A friend just emailed to let me know that today is the forty-fifth anniversary of the Beatles’s (“Beatles’ “? These confusing apostrophes!) appearance on Ed Sullivan. I simply do not believe that forty-five years have gone by since I sat spellbound and hyperventilating in front of our very small rented television, rushing off during the break to phone my friend Lea, who was similarly incoherent. She was a John girl.
My friend also let me know, gently, that it is more or less official that Paul McCartney will marry his new girlfriend, Nancy. (Does everyone, I want to ask, know her as Nancy?) This friend has heard about my past adoration of Paul, and felt it necessary to point out that this is the third time that Paul is marrying someone other than I.
Very true. I loved Paul so deeply in my youth that I have sometimes wondered if the reason I’m divorced and have not remarried is that no actual man could live up to the fantasy man I created. But truly, I never really wanted to marry Paul, then or since. I wanted to love him and make up stories about him and listen to him sing love songs to me, but I can’t say that I wanted to wash his socks and make him scrambled eggs. The fantasy did not extend that far.
These days, I would very much like to be his friend; how wonderful to engage with a mind that energetic, creative and musical, with a man who continues to plunge joyfully into the musical mainstream no matter how old he gets. Seeing him in Quebec last summer was one of the great highlights of my year and even of my life. (For those who weren’t reading the blog last year, scroll back to July 2008 for my ecstatic report.)
But marry him? Nancy looks like a very nice woman; she is rich, which means he can put his mind at rest about certain issues that arose with What’s Her Name. I am not rich, and I’m not vegetarian and I’m not good at sitting sweetly beside the king. I saw them together on the Grammys last night, and she looks perfect by his side, dignified, poised and serene. I am thrilled that this dear man has found love again. Though it’s unlikely that she, either, will wash his socks or scramble his eggs. I wish them, and their plentiful household staff, many years of the greatest happiness.
And if he’s looking for a really, really nice person to talk to about his work and his life and about what it was like to be a Beatlemaniac in the Sixties who loved him with every breath, I’m his girl.
By the way, re Ben McNally books, I have just learned that Wayson Choy will be reading there on May 24th. I sadly will be away, but those of you in Toronto on May 24 can have the enormous pleasure of hearing the master read from his new memoir in one of the most beautiful bookstores in Canada. Don’t miss it. Not Paul McCartney, but just as good.
