Paul McCartney used to be co-leader of a group called the Beatles, who were, according to some assessors, either the biggest thing in the history of rock 'n' roll, or showbiz, or both. That does not, however, explain why Paul McCartney is currently running neckand-neck with Elton John for the title of most popular recording artist in the world, nor why he recently re-signed with Capitol records for what may be the largest multimillion dollar contract in history, or at least until Stevie Wonder finishes his current negotiations with Motown.

Beatle nostalgia does not explain McCartney's Grammy Award for Band on the Run, nor, really, the spectacular success of his current tour of the United States. The last time Paul played here was with the Beatles, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco on August 29, 1966. His old fans have not seen him in ten years, and many of the new ones he has picked up 'with Wings have never seen him, may not even have been Beatle fans. This Wings tour has been described by one of its own. employees as a "military operation," and it certainly bears some of the earmarks of one — an entourage of 33 people plus offand-on publicists are hitting 20 cities for 31 performances in large arenas, climaxing a world tour that began in England late last year. The two and a half hour set includes 27 songs, elaborate new sound and light apparatus, a glowing silver stage with flashing lights, smoke bombs, brass section and laser beam climax. All tickets have been sold out immediately - they broke sales records in L.A., selling out two Forum shows in three hours and fifteen minutes, and New York, where they sold Qut Madison Square Garden in four hours. Furthermore, this has probably been covered more extensively by the "straight" press than any other rock tour in recent memory — NBC, CBS, the daily press on all levels including photos on page two of five separate editions of the New York Post and a New York Daily; News centers, ead. The New York Times ran an article on ticket sales for Wings, Newsweek devoted a full page and Time a cover article, and there has been a blanket local TV coverage at every step. Not only that, but he and Linda even took the kids along.

If you think you can pull all that just on the basis of being an aging Beatle, just take a look at George Harrison. If you can stand to.

So now the obvious question is: why? What has McCartney got that makes people of all ages the world over respond, that makes the media sit up and bark soon as he strolls across the pond, that makes his comeback solo tour a notary-certifiable Event in a day when rock tours are dubbed Events every time you turn around? His albums are, by and large, some of the blandest discs ever piped into a waiting room, and even his hit singles are so eminently forgettable that the titles evade recall without research. The man obviously proved he had a gift for melody in the Beatles, but his lyrics are so dopey they end up making fun of themselves, and on top of all that he insists on trundling his musically illiterate photographer wife with him everywhere, insistently, both on stage and records.

It doesn't seem to make any sense, but then few things willingly do these days. The obvious place to begin is Linda McCartney, since they asked for it and there is no getting around the question of her presence even if one wishes to be kind. Forget that bitchy Blair Sabol. Forget all that stuff you might have heard or suspected about Linda being just a richbitch groupie who pulled off a big score. The fact is that she takes lots of nice pictures — maybe too many — of Paul^ and the kids for album covers, and Paul loves her very deeply. So deeply that, just about the time John and Yoko began their post-Beatle breakup artsy capers, Paul began to involve Linda in his own creative endeavors. The progression of this enterprise, in terms of album cover credits alone, is interesting. On McCartney, Paul's 1970 solo bow, he does (almost) everything musical down to overdubbing all his bwn instrumental tracks, while Linda is credited with liner photos and vocal harmonies. By early 71's Ram, however, they have become complete creative coequals — this album is by Paul & Linda McCartney, and Linda gets co-production credit, as well as co-authorship of six bf the LP's twelve tunes. By late 71's Wild Life, Denny Laine has joined the family, so the group's name is Wings, but Linda still receives co-production credit, and all the songs save one oldie are listed as composed by Paul & Linda McCartney. There is a photo of Paul on the label affixed to side one, a pic of Linda on side two.

