Maybe I'm Amazed

You may well have seen/heard this - Paul McCartney's Kennedy Center Honors concert:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36XtOG_nkSw

I think John Lennon brought an indispensable transcendent spark to the Beatles, but Paul - if Paul had