The album, considered one of the greatest releases in “solo Beatles” history, is packed with songs the guitarist had been stashing away since 1966, including a few that didn’t make it onto Beatles albums. Harrison, a junior songwriting partner to John Lennon and Paul McCartney for way too long, emerged from his bandmates’ colossal shadows with a masterpiece.
His books include “Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero.All Things Must Pass caused a sonic boom when it was released in late 1970. He is a professor of economics at George Mason University and writes for the blog Marginal Revolution.
Tyler Cowen is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. But that list is longer and more diverse than is commonly believed - and Paul McCartney stands pretty close to the top of it. Still, the point stands: The ranks of great founders and managers rightly includes people such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. In his solo career he has sometimes released sub-par material and been too tolerant of less talented subordinates. At times he pushed Harrison too hard, and that led to Harrison threatening to leave the Beatles, as shown in “Get Back,” which resulted in a more general group dissatisfaction. He was also, by all accounts, a very active father, helping to raise five children. He has been an active painter, published two children’s books, and this year oversaw the production of the gorgeous two-volume set “The Lyrics,” a memoir of sorts told through his songs. Well into his 70s, he was still putting on two-and-a-half-hour live shows, a practice stopped only by the pandemic. He grew up in a very poor area of Liverpool (you still can visit the house) and became music’s first billionaire, through royalties from songwriting, revenue from concerts and shrewd investments in royalty rights to others’ songs (he also inherited money from his late wife). He studied the avant-garde and helped incorporate the ideas of John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen into popular music. The list of those he has collaborated with includes not only John Lennon and George Harrison, but also Ravi Shankar, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Elvis Costello, Carl Perkins, the Everly Brothers, Kiri Te Kanawa, David Gilmour, Kanye West and Rihanna. His vocal range once spanned four octaves and he is considered one of the greatest bass players of all time.
He also learned how to compose for classical orchestra and wrote several major choral works, including the well-received “Ecce Cor Meum.” Working with producer George Martin, he was one of the first popular musicians to master the use of the recording studio, in spite of having no technical background. He has three solo albums on which he plays every instrument, and he has composed in virtually every musical genre, including heavy metal, blues, music hall, country and western, gospel, Latin, pastiche, psychedelia, electronica, new wave, drone, lounge, reggae and more.
Many fans and critics prefer his work with the Beatles, but the totality of his achievements is jaw-dropping. And after “Let It Be” was to come “Abbey Road,” the Beatles album where Paul most clearly takes the lead.Īfter the Beatles broke up, McCartney kept going. The sessions for the “Let It Be” concert and album, as portrayed in “Get Back,” started only a few weeks after the work on the so-called White Album was concluded. The Beatles were one of the greatest startups of their generation: In addition to making music, they revolutionized social mores on a wide range of issues, including sex, drugs, fashion and politics.Īs for work ethic, Paul has been writing and performing songs since 1956 with no real breaks.
He has what Silicon Valley venture capitalists call “founder energy.” Chris Dixon, a partner at the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz and a professional judge of (non-musical) talent, tweeted how much respect he gained for McCartney by watching the documentary. In one scene, while experimenting on the bass guitar for a few minutes, he seems to conjure up the song “Get Back” from virtually nothing. He is energetically testing and trying to improve musical ideas, whether his own or those of the group. Almost everything that gets done goes through Paul. “Get Back” presents a reality-TV show version of this process in action.