By 1973's Red Rose Speedway, however, Paul has begun to tire of \ sexual democracy. The album's listed *j as Paul McCartney & Wings, entirely j written and produced by Paul. Linda is credited with backing vocals, keyboard fills, and playing "dingers" on "Little Lamb Dragonfly." Band on the Run and Vends and Mars sustain this reassertion of male hegemony, with Paul receiving all composing and production credits, although by Venus & Mars he has relaxed enough to merely call the group Wings. The recent At the Speed of Sound is all written and produced by Paul, but he re-establishes democracy in more generalized form, allowing Denny Laine and guitarist Jimmy McCulloch each to write and sing one song, while Linda, Laine and drummer Joe English get to sing one Paul song apiece. Linda's is called "Cook of the House."

Having Linda play keyboards on stage in a multimillion dollar tour is like hiring a good black construction worker to edit the New York Times.

At this point it would hardly signify to point out that, as in the case of John and Yoko, the compulsive public utilization of any woman, wife or no, in a creative capacity for which she displays no aptitude is not only not striking a blow for feminism but is actually inverse sexism of the most emetically patronizing kind. Having Linda play keyboards onstage in a multimillion dollar tour is like hiring a good black construction worker to edit the New York Times. And then not even giving him a chance to fuck up, just a desk instead.

But it's obviously not feminism from any angle that drives Paul to put Linda in the band and Linda to accept the pbst. From a recent article in the London Sunday Times Magazine about the McCartneys by Beatles biographer Hunter Davies: "Linda stands in the kitchen pressing 24 tangerines to make fresh orange drinks for breakfast. Rose is putting the bacon in the pan. Rose is a friendly, red-headed Cockney lady who is their, housekeeper-cumnanny. They took her on their recent Australian tour, although normally Linda manages by herself, despite singing and playing in the band...In America, they're hiring three houses, one for the West Coast, one the East and one for Middle. Linda will be home each night to do the cooking, to be mum."

Quite the proper British couple. Which, of course, is exactly the impression they wish to convey. It runs through songs on all the albums, from the "cook like a worhan" line in McCartney's "Oo You" to "Cook of the House," which opens and closes with the sound of frying grease, Linda cheerfully prattling "No matter where I serve my guests/They seem to like the kitchen best/Salad's in the bowl/The rice is on the stove/Green beans in the collander and the rest is heaven only knows" — it's "One's On the Way" with birth control.

Which brings us to the question of sex. Paul and Linda's sex life is almost an outright question, if ohly because for a while at least he/they wrote and sang about it with such graphic compulsiveness, which is the only reason it's my or anybody else's business. But, Jesus. They were discreet enough on the first album, with "Man We Was Lonely'"s rejection of secular one-night floozies in favor of monogamous homebody-tobody, which at least on the surface is admirable: "I used to ride ih the fast city lights/Singing songs that I thought were all mine/Now let me lie with my love all the time I arh home..." As Paul told Davies: "I'm as happy as when I was playing with the Beatles.. .But what I have got now is an extra — the family. I had chicks in the Beatle days and now I have kids [?]. I don't miss the old way of life at-all."

Okay, but when Paul sings in "Silly Love Songs," "How can I tell you about my loved one?" — well, let me count the ways you've tried. In "Hi Hi Hi" you told the bitch to sprawl on the bed and spread, because "I'm gonna do ya sweet banana" (?). Or who could forget "C'mon little lady , let's eat at home/in bed...now don't do that..." Leaving questions of subtlety to dry off, this song seems curiously antiseptic for a celebration of cunnilingus and dicklick. And isn't, like Doris Day and Rock Hudson movies, the asepsis in a ribald posture exactly where the element of incongruity, if not downright creepiness comes in?

In attempting to put over an image of healthy hearthside connubial fructification, Paul and Linda may have unwittingly trumpeted their insecurity to the world. Like in "My Love": "My love does it good." So what? So does mine, but I don't go around telling locker room tales from podiums. "My love does it good" — is this not extended narcissism? Note that if you make a double entendre, you must make it backwards, away from salacity. One could even make a case for an admission of inability to perform adequately with other partners: "Only my love does it good to me." To say nothing of the brutal honesty (or is it braggadocio?) of: "Love doesn't come in a minute/Sometimes it doesn't come at all."

