if you don't like him, you don't like him. I think you're being narrow minded and that you're conveniently 'cherry picking' (if such a terms can be used to describe low-points) his poorer moments, but, y'know, these things happen. Band on the Run is a good album. Have you given that a shot? Does 'Maybe I'm Amazed' strike you as a good song? Coming up to date, does the last Fireman project do anything to persuade you.

Otherwise, worry not. I hate cauliflower and mackerel. I stopped caring what other people liked in either years ago!

I think Paul And Artie were right to reject that name change.

Oh and you can't like everything so don't worry about it.

Start picking at Macca's solo career and then look at Lennon's solo output of the same period. There is a fair bit of dreck there and some which matches Macca at his most sugary sweet.

His Beatles output is naturally brilliant and his solo career is much better than critics would have you believe.

To dismiss him on the basis of one children's song and a Scottish folk song is frankly ridiculous.

These are all excellent albums :

70s

McCartney
Ram
Red Rose Speedway
Band on the Run
Venus and Mars
London Town
Back to the Egg (some may differ on the last two)

80s

McCartney II (bizarre album but often brilliant)
Tug of War
Flowers in the Dirt

90s

Flaming Pie

00s

Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (especially)
Electric Arguments (The Fireman)

So that's 13 albums for you to get stuck into. Otherwise give the Wingspan double CD a shot as a decent introduction to the (mostly) 70s period. Maybe it's on that Spotify contraption.

feel the same way you do.

I'm not a big fan but are you being diverted by the fact that he always comes across as a complete pillock on radio and television. As others have said, you've focussed on his appalling stuff when he really has produced some classic pop songs.

My feeling is McCartney made an evidently brilliant contribution to many Beatles records - bass obviously, vital creative ideas, suggestions for changes to the others' songs. But a number of his own Beatles songs (as well as solo work) are just rather too twee and pleased with themselves and can be quite cloying - 'Here, There and Everywhere', 'Michelle' and 'Yesterday'. Others have agreed and it's a perfectly reasonable point of view to have. His songs on Beatles albums are rarely the high points for me. Even 'Penny Lane' I find a bit irritating - beautifully made though it is. I much prefer 'Strawberry Fields'. It's all that so-English, brass band, umpah umpah, music hall pastiche style he often adopts that I dislike. There is something off putting about him that I can't get past. He's more tolerable, or even great, when he rocks out ('Can't Buy Me Love') or when he is less polished. Nevertheless I acknowledge there are some real gems in his own work. It doesn't matter how talented someone may be - if it doesn't do it for you no one can make you see otherwise, which is fine.

and valid point.You were born in 1965.By the time you were a teenager British pop music for the teenager was in full swing.I think a-lot of people forget that during most of the 70's & 80's The Beatles were by & large off the Radar so your recollections of McCartney as a "What's all the fuss about?"seems appropriate.As for destroying his legacy,I'm certain that's impossible.

GMT-8

I am a big McCartney fan.I really enjoy the different styles of music he writes. The 'Brass band, umpah umpah, music hall pastiche style' is his father's influence.I love that music and I think the Fireman is right up there with his best stuff.As Dai said, listen to the albums on the list, in order, and you will get a sense of what all the fuss is about.The only change I would make to the list is don't bother with 'Chaos and Creation in the Backyard',it didn't do much for me.He still has the magic and the drive(still touring)and do not pay much attention to newspapers, it's the music the man has written that counts.

"True legends die before their time "

By that logic Messrs Dylan, Cohen, Jagger, Richards, Spector, etc etc should be dead.

I'm not *altogether* convinced by your argument :-)

Writing children’s nursery rhymes is, I would say, a good deal harder and a nobler calling than writing surly rock for spotty students and malcontents.
Kids’ have much sharper bullshit detectors. And better taste. And batter table manners.

made the crucial mistake of not being gunned down by a madman in 1980. Silly old Paul!

I have a feeling it's anyone whose face a bored Portuguese teenage will have on a t-shirt while they morosely munch Pringles sat on the pavement in Leicester square.
I not sure Macca wants to be "legend" anyway it seems a fairly thankless role really having to meet people's you've never met overly romantic teenage expectations of you.

All I can suggest is you listen to some of his music and make your own mind up. Oh and get over is he cool thing which seems to underline your post I had thought we'd agreed to like what we like regardless of the prevailing opinion.

