Paul McCartney is back in fashion. When, after a three-hour set, McCartney walked off stage at Glastonbury in 2022, the audience seemed to be expressing a country’s gratitude, as 20 days earlier those on the Mall for the Platinum Jubilee celebrations had to the Queen. For Elizabeth II, it was her penultimate public appearance. McCartney, though, was back on tour in the UK last month: still hungry at 82 for the appreciation, still, by his sheer virtuosity, wishing to settle scores.

Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary Get Back on the Beatles’ January 1969 sessions, the Glastonbury concert and the 2023 Beatles single Now and Then are all part of McCartney’s attempt to re-elevate the Beatles into the mythical realm, with the songwriting duo of Lennon and McCartney at its heart. His implicit antagonist is still Yoko Ono, who has spent the four and a half decades since her husband’s death insisting that the spirit of John Lennon was bigger than the Beatles.

New Statesman