Jeez, I'm beginning to feel like Masters & Johnson. Let's*change the subject. The kids. Now, again, this writer would like, to state categorically that he is every bit as much in favor of children as sexual intercourse, even when the two have nothing to do with each other. What he does not believe in, however, is the bringing of innocent tots along on rock 'n' roll tours, where they might be subjected to, the sleazy forays of foul-mouthed roadies, nor the conversion of rock 'n' roll albums to family albums more fit for Grandma's bureau than the racks at Sam Goody's.

I know, I know. Sonny & Cher, Grace & Paul. David & Angie, even. But there is something more at work in posing for publicity stills with your progeny on your lap than mere selfprostitution and the use of cloying gimmicks to boost biz. Like the King Family, the McCartneys in their celebration of suburbap conjugal joys and hyping of their children are involved in a presentation of nuclear normalcy, a model for the present and future (as they see it) based on the conventions of the past. Just like Paul's music, in which Sgt. Pepper could draw rock from music hall and be hailed as an avant-garde masterpiece. To be sure, Paul and Linda are marketing themselves, but they are also marketing a lifestyle. What lifestyle? Father Knows Best. But unlike Father Knows Best, which was smug, there is a . certain desperation underlying their presentation. They protest too much, and in their very bland rectitude there is a certain wild yearning after their idea of an ordered world. Which is, of course, very British and very middle class. This may look like a rock tour, may in fact be the biggest rock tour you ever saw buddy, but it's really just us and the kids on vacation.

Much of the result is nursery school music (but there are rules in nursery school, of course, and Paul is a Do-Be), in line with Rami's cover design by Paul which looks like the wall of a child's room. Does he write these ninny-tunes as home cartoons and lullabies for his children? And if so, what does this say about the kind of artist who would devote his public output to such a scheme? From fairy tales with storybook characters ("Band on the Run," jailer man and Sailor Sam) to comicstrips ("Magneto & Titanium Man"), lines like "when I leave my pajamas to Billy Budapest", ("Monkberry Moon Delight") and "Man, I could smell your feet a mile away" — only a child could laugh wholeheartedly at that. Perhaps McCartney has really tapped the vast market available to the musical equivalent of Benji, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory; traditional bubblegum music seems to be a playedout form anyway, and half these songs would be perfect Sesame Street fodder. They're cute, with a childish humor that's slightly out of kilter.

TURN TO PAGE 71

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 39

Of course, I realize that it is as silly as a McCartney song to analyze his lyrics in any kind of serious detail. The success of any given McCartney song depends not at all upon the lyrics, but on the hook, melody and how much conviction he can infuse into the subverbal core of his sonic truffles. That is, the songs, however fatuous, project an attitude, but that attitude is not to be taken seriously. Because it is irrelevant. As irrelevant as a Slinky. On the back cover of Venus & Mars: "Manufactured by McCartney Music, Inc., 39 W. 54th St., N.Y., N.Y." If your copy is defective and you write them a letter they send you a case of new ones.

As for Wings live, Paul McCartney's triumphal tour of U S. rock arenas is final proof that rock fans can no longer distinguish between rock 'n' roll and Easy Listening. Nor do they care. On the basis of his records, they didn't know Paul would have as relatively gutsy a live show as he did. Clearly they were buying a name with their $9.50. And they got more than their money's worth. They got the best entertainment package (as opposed to rock 'n' roll concert) since Alice Cooper's Welcome To My Nightmare tour.

And like Alice, McCartney is sterile. Sterility is both the selling point and insurance of ultimate obsolescence for McCartney albums. They're like electronic massages, from which you come away soothed but neither satiated nor fortified. It's this sterility which is fortunately missing from Wings' live presentation. Paul's cleanness and natural sense of showbiz simply makes the energy of his performance breezily expansive. Unfortunately, this amiably mild kick is delivered in Dachau franchises, to bedraggled and benumbed animals. Most don't notice the clash — they've got long hair at the Madison Square — but it renders McCartney's real accomplishment (the translation of his boutique ditties into a rousing party) ultimately meaningless. Kind of like bringing A Chorus Line to Folsom Prison.

