Friday 11th March

He has been around so long it is hard to imagine him not making music.  Every couple of years or so he gives us another record, some are better than others – I didn’t really like his take on old standards “Kisses on the Bottom”, despite its cheeky title.  But “Run Devil Run” his modern version of old rock’n’roll songs was excellent and better than John’s “Rock’n’Roll”.  And he continues to surprise us; he has written classical pieces and a couple of experimental electronic records as ‘The Fireman’, not my cup of tea but interesting, and apparently he was the Beatle who first used tape loops, taking his demo’s in for George Martin to smooth out.  And he was far more interested in the avante-garde in the mid-sixties than John who discovered it a bit later.

And he still has something to say.  His latest record “NEW” is certainly very modern sounding and the tunes aren’t that bad either.  I doubt he will ever write another “Yesterday” or “The Long and Winding Road”, but the Sixties were indeed extraordinary times, and while most of his contemporaries rest on their laurels or embark on lucrative World Tours he is still exploring new music and writing and releasing records.  And he obviously doesn’t need the money, The Beatles made far more money from their records after they split than before.

And he is almost the last remaining Beatle, (Ringo? Well Ringo played drums very well and was a funny man, but is pretty irrelevant nowadays) and he was at least an equal to John and though the Popular Conception is that he was lucky to bump into him, it may well have been the other way round.