When do you think the 20th century will end? Not chronologically - that ship has long sailed - but emotionally. At what point do we stop living in a world that is still shaped by the last 100 years? And will it be when Paul McCartney dies?
It’s a morbid thought that has been going around my head of late. Probably because he’s been very present recently.
At 83, Macca has a new album coming out. He’s been doing the promotional rounds as a result, including an appearance on the Tracks of My Years slot on Radio 2. It was enough of a coup for Radio 2 to spin it off into a Bank Holiday special on Monday evening.
You couldn’t say it was a particularly revelatory hour in his company. He picked 10 old records and told some of his old stories to Vernon Kay. About the time he met Elvis, gave the Stones a hit single and the days - or rather, the nights - the young and innocent Beatles spent in the Rieperbahn in Hamburg.
There were a couple of good lines, though, including a story about the time he met Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter at a party. “I’m like the older brother to that generation,” he suggested, before revising. “More like the grandad.” And there was one nice scoop. McCartney revealed that Prince once covered the Beatles track The Long and Winding Road. It's never been made public, but McCartney has heard it “and it’s really great”.
You can hear the age in McCartney’s voice these days. It’s very apparent on the vocals for the new record too. The album, he admitted to Vernon Kay, was pretty nostalgic. A harking back to his pre-Beatle days growing up in the bosom of his family in a council house in Liverpool after the war.
He’s not afraid of the word nostalgia, it seems.
“It’s a nice place to be. Some people would say, ‘oh nostalgia … I don’t like it.’ But I never understand that. There are so many beautiful memories … If you are lucky.”
He was. “I grew up in a very loving family in Liverpool, so I was very lucky to have these great uncles and aunties and cousins. And I thought everyone had that kind of family. A lot of people, but not everyone … When I met John, his dad left home when he was three years old. And Ringo has the same kind of story.”
The temptation is to read everything into that; to see Macca’s personality shaped by that settled family seedbed. But then you remember that he also lost his mother when he was just 14 and realise McCartney's story is probably more complicated than the one he was telling Kay.
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There was more 1960s nostalgia over on Boom Radio later on Monday night when pop star and one-time Morrissey favourite Sandie Shaw made a rare appearance on the station, picking records and telling stories for a couple of hours.
I would like to think I’m too young to be part of Boom Radio’s demographic. The station’s ads are all for Saga Holidays and pension organisations, after all. But the truth is I am a boomer and shows like this just remind me of the fact. Because I lapped up all of Sandie’s stories; of the time she saw Hendrix play the Bag O’ Nails club, or when she sat in an empty hotel bar in Cannes with Diana Ross and Stevie Wonder, all of them singing each other’s songs. “Stevie and Diana Ross, they did a duet to Girl Don’t Come. I was in heaven. I couldn’t believe it.”
And, yes, there was a story about McCartney. He gave her a kiss on the cheek once, she said. But she always fancied John Lennon more. She once saved up her money to go to the Albert Hall where the Beatles were playing, but didn’t have enough money for a ticket, so she went to the stage door and said she was John Lennon’s cousin Sandra. Lennon came to the door to tell her, “I don’t have a cousin called Sandra.”
My favourite story, though, might have been about her fellow pop star Adam Faith.
“Adam just introduced me to everybody, every single woman he’d ever gone out with,” Shaw recalled of her fellow pop star.
“He took me to the ballet and I was watching Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn and I looked at him and I said, ‘You never …?’”
Shaw was good company for two hours. She should do this more often.
Finally, radio is all about voices. So can we just offer up a cheer for Scott Miller who has been reading Radio 4’s adaptation of Douglas Stuart’s new novel Book at Bedtime on Radio 4 all week? He tells the story plainly and directly, shifting into a Hebridean lilt when required. The result is effective and affecting. It’s now the voice I’m going to hear in my head when I get around to reading Stuart’s novel.
Listen Out For: Radio Scotland Afternoons, Monday to Friday, 1.30pm
Farewell Michelle McManus, Len Pennie and Nicole Meighan. Radio Scotland’s reboot of its daily arts coverage will see all three replaced by Grant Stott on Monday. We’re promised “feel good music and celebrity guests”. Hmm. On paper that doesn’t sound exactly ambitious, but let’s see what it means in practice.
