Paul McCartney and Nirvana

That is Paul McCartney (Beatle: guitar and vocals) with Dave Grohl, Krist Novolesic and Pat Smear (Nirvana: drums, bass, guitar) at the Hurricane Sandy benefit concert on 12.12.12, performing “Cut Me Some Slack”. Readers who think of McCartney as the cuddly composer/singer of “Yesterday” and “Mull of Kintyre” may be surprised by his raw vocal but as David Hepworth observes:

McCartney, whether you like him or not, has worked in more musical idioms over a longer period of time than anyone else and therefore he’s the last person about whom you should ever say “but I never realised he could do that”. Every shade of pop and rock and roll, dance music, sound collages, show tunes, classical, film scores, kids songs and “Give Ireland Back To The Irish”. He’s done the lot. Nobody would claim it’s all been uniformly brilliant but he’s always been equal to the job and very often he’s shown mastery.

Plus, if one living performer could be said to have invented the art of screaming in front of a rock band it was Paul McCartney. He did that with “I’m Down”, “She’s A Woman”, “Helter Skelter” and plenty of other recordings and he did it long before anybody even thought of putting up the discredited polytechnic that is indie rock.

Monitors: Mark Tierney, Chris Bourke