May 7, 1976. I dragged my baby, Nancy, down to Detroit's Olympia Stadium to witness Wings along with 34,000 people who were either true fans or had money and nothing else to do that night. She didn't want to go; she hates rock concerts, particularly since she got a part-time job in a boutique where they sell hip threads and rock tapes blare, of course, all day. When At the Speed of Sound, the latest Wings LP came out, another employee of the boutique immediately purchased an 8-track of it, so she got to hear it uninterrupted for eight hours on each of two successive days. At the end of that time, she told me that the only thing she could remember off the entire tape was the phrase "Someone's knockin' at the door/Somebody ringin' the bell/Do me a favor/Open the door and let 'em in..."

I always thought that sounded like something a stoned-out junkie (the guy in the song, not Nancy) would say, but I let it pass. I wanted her opinion of Paul McCartney . So, after finding a place to park in a rubbly ghetto lot for under four dollars, we pushed our way-into the Olympia, through the crowd, and finally found our seats. And when I say push, I mean comes to shove. Olympia is like many large concert venues: when fully packed it closely resembles the concentration camp scenes in Wertmuller's Seven Beauties. A greyish darkness piled with sullen, lumpy, half-dead whelps. Except that, as we strongarmed our way through the teeming wretches to our two assigned folding' chairs on the main floor, we could hear and see Paul McCartney and Wings somewhere far in the smoky darkness with a blaze of light lifting them,.singing "Jet" with a power that reeked of enough back-on-the-boardsand ecstatic-for-it joy to lift you.

Except that very little beyond a joint can be lifted in a charnel house. So Nancy got stoned. "I figured it's the only way to make these things work," she said. I didn't indulge because, as a responsible journalist, it was my job to observe the entire show intently and with the most scrupulous objectivity. No drugola here! Unfortunately, my objectivity didn't amount to a hill of sopors, because when I turned face forward to check the McCartneys' approach to de rigeur rock theatrics, I saw instead a forest of ragged backs. Everybody in the two dozen rows ahead of us was standing on their chairs. So I stood on mine. Immediately a torrent of screams exploded behind me: "Siddown! Geddawf ya fuckin' chair! Hey, dumb fuck, we can't see, siddown! Siddown, siddown, siddown, siddown, siddown!"

I sat down. One could hardly, I felt, properly scrutinize the onstage proceedings with objectivity when every note was soiled with the sludge of this mob's abusive ravings. Ordinarily I wouldn't mind , because ordiharily I am at Led Zeppelin or Aerosmith or Kiss or Jethro Tull or Black Oak Arkansas and it doesn't make any difference, in fact adds to the overall aesthetic transaction. But th|s was Paul McCartney, for heaven's sake, and how in hell was one supposed to shiver his timbers to the wistful nuances of "Maybe I'm Amazed," not to mention "My Love," in the presence of such a caterwaul? No matter — Paul did both of those, as well as "Venus & Mars/Rock Show," "Let 'Em In," "Live & Let Die," "Hi Hi Hi," "Soily" (a new one, very driving, second encore), "Band on the Run," "Silly Love Songs," "Magneto," "The Long and Winding Road," "Lady Madonna," "Listen to What the Man Said," and, for a short acoustic set in the middle, "Picasso's Last Words," Paul Simon's version of "Richard Cory," "Blackbird," "I've Just Seen a Face," and "Yesterday."

Intermittently the forest of backs would clear for a few moments, or I would stand up on my seat again, and when I was able to see this is what I saw: Paul in a black jacket and scarf, running back and forth from a keyboard up on one end of the stage to strap on his guitar at the center. His instincts as a showman and, surprisingly, as the rocker you might have forgotten he was capable of being, were in high gear *he redeemed his worst material, because he was full to bursting with excitement at touring America again after all the years, and it showed, was inspiring, even thrilling in a way if not exactly contagious. At one point I turned around in my seat and looked at the crowd. Almost every face had that same vacant, stoned, null stare you see at all the rock shows now and have seen for a long time. I turned to Nancy, who pointed to a large blank screen high above the stage; as the smoky light shone on and through it you could see vague chiarascuro outlines that occasionally shifted ever so slightly. She wondered if this was part of the show and I said no, it just looked like a big blank screen to me, and what we were seeing on it was the iron rafters of the ceiling behind its half visible through its semi-translucence as the lights changed. She said, "No, I think it's part of the show." I told her she had been to too many Pink Floyd concerts. But even I wasn't sure.

