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This is a course McCartney has been following since John Lennon initiated the breakup of the Beatles in 1969 by telling Paul "I want a divorce." McCartney's first few albums, done solo or with Linda or with the constantly metamorphosing Wings, survived uncertain financial prospects and some serious critical drubbing. 1974's Band on the Run got raves, however, and won the first platinum record McCartney did not have to split four ways. Venus and Mars, released last year, was just as successful, and McCartney's current concert tour—which will land him in New York this week for two shows at Madison Square Garden —is sold out in each of the 21 cities it will blitz. In Los Angeles and New York, all tickets were snapped up within four hours. Right now, McCartney is bucking Elton John as Pop's top gun.
McCartney is more than a celebrity, because he is part of the poignant, exalted contemporary myth of the Beatles. Each member of the group had a persona that was clearly defined. George Harrison was the shy mystic, Ringo the innocent good-timer, John the dark poet, Paul—well, the one who would make the best impression on a weekend in the country. His bounteous melodic gifts seemed to be reflected in the brightness of his step, the openness of his smile. His impishness, and his considerable charm, always had an ironic undercurrent of worldliness and assurance. Even now, in performance or in conversation, he has the surprised sophistication of a gremlin who has just been caught under the drawbridge compromising the fairy princess.
It is not for any of this that Paul is popular, however. It is for the music he is making, the flowing Pop that typifies, even defines, the snug place much contemporary rock has found. When Lennon and McCartney wrote "Why don't we do it in the road?" neither one of them was talking about the middle, which is where Paul finds himself now, bopping straight down the white line. M.O.R.—"middle of the road"—is what the music business calls it, and that is the course Wings most frequently flies. McCartney is tempering the revolution he helped to create.
The Top 40 is where the money is, but never the heavy action. Bob Dylan, a visionary who helped alter the course of contemporary popular culture, is regularly outsold by the whimpy Carpenters, and has had only a handful of singles in the Top 10. One of the most remarkable things about the Beatles was their ability to have it all: to catch and change the spirit of the times, to be wildly popular, vastly influential and still adventurous, to amuse their audiences and make demands on them as well. Rock 'n' roll was born in the 1950s, out of black rhythm and blues mostly, and it took it just about a fast, funky decade to reach its adolescence. Dylan and the Beatles were most influential in bringing it along. In the early '60s it might have seemed heretical to suggest that rock could be a vehicle for intimate self-expression, for anger and confusion, or a cultural revolution. By mid-decade, all that was a foregone conclusion. Rock music had scrounged for and found its own randy legitimacy.