Oh and re: the frog chorus it's a children's song, catchy tune, easy to remember lyrics, suitably silly la la bum bum moments, a well done animated video and Rupert bear perfect. It's not Helter skelter but then again it was never intended to be, judged as a children's song (and also by children, my niece likes it) it's not too shabby.

I'm with you completely on how the guy comes across. I was born in '68 and find it hard to connect the genius behind The End, Hey Jude, Helter Skelter, Band on the Run, Got to Get You Into My Life etc with the history-rewriting, self-justifying and largely talent-free berk who keeps popping up to trade off his HJH legacy to promote a never ending tidal wave of dreck.

And then I catch a bass line - Dear Prudence or Two of Us - or Uncle Albert or Junior's Farm comes up on iTunes, or I hear my 5 year old singing along to songs I've taken for granted for years and realise how long his shadow is. It's not just that he wrote some amazing songs, it's also his hand on the tiller that led to some of the musical adventures I know and love. And more than that, his contributions to others' ideas, as well as the entirely benign effect he had on the creativity and determination of George Harrison and John Lennon. The guy is the single most important popular musical personage of the Twentieth Century in my view.

No doubt he realises that a period of quiet, non-product pushing obscurity would do wonders for his legacy - a legacy that clearly bothers him in part - but at the end of the day, you do what you know and what makes you happy. We unfortunately have no escape because he will always attract publicity no matter what he does.

Honestly, what's the point? You don't "have a problem" Dave, you just don't think that much of Paul McCartney. That's your prerogative, and you've made your point with gusto, if not always with consistency. If I were you I'd leave it a that, lest I start to come off like a troll, which I don't think you are.

"You Never Give Me Your Money"?

If he did - then that's enough for me.

to carry his luggage

we have brilliance like the previously mentioned You Never Give Me Your Money, not to mentioned myriad others such as For No One, Eleanor Rigby, Got to Get into My Life.

To Lennon's debit we have lazy and down right nasty stuff like Run for Your Life.

To his MTV Unplugged the other day. I had never heard it before and found it a very enjoyable hour. Did Lennon/Mccartney ever write songs "together" after the early days? or was it just an idea here and there added to each other's songs? If so, surely poor old George was getting shafted royally.

No More Lonely Nights was the last good song he did, and he's a terrible live performer.

I'm a big fan, though, of his solo stuff and a lot of Wings, but as a person I think he's a bit of a tit and has nothing interesting to say whatsoever.

Where's the mystery?

I know its trivial, but its the endless thumbs-up / peace signs that get up my hooter.

Johnny Gets It Right...

Bazza responding to the question "How many games will you get in the Premiership this year before they find out how overrated/crap/overthehill you are?".

OK, so, Macca was 25% of the Beatles and wrote about 45% of their material. The Beatles are 100% awesome. Therefore, solo Macca must be, on average, about 35% awesome - and it is!

I think Dance Tonight is an incredible song, for this reason: It wasn't a hit, didn't make the charts, the lyrics are banal, but... it penetrated. There is a pop knowledge within that song that's unfathomable, written with earworm DNA so that on just one listen you think it's old and new and when it's finished you know the song inside and out.

Shall we all sing it now..?

I have read and digested every comment and genuinely appreciate the constructive advice. I have no agenda, just a desire to find out what I'm missing. It is clear that 40 years on The Beatles still MATTER to many people and for that reason I will listen again and try to understand. Maybe a chronoligical journey from the beginning might give me something to look forward to. There is currently a gap in my musical tastes that I find hard to fill with anything current (Lady GaGa excepted). My view on Paul McCartney the person remains unchanged, but I am willing to give the musician a chance. I am fascinated by the obvious John / Paul split among genuine fans and any recommendations on good books on the subject would be appreciated.

There had to be a however and it is this, most of the real fans treat a nuisance like me with a sense of humour and words that make me think, mmmmmm maybe I'm wrong? Others should learn to take the criticism and understand that we do not all like the same thing and opinion in music is almost as important as the music itself. And the ones that ask "What's the point?" well the point is minds can be changed, never accept your first thought and sometimes views need challenging just so that they can be confirmed.

This could be the last time, I don't know!

McCartney that is. By having the temerity to still be alive, and with his creative juices still flowing, he's just trying to stay busy. There's going to be a few duds among the gems, but it's too complex to reduce it to a 'good or bad' debate.