Because the McCartneys have followed the Stones and all the other poor fools since Alice Cooper in holding onto the notion that some kind of inanimate visual staging, some set behind the action, no matter how lame or irrelevant, is essential if you are going to tour at all. Even ZZ Top have their own little corral and fake ca~ti. Wings had a series of large pictorial panels, changed at arbitrary intervals and supposedly illustrating certain songs, which looked like they had been airbrushed by a singularly unt'alented shut-in with a paintbox containing only dark grays, blues, browns and off-drabs. Two of the more memorably somber were £ brown chair, and an embarrassing depiction of a candlestick burning with its flame running into a reclining crescent moon. I say running into because that was exactly what it was doing — you couldn't actually see the flame, just a white candle rising to seemingly connect with a similarly white crescent, so they looked like two parts of the same grimly arcane symbolic object.

Towards the end of the show, when they did "Band on the Run," we discovered why the big screen had been above the stage all this time: they projected what must have been a promotional film made for the album at the session where the cover was shot — thg McCartneys, James Coburn, all those British character actors frozen in that tangled-bodies prison-escapee pose, knotted together like that for about ten minutes,, as the camera randomly cut back and forth between extreme facial closeups of Paul, Coburn, one of the black guys, back to Coburn, etc. They looked pained, the film was grainy, and you got embarrassed.

Which was especially unfortunate because they really didn't need any of this flapdoodle — the band was cooking, Denny Laine's guitar solos were wiry and inspired, and you could see through Paul in both his performing moves and between-song banter plenty of that old magically charismatic delight that made the Beatles such a charge. It was like being simultaneously shaken free of bondage to history and reminded of why it mattered enough to become historic in the first place.

Everybody got off on "Live and Let Die" — Paul let Linda introduce it, I thought she was going to sing a song and sat up straighter, she mumbled something about James Bond and the band went crashing into the song, complete with smoke bombs, which of course got the audience to react for once. Big ones, they were, biggef than Kiss' in 1974, though probably not so big as the ones they've got now. This song was also Linda's moment to unleash her Dramatic Gestures: when Paul would, sing "Live," she would shoot one arm straight up in the air in a modified power salute, when he'd bear down on "Die!" up would shoot the other one. She looked like a cheerleader, and I felt sorry for her during the acoustic set, when the band all sat in a semicircle on chairs at front stage center — she was the only one without a guitar in her hands, and had to content herself with patting her palms on her thighs in time. As for her instrumental work, she moved back and forth from piano to organ/mellotron a lot, but there didn't seem to be much coming out. During the encore,after Nancy and I had left our seats and pushed our way up front in preparation to go backstage. I got to see Linda close-up, from behind, her bony fingers gingerly tapping the keys, playing fills worthy of Question Mark & the Mysterians. She looked like she was haying fun, and you felt glad for her. She is, after all, not the first talentless musician to make this stage in a band popular enough to sell the place out.

When it was all over, my PR rep friend rounded up us lucky press and guests, including local TV crews and photographers scampering everywhere like rabbits in heat, and led us in an amoeboid pack down a hall and into a typical dingily bright dressing room where stale cold cuts littered a table, there was a garbage can full of beer and Paul and Linda McCartney sat on a ledge, seemingly cool and unruffled, while people clustered around them babbling and popping flashbulbs. They were instantly likeable, not least for their air of casual affability . They were so easygoing as opposed to the imperial manner of a Bowie or Jagger that perhaps they were ultimately imperial. Which is not to say gbdlike. Paul was tanned, with a Hawaiian shirt, while Linda w'ore what looked like a black silk man's bowling shirt, reinforcing the impression that she was just one of the boys in the band even as she sat next to Paul, ribs clamped tightly together facing out at a 45 degree angle fielding the questions and geegoshes, completing halves of the ideal Romantic Module. Meeting him you immediately flashed to A Hard Day's Night — the confident, pre-selfconscious charm, the easy quips, a veteran who still wears his boyishness well, and she obviously schooled ih that patented style by him, a working team, a smooth front. It was impossible not to feel that that bland facade was too breezily charming, that behind their tranquil accessibility were shields upon shields and two of the most guarded people in the business. I'told Paul that I thought his records bland but had been surprised at how exciting the live show was, and he sprang immediately into schtick: "Okay, you and me, Lester, outside, wfft! pfft!," making judo motions in the air. I asked them the meaning of those pictures at the back of the stage and Linda looked at me and cracked, "You know, Lester, surrealism! Symbolism! Come on!" I wandered away, drifted back into the middle of a gaggle of microphones and asked Paul & Linda why they took their kids everywhere with them.

