Loading ...
Two sycophantic Macca interviews from which to choose: Stereogum’s fawning face-to-face (a good chunk of which is spent describing what it’s like to walk to a Paul McCartney interview) or Pitchfork’s fawning phoner, which actually posits the following question:
Pitchfork: I wanted to ask about the song “Freedom”, which you wrote in the wake of 9/11. Lately dropped it from your setlist. Do you think it might come back?
“Freedom,” of course, easily being one of the most reviled songs of McCartney’s career, and…oh, fuck, I give up. The music magazines may have their problems–lots of them–but is this nonsense really going to be what finally drives them out of business altogether? It’s like that Saturday Night Live sketch in which Lovitz/Dukakis interrupts his debate with Carvey/Bush and marvels: “I can’t believe I’m losing to this guy.”
Or like the sketch where Chris Farley interviews McCartney, asking him a bunch of stupid questions and eventually going “Stupid, stupid, stupid!” Too bad this current crop of interviewers don’t have this self-awareness.
I can’t believe you posted about fawning McCartney interviews and you dropped an SNL reference that wasn’t about Chris Farley.
The PF interview was dull but I thought their bringing up “Freedom” was meant to be kind of backhanded or an attempt to bait him into admitting how awful it was.
haha ok sorry xpost on the Farley thing
I’m with GN here. McCartney pretty transparently corners the interviewer in that one and dictates terms thereafter.
I do love this picture, perhaps meant to cover up the Wildenstein-ization of his face.
“So to recap…stay the course…thousand points of light…thank you.”
Unless he has another heart attack in the next few hours, Larry King is hosting Paul Ringo and anyone who ever married a Beatle tonight on his show:
[www.cbc.ca]
Those “Love” ticket sales must be really tanking to get Paul and Yoko in the same room…
Here’s the Farley sketch in all its glory:
[snltranscripts.jt.org]
wasn’t that guy in Wings?
Yoko rocks. That’s all.
Chris Dahlen was the best Pfork could come up with? Sad.
One of my favorite sketches ever.
“Mr Vice President, you still have 45 seconds left…”
Dear Idolators, thanks much for the link – I’ll always take a link to one of my articles, especially if you frame it with a bad SNL joke (nice reach there, points for effort). And I apologize for not tearing him a new one, like all those other interviewers who asked such hardball questions about the trials of being a Beatle. (Everyone sure did get to the bottom of that Heather Mills thing!)
Have to clarify one thing. “Freedom” is one of Macca’s most reviled songs, which is the reason for the question – he pulled it from the setlist, and now he’s decided he can bring it back, and I got him to explain why. The politics around the song are more important than its musical failings. Next time I’ll spell it out more clearly.
But I’m surprised by the apocalyptic tone of this post. I know you’re building a case here that the major print mags are failing, and the online sites aren’t filling the gap. One question: how does Idolator help? You’ve got bucks and contacts, I hear you can write – why not file more stories? Is filling your Gawker blog quota on snarky posts and links to other mp3 blogs really going to turn the industry around? Say what you will about my work. But you’re the one linking to me.
And by the way, you missed my column last Friday – how about we get the link up this week? This Macca thing’s already a month old, so let’s see if we can tighten things up.
See, that above rant is why I (sadly) take Pfork with a boulder-sized grain of salt, now, and prefer to read snark about it than actually read it.
A lot of passion, sure, but completely misdirected, plus timidity disguised as professionalism.
Besides, everyone knows Idolator’s around to cull the herd.
Normally I’m on Idolator’s nuts like whoa but camp Dahlen has a point there.
It’s odd that you would take him to task for championing the song “Freedom” when he so clearly was doing the exact opposite (in fact, when I originally read the article, I was somewhat taken aback by the snark of that question).
And I thought the interview was fine. It didn’t reveal a new layer of Macca but at this point considering Paul has reached the twenty billionth interview mark, I don’t expect revelations at every turn. I expect a somewhat interesting conversation, which is what I got.
By all means hate on PFork, but not for this.