Just that solo on Taxman, the bassline on And Your Bird Can Sing and all of Maybe I'm Amazed are enough for me to cement his reputation. No amount of Frog Choruses can change that. His problem like most artists is that their best work is probably behind him, but don't knock him for trying. Just that his legacy is larger than most. He must have realised things were a bit odd when his daughter, aged 6 or so, finally twigged it and asked him "Are you Paul McCartney?"

Out of 700 or 800 songs, he's always mocked for things like 'The Frog Chorus'....a song made for children for a best selling and much loved cartoon film; children loved it.

My point is that a lot of bands don't have such baggage to hide (U2, The Clash, New Order etc.) but that is because their music hasn't encompassed one tenth of McCartney's.

Thus po-faced, right-on, one dimensional acts like The Jam have no embarassing moments because they stuck religiously to a very narrow musical style and fan-base.
They're not mocked because they never left their safety zone.

all of youse.. you're disturbing the neighbours

in today's Times:
'who is the fabbest Beatle?' by St. Etienne member and all-round musicologist Bob Stanley , particularly his view that 'a compilation of tracks from his (McCartney's) last five studio albums would be enough to cement his legend', especially the above-mentioned End of the End.

does my 10-year-old daughter, who is - I'm delighted to say - just blown away by The Fabs, just think they're brilliant?
She loves Paul's songs and she loves John's songs - she just loves the music and doesn't carry any of the baggage that us old fogeys do.
As I write this she's watching the Beatles in the USA prog on BBC 2 and singing along to I Wanna Hold Your Hand - it doesn't really matter to her Who's Best, they were, and are, still Fab. Nothing Paul or John have done since really makes any difference.

I'm going to tell you all...GO TO SLEEP. It's Monday already.

Paul's probably the most gifted prolific songwriter ever. All kinds of hits he has had. He's been successful in multiple genre's of music. In pop music he's been successful in 2 or 3 different musical voabularies. His Wings is different from his solo and Beatles musical languages. As if by 3 different people. That's pretty unusual. No one has ever done that....ever...
He writes, rock, pop, ballads, folk, classical, ambient/electronic, avante guard, children and all with success. The guy even paints to critical success. He's also one of the best live performers too. Proves it over and over. John Lennon was not. He just didn't do enough of it later on to prove he could do it alone. But he was awesome in the shows he did do. Also John's solo career was not full of many rockers. Paul arguably wrote more in the first 5 or 6 years after the break up. In some new candid unreleased interviews released yesterday; John talks nicely about how Paul taught him guitar and how early on it was hard to keep with him because of him being just a natural... He is just one of those gifts you get like Beethoven, Scott Joplin, Cab Calloway, Sinatra...He is arguably the greatest ever. His last 20 years have been filled with less radio hits yet his zeal for the new has never changed. A true pioneer, nobody can touch him. He doesn't have to do a thing, nothing to prove. but he pushing the envelope.

This is the sort of Macca propaganda that always riles even those of us who defend him. 'No one has ever done that...ever' eh? Really? You don't have to look much further than Phil Collins to find someone who's stuff differs hugely according to era and band (solo, Genesis, Brand X).

The writing of different styles 'with success' is a bit of a moot point: I personally doubt that his poetry, classical music or art would have been remotely successful if it appeared under a different name (sample poetry: "Sadness isn't sadness, it's happiness in a black jacket... tears are not tears, they're balls of laughter dipped in salt").

I think you may be confusing fame (which allows him to release whatever he likes to some degree of success) with artistic merit, where his muse has been much less assured since the breakup of the HJH.

BTW, the candid interviews you refer to did not say that Paul taught him guitar - they said he taught him 'quite a lot of guitar' - a subtlety that only the blinkered would miss.

(Who needs Barry Miles!)

For much of the 70s every album, from 'McCartney' to 'Back To The Egg', was a stoner's delight - melodic gems amongst the throwaways, little fragments of songs stitched together, recorded in the barn or on the boat, with the wife, in a haze of smoke, and much of what emerged was fantastic, although derided at the time as not worthy of the HJH work ethic.

In the early 80s he seemed to straighten up a bit and produced, for the main part, rather trite pop songs and duets and collaborations with anyone that was passing - Elvis Costello, MJ, Stevie Wonder, Carl Perkins, Eric Stewart - while trying to come to terms with the new technology and a world in which chart placings for the Gods of the Sixties were no longer guaranteed. (It's my Fairlight & Linn drums theory again).

