On the UK albums chart, the number one spot this week belongs to The Boys of Dungeon Lane, a record released, in all the usual formats and a few new ones, by a man turning 84 next week.
The man played almost all the instruments, 17 in all. It's his 24th number one album, 9 with a former group, 15 since they split in 1970. These triumphs come 70 years after the man cut his first record: a demo acetate of a song he composed with his school-bus friend in Liverpool, George Harrison, called 'In Spite of All the Danger.'
We've been listening to what the man said our whole lives – and with good reason. Sir Paul McCartney should no longer be thought of, primarily, as an ex-Beatle or survivor of the counterculture but as a singular man for all seasons, one of the great exemplars of his time in how to live.
In his ninth decade Sir Paul strikes a blow for the world's aged with the same good cheer, and murmurs of melancholy, as when the Beatles first struck blows on behalf of the world's youth.
Better still, he reaches this stage without any need for his fans to separate our feelings about the man from our feelings about his art. (Think Roger Waters.)
