A galaxy of stars

“Alright, so, here’s one thing,” says Paul, sitting at his psychedelic harpsichord and peering deep into the Somerset night. “We know when you like songs and when you don’t.” Over an hour into his headlining Glastonbury set, it feels like a potentially awkward moment. Is he about to chastise this vast crowd, hanging on his every word, for being insufficiently enthusiastic? The set so far has been heavy on deep cuts from the Wings discography, and, despite the reissue machine that is slowly gearing up, most anyone under 60 might be forgiven for being unfamiliar with the charms of “Junior’s Farm” or Venus and Mars. 

“Because when you like it, when we do an old Beatles song, your phones all light up and the whole place looks like a galaxy of stars.” He pauses to relish the image. “When we play a new one, it’s like a black hole.” A nervous laugh spreads across the crowd. “But we don’t care - we’re going to play ‘em anyway!” 

As he goes deep into a second and then a third hour, the night grows mad with stars. There’s Dave Grohl and Bruce Springsteen, bounding on to bask in a little reflected Macca radiance. But mostly it’s about the stellar home run of Beatles songs that press all the old familiar buttons, lighting up the night. He builds inevitably to “Hey Jude”, the endless phasing fanfare swirling around the Mendips valley like the cosmic anthem of this corner of the Milky Way.

Paul has just turned 80. It’s 60 years to the month since he first entered Studio 2 at Abbey Road with a shy grin, his Hofner bass, and crummy little Vox amp and bashed out a cheeky, cheesy “Besame Mucho” for a stern George Martin. Elsewhere this month, some have been celebrating the platinum anniversary of Queen Elizabeth. But with all due respect to Her Majesty, tonight feels like the real jubilee.

“OK, we’ve got a special little thing here,” he says, returning for the encore. He talks about his work with Peter Jackson on Get Back, the technological wizardry that enabled its restoration. “One day Peter rang me up and said ‘I can take John’s vocal and I can isolate it. You could play live with John on tour. Do you fancy that?”

He’s been playing “I’ve Got A Feeling” - duetting along with the 1969 footage of John, his mane of hair blown back like a specky Aslan - in his gigs all spring, and it never fails to work its magic. It’s a reminder of how, slowly emerging out of lockdown in the winter of 2021, the whole world had needed the restored Get Back. It satisfied a very deep wish - that the Beatles didn’t end in boredom, rancour, addiction and spite but rather in goofy camaraderie, sudden sparks of inspiration, friendship and even forgiveness.

“I know it’s virtual, but there I am singing with John again,” beams Paul. “We’re back together!” It sounds like he needs to believe just as much as the rest of us. Truth is, he’s still high from more uncanny adventures in spirit and sound. 

All spring he’s been secretly putting the finishing touches to “Now And Then”, a song that John began one afternoon in the Dakota in 1977. It was on the tape that Yoko shared in 1994, as the Anthology project gathered pace, and the need for new music became pressing. The Threetles had tinkered with it, along with “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love” at Hog Hill, but ultimately decided that the tape audio was too crude to bring to completion. 

But while working on Get Back, poring over the flowerpot tapes like Zapruder scholars, Jackson’s team of phonomancers had perfected tools which enabled them to unpick and refine the warp and weft of sound with sublime delicacy. “Spectral demix algorithms” had been around for ages, Jackson patiently explained to Paul, like Gandalf explaining the old magic to hobbits - but these machines were trained exclusively on their specific scouse sibilance, the rattle and buzz of their guitars, bass and drums in the air of a certain room at a very particular moment of time.

In a moment of Kubrickian inspiration Jackson named the tool MAL - Machine Audio Learning. But it was also a loving nod to Mal Evans, the gentle giant Cavern bouncer who became the boys’ roadie and infinitely patient assistant, and was the first of the Fab inner circle to meet a very messy end, in 1976.

One afternoon, Paul hears it: John's voice, breathing into his boombox in 1977, emerging clear as day in 2021. It’s like he’s in the room, back from a very long tea break: revived, refreshed, ready for work. He remembers the first time he heard John’s voice on shellac, on the 78 of “In Spite of All the Danger” they cut in Percy Phillips’ front room back in 1958. The miracle of hearing themselves coming out of the Dansette, next to Fats Domino and Elvis…

It’s thrilling but he can feel an abyss, the sudden yawning of a black hole: are they all now destined to be revived, posthumously put to work, like poor old Mal, forever lugging the anvil around for one more take of “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”?

They’ve managed to isolate a few strums of George’s guitar from 1994, and Ringo’s recorded some drums, but Paul takes it upon himself to edit the song: excising a dark middle section, adding his own bass, piano, harmonies, strings and even a slide guitar tribute to George. Paul is now the Beatles’ final curator and custodian. The respective estates insist that John and George would absolutely love it.

They’ve packaged it all up as “the final Beatles single”. But is it too late to stop now? Are they becoming one more franchise in the Disney imperium, like Spider-Man and Star Wars, eternally teased and twisted into new shapes, death no longer an obstacle, as long as there’s still a hunger out there for more songs, more movies, more content?  Somewhere in a server farm in Silicon Valley, is MAL training John's voice to work on a new verse, a new chorus, a new Beatles song?

But midnight has passed at Glastonbury, and for now there are no more songs. Paul brings back Dave and Bruce for a last medley, the boys merrily trading licks in front of a grotesque CGI rendering of Yellow Submarine. He steps up to the microphone and into the spotlight alone: “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make”. He nails it, the great Hollywood finale, the perfect bow, a showbiz pro to the end. And his words slip away, into the galaxy of shining phones, into the night and out across the universe.