Happy 75th Birthday to Paul McCartney!!

Photo courtesy of RV1864's Flickr page - Paul McCartney: https://www.flickr.com/photos/summer1978/17049437322

Creative Commons License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/

Today marks the 75th birthday of Paul McCartney, who was born on June 18, 1942 in Liverpool, England. 

He went on to have some modest success in his musical career. Mostly, however, he spent his years playing small clubs and wondering around in obscurity. 

Actually, come to think of it, he might have had one or two hits along the way, and gained a cult following.

Hey Paul, you say it's your birthday?

That's right, Sir Paul McCartney is now 75 years old! He has lived for three quarters of a century now, and is still going strong. Still touring, still creating good music, and still looking pretty good after all of these years!

For me, personally, I felt it was an honor to see him and Ringo in concert. To see members of the most legendary rock band in history still amazes me! The first such concert came in 1997, when I saw Ringo Starr. I just kept looking at him, and feeling amazed that this was the guy in all of those legendary pictures of the Beatles from back in their glory day. Then I saw Paul McCartney for the first time in 2002 at Madison Square Garden, which was an amazing show! 

Since then, I saw them both numerous times. Took a trip up to Quebec City in 2008 specifically to see Paul McCartney give a free concert in honor of that city's 400th anniversary. My son was with me, as was my then wife, just before we split. It was a magical night, a beautiful night, and all of my memories from that entire weekend trip up there are still very pleasant. A couple of years later, I made a point of getting tickets to Ringo Starr's 70th birthday concert, and took my brother. We saw a whole bunch of special guests arrive to help Ringo celebrate his birthday, including Yoko Ono, and Zak Starkey, Ringo's son. However, everyone went especially wild when McCartney took the stage, playing bass, while Ringo went on drums to perform, fittingly enough, "Birthday." In effect, it was half a Beatles reunion, and as close to a Beatles reunion as I was likely to see. 

Here is a clip from those two concerts that I actually was blessed enough to have attended, and which was like a life dream in music come true. The first is that McCartney concert in Quebec, on the Plains of Abraham (where the British defeated the French to take over North America, for all intents and purposes, and where the revolutionary American forces were defeated years later when they tried to go up to Quebec and get the French-speakers there to join the American cause). This is the full concert. The next one is a clip of Ringo Starr's 70th birthday concert at Radio City Music Hall, with Paul McCartney making a special guest appearance. McCartney was on base, Ringo was on drums, and it was touted as half of a Beatles reunion. It was as close as I'll ever get to actually having seen The Beatles as a band, and again, I felt extremely privileged to have seen such a thing in person!

And here is the entire concert!