Paul McCartney brought a lot with him from his long life journey. With full pockets, he gets on the train at the "Egypt Station" and looks back with relish. A Beatle who has long been more than a former member of a legend knows how to enjoy life to the full. This quality can be heard on the seventeenth solo album of the famous Englishman.
It may be a miracle that the Rolling Stones still exist. A much greater miracle, however, is that there was the Beatles. Were they really real, or were they just the result of a megalomaniac's fantasy? From today's perspective, they seem as mythical as Odysseus or King Arthur. A living indication that the Beatles do not belong to the realm of legend, but were four people of flesh and blood, is the tireless Paul McCartney. At the age of 76 he doesn't seem to have lost too much of the vitality and fabulism of his youth, as his new album "Egypt Station" shows.
Paul McCartney had found the supposed formula for the perfect pop song at an early stage: a catchy hook that you can whistle along to at the latest on second listening, a simple song structure that can often be provided with complex arrangements, and a text that doesn't always make sense, but has to go over your lips easily. With the Beatles, this recipe worked reliably and was also able to make the more experimental songs popular. Besides the cynic John Lennon, McCartney always seemed to be obsessed with harmony, and one cannot deny a certain inclination towards balance in his work after 1970. Nevertheless, in his songs he was always committed to social issues, both in his personal environment and in the larger social context. And at least the hardest song of the Beatles, "Helter Skelter", didn't come from Lennons, but from McCartney's pen.
