody see the sun shine.
by Ted Gioia, Honest Broker | Read more:
Image: Paul McCartney/YouTube
[ed. What were those chords he was playing? (hard to tell backwards and upside down). And check this out:]The barely 15-year-old Paul McCartney used “Twenty Flight Rock” as his first song when he auditioned for John Lennon on July 6, 1957 in Liverpool, England. The 16-year-old Lennon was impressed by the young McCartney’s ability to play the song on the guitar during their first official introductions at St. Peter’s Church Hall prior to a church garden fete. The good first impression of McCartney’s performance led to an invitation to join The Quarrymen – John Lennon’s band that would eventually evolve into The Beatles. On The Beatles Anthology, McCartney noted that: “I think what impressed him most was that I knew all the words.” […]