"Kiss?" said Paul.

"No, kids. You know, children."

"Oh, them — well, we don't take them every where," said Linda.

"Not to adult functions — you know what I mean, old boy," said Paul, laughing and winking and nudging a microphone in the ribs all at the same time. Practiced, practiced.

"Oh, you mean like topless bars and such?" It was impossible not to meet their level of coyness, and no reason, under the circumstances, why you should resist. I wanted to ask them why the hell they were dragging their kids along on this goddam tour, but three microphones converged at once, and a few moments later we were all being hustled out because our fifteen mintues in the presence of fame were up. For an audience with the Pope and Mrs. Pope, it was pretty good. Not like a couple of months ago here when a whole bunch of people were received in David Bowie's dressing suite, and told to line up against one wall when the time arrived for His Majesty to make his entrance, after which he went down the line shaking hands with each supplicant and conferring whatever blessings a duke can drip on you. This is the way it is with big rock tours now, and by all comparisons the McCartney experience was remarkably non-uptight. Even if they did have two burly guards on either side of that room's door, who would not let you back in once you'd walked out. Security is at a premium these days.

And Paul McCartney, of course, is the antithesis of all the danger that rock 'n' roll used to stand for. People like McCartney because he epitomizes safety — a nice safe boy, safe music, safe marriage, safe kids, safe tours, safe money. Listen to his description of a rock concert in "Venus & Mars/Rock Show," even the way he sings it, and you know how cutely, albeit affectionately, distanced he is from the tumult and the stoned, stunned ennui. But then, why should he attend rock shows? Records are so much more manageable that I prefer 'em myself. I mean, "You score an ounce Ole!"? The man simply seems incapable of a gesture that is not arch. He's a plasticene porter, and for all his coyness lacks the obscene smugness of Elton John. But for all he sings of love, you don't sense much coming out of his music. It's more like a Mattel toy — shiny, synthetic but durable, breakresistant.

I mean, I realize the counter culture is dead as Davy Crockett hats, but at least Kiss are a war toy. Whatever nonsense has ever been promulgated in the name of rock 'n' roll, it's certain that Paul is, in every sense, on the side of law and order. Consumerism has always been integral, but were human beings, young ones at that, really meant to fulfill their generational destiny as passive receptacles for predigested pap? Why not just sell drugs through Ticketron? Leave It To Beaver, ca. 1977: "Mom,, can I have fi' bucks for an ounce of grass?" "Certainly, Beaver, but at that price are you sure you're not getting burned? I think we'd better consult your father about this..."

Oh, well — showbiz is as showbiz does, and I think my friend Eric has a pretty good handle on the whole situation. Eric works in a hip record store in a mall of hip boutiques; he sells Nancy's boutique their tapes of Wings, Bowie, Roxy and all the rest. Eric goes to all the concerts — loves 'em.' He loved McCartney. "It was a great show," he said. Eric also loved Bowie, Aerosmith, Jethro Tull, Chicago, Mahavishnu Orchestra, the Stones, Eagles, Elton John, Kiss and Yes. They were all great shows. "I just dig concerts," Eric says. "I'll go see anybody who comes to town."

If there's a ROCK SHOW

At the Concertgebow... *

* McCartney Music Inc., ATV Music Corp./BMI

(This article originally appeared, in slightly different form, in The Real Paper.)