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January 19, 2003
REVIEWS: Expression of man’s soul
Among the teenage millions who were swept off their feet by Beatlemania in the sixties were my mom and aunts. Two months ago a colleague of mine, aptly named Jude, travelled two hundred odd miles to listen to a concert the remaining Beatles gave in Los Angeles. Another co-worker’s eight-year-old daughter requested a Beatles Top Ten CD for Christmas.
The phenomenon unleashed by the Liverpool boys almost four decades ago, ravaged by the tolls of time and an entertainment culture geared towards computerized gadgetry, has still kept a hold on people for three generations. No small feat in a time when digital know-how increases exponentially every minute. Part of the credit for the enduring appeal of Beatlemania goes to the most sobering and introspective of the group, Sir Paul McCartney.
A glimpse of the measure of the man’s soul is found in the pages of his first anthology, Blackbird singing which includes samples of his better known lyrics, eulogies to past friends, self-descriptive poems and stand-alone stanzas.
Of course, the more famous lyrics, “Blackbird”, “Hey Jude”, “Yesterday”, are all there. So are comparatively less well-known numbers. In the form of full poems, the reader sees the context of the lyrics that thrilled the world once. “Blackbird”, sang by Sir Paul solo on acoustic guitar, was a reference to the oppression of blacks in the segregated times of the American South.
“Yesterday” was a premonition of the misfortunes, like breakup and death, which was to shadow the Liverpool phenomenon soon. A similar realistic context goes with almost every one of the lyrics.
More poignant and personal are the twenty or so pages devoted to the woman who gave Sir Paul strength and stability for a quarter of a tumultuous century. The streams of consciousness, short poems, and verses that celebrate the life of and longing for the late Linda McCartney are an understandable mixture of grief, mysticism, and ecstasy. A line like “Don’t ask me why/I never say good bye to my love” has an echo in too many of the ghazals of Ghalib and Meer.
Yet, Linda is not the only woman mentioned in the book. There are others, neighbours and friends, paupers and prostitutes who have come in and gone out of Sir Paul’s chequered life or have influenced his thoughts and songs. Some get a whole poem while others merit a small verse.
Love, women, music, and friendship aside, Sir Paul McCartney’s social conscience is on display in the book too. There are verses decrying nuclear armament and championing the universal brotherhood of man. A few celebrate truly eclectic beliefs like the Chinese concept of Ying-yang!
This is a breathtaking kaleidoscope of a personality that is both contemporary and timeless. The volume has done an impressive job in condensing the forty-year career of a man who helped redefine popular culture. The lyrics, the love poems, the verses of social protest are all here. This is poetry at the level and context of the average person.
The enticing slenderness of the volume is its bane. Edited well by the contemporary British poet Adrian Mitchell, the book suffers from the dilemma of logistics. It is a daunting job to squeeze Paul McCartney’s multi-faceted output into less than two hundred pages. The results will leave some complaining that their favourite lyric is not there while others will be disappointed in not having any contextual notes to the lesser known or slightly bizarre poems like the enigmatic three line “Steel”.
Nonetheless, as long as the book is taken in the spirit it was put together, that of a sampling of Sir Paul’s autobiographical literary output, the reader is well set to enjoy it. For many in their middle age, the book will bring silent nostalgia, while for the Generation-X this volume will reemphasize that certain literary impulses exist in a plane devoid of time and space.
For a generation with little time to savour culture, this slim anthology is as good an introduction as any into the mind of a cultural icon of its parents’ generation.
Blackbird singing: poems and lyrics
By Sir Paul McCartney
W.W. Norton and Co. Inc., New York
ISBN 0-393-02049-5
190pp.
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