What does any
self-respecting thirty-six-year-old who was given £30 in Amazon Gift Card
vouchers for his birthday spend them on? Special Edition remasters of two of
Paul McCartney’s best 1980s albums Tug of War and Flowers in the Dirt, that’s
what.
You’d think this
many years into the game my interests might deviate, but apparently not; the
man who first bought Flowers in the Dirt on cassette from Wembley Market in his
early teens is buying it again in his mid-(don’t you dare say “late”)-thirties
on a different format; give it another twenty years and I’ll be paying to have
the album implanted into my head.
Yet again, I
prove where my allegiance lies; I didn’t use the vouchers to buy the 50th
Anniversary remaster of Sgt Pepper- even if that was essentially another
Macca-led project; I spent them on his less-celebrated yet often as interesting
solo work. A lot of people would sniff at that statement, but only because
they’re comparing the man’s later work with his earlier stuff and judging him
against himself; how many people can say they’ve achieved what he’s done in his
life? So very few - so why can’t we celebrate him for it? There’s no need to be
snobby about it.
I’m currently on
track four of Flowers - the beautiful Distractions, with it’s And I Love
Her-style semitone key change for the classical guitar solo (I’m a musical
nerd) - and it’s like being reunited with an old friend; I haven’t heard it
properly in years, since no longer owning a tape deck. Strangely, I don’t find
myself judging the taste of the thirteen-year-old me; it’s probably more
acceptable for someone of my age to like this sort of thing now. I don’t care;
for me, Macca’s songs are little gifts that keep giving. Thanks Mum for the vouchers (she’ll like that).