Memory almost full

I do not know if Paul McCartney ever thought of it while working on his latest album Memory Almost Full. At that time, it had been almost 40 years ago since the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the defining album of the new rock era, came out. That was in 1967, a period when drastic changes in the world came accompanied by the music that would haunt generations to come. One of those songs and also one of those included in the Sgt. Pepper’s LP was a lively ditty composed by Paul and fellow Beatle John Lennon titled When I’m 64.

The song asks, “When I get older and start losing my hair many years from now/ will you still be sending me a Valentine/ birthday greetings, bottle of wine/ if I’d been out till quarter to three/ would you lock the door/ will you still need me/ will you still feed me/ when I’m 64.” McCartney is now over that. He turned 65 last June 19. Now divorced, there is no wife to lock him out of the house if he comes home late. And he certainly did not want for gifts or well-wishers.

In fact, in a manner unprecedented in pop music history, Paul, the most loved Beatle of all, received greetings from fans from all over the world via the Net courtesy of the leading coffee place of them all, Starbucks. Then to honor his birthday and the release of Memory Almost Full, the album was played repeatedly throughout one entire day in all Starbucks outlets everywhere. And I tell you, that is quite a lot!

You know the phrase Memory Almost Full. It is what you see on the screen when your mobile or PC is already overloaded with messages or data. Time to empty or lose everything. So McCartney celebrated his 65th with the Net, with Starbucks and an album titled Memory Almost Full, with words and items so far removed from the era of Sgt. Pepper. Who would have thought that those analog recording days in London would come this far? I do not think that even Paul did. And what a great musical ride it had been for all of us who chose to go along.

Still the quintessential pop artist with great commercial flair, McCartney fills Memory Almost Full with pretty, hook filled melodies. Not for him though the moony sentimentality of Yesterday, that he wrote as a 20-something singing idol. This is more like Mull of Kintyre, introspective but with a tongue-in-cheek sense of fun. It is almost like an expanded When I am 64 but with the sage observation of somebody who is now examining his life. This is no longer future thinking. This is real. This is now. And bless all of us who are still around to find bits and pieces of the lives we lived and are still living through in his lyrics.

We know what he is singing about when he goes like this in Ever Present Past, “I’ve got too much on my plate/ don’t have no time to be a decent lover/ I hope it isn’t too late/ searching for the time that has gone so fast/ the time that I thought would last, my ever present past.” We like to think we know what he is referring to when he asks, “When was the summer when the skies were blue…when was the summer when it never rained…was I really there with you,” in You Tell Me.

Of course he sometimes teeters over dwelling too much on what has gone before. So he says these in Vintage Clothes, “Don’t live in the past/ don’t hold on to something that’s changing fast/ what we are is what we are/ and what we wear is vintage clothes.” But then he also intones “I’m so grateful for everything you have given me,” in Gratitude and we think, he is grateful for all that has happened to him, for having been lifted off Liverpool to the top of the world. And in disbelief over all that has happened he says, “When I think that all this stuff could make a life/ it’s pretty hard to take it in,” in That Was Me.

The laid-back The End of the End seems like a beautifully moving summing up of a charmed life, “At the end of the end/ it’s the start of the journey to a much better place…./ on the day that I die/ I like jokes to be told and stories of old to be rolled out like carpets…on the day that I die/ I like bells to be rung/ songs that were sung/ to be hung out like blankets/ that lovers have played on/ and laid on while listening to songs that were sung.” And chances are huge that those songs will be McCartney’s.

But if you think that is the end then you have another think coming because McCartney follows up The End of the End with the rocking Nod Your Head. The man still rocks and as his Dance Tonight invites, we should rock right along with him.