In the 90s, with the resurgence of interest in his former band, he seemed to come to terms with the weight of the HJH's legacy and began 'crafting' songs again. Recently, and certainly on 'Memory Almost Full', I'd say he's producing some of his best work in years drawing on all of those earlier elements, and he's touring the entire back catalogue like a bastard. I suspect the reefer's back with a vengence too. Good for him.

could not produce one single, solitary decent song post-Beatles. John had a brief purple patch lasting exactly 1.5 albums, but Paul lost the plot.

In truth, the rot had already set in for both of them long before the Beatles finally called a halt to the madness. For me, "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" and "Yesterday" will always exemplify the two major weaknesses in Paul McCartney's work - sickening music hall on the one hand, maudlin drivel on the other. I prefer him in "I'm Down"/"She's a Woman" mode any day.

Of course, I'm in the very small minority who consider "Please Please Me" the Beatles' most thrilling album. And on this matter I won't listen to the opinions of anyone born after 1949, or 1951 at the absolute latest. If you weren't there when the Beatles broke, you'll never know how the world changed.

Your opening statement is utterly ridiculous.

That's not to say he hasn't produced the odd duffer but he has been amazingly consistent in producing quality songs even post Beatles even his worst albums have had something great on them

People are so tough on Paul. He's just not what a male rock/pop icon is supposed to be, is he?

He's always been too pretty, and he never properly subverted it by dressing in drag or whatever. Paul's always acted dorky and enthusiastic when hip rock stars are supposed to act cool and cynical. He likes to be liked and to please people when he's not supposed to give a shit. He gives a thumbs up when he's supposed to grab his crotch, flip you off, or stand stoically behind his shades. Good lord, he dyes his hair! (Of course, so does Yoko; at 76, you don't have jet black hair anymore, yet no one seems to mind her hair job.) In his own way, Paul is a freak in the male rock world. Too bad people can't appreciate that and the fact that he never really tries to be anything but his goofy self.

And then there's the music. About his work and contributions to the Beatles, enough has been said. In his solo career, there are so many great songs (and plenty of awful ones, too). But if you don't like his style or his voice, if it's not your thing, I doubt any listing of the stuff I like will sway you. Still, here are my favorites: I think all of Ram is brilliant -- really gorgeous and really strange. Many reviewers hate it, but one I read who loved it called it the first indie album. The only Wings stuff I like is Band on the Run, which holds up really well and doesn't sound dated, to me anyway. I think Chaos and Creation is his best work in this decade. I didn't really like Memory Almost Full, with the exception of a few songs. Much of Electric Arguments is damn good, though.

...Paul McCartney is hated for.

that McCartney's biggest problem is that he hasn't once, not for one second, not ever, not remotely, been cool. He was cool-by-association in the Beatles, but once he and John (who was always effortlessly cool) stoped being partners, Paul was all mullets and Wings and thumbs ups. I feel like there's no question that he was the greater songwriter, or at least, the greater craftsman. In any case, he was the reason those Beatles records, incl John's incredible song, got finished. He was the finisher. And that means you can forgive him his Long and Winding Roads. As for his solo work, again: pretty lame as far as rockstar stuff goes; image was never something he did well. But there are dozens of incredible songs, many of them hits, many more obscure and interesting and truly bizarre and every bit as rocking or beautiful or dignified or "artistic" as any of his contemporaries' work (John had just as many solo clunkers and George had twice as many; but they're cool, which goes a long way in rock). And even now that PM's in his nineties or whatever, he's still trying. It's not all great, but it is worth your respect. Whatever else he might be, he's a musical force. Which is better than cool.

but I think your Long and Winding Road reference is flawed. The schmalz factor on that is entirely down to Phil Spector, not Macca, as a listen to 'Let it Be...Naked' will confirm. A beautiful song, imo.

myself - why didn't Macca record the bass line himself?

Given the amount of grief it's caused since, I just can't see Macca abandoning TLAWR. Just never made sense to me - even the Naked version has the sloppy bass on it.

McCartney had been shot in 1980 and Lennon had lived? I suspect it might be slightly different in tone.

Besides, the best post Beatles solo album is All Things Must Pass, by The Quiet One, seeing as he was saving so much of it up for when they did split.

Is that contrary enough? :D

"has there ever been a man so destroy his legacy by what he did after his peak?"

Applied to the HJH, I'd say that of the four, Macca is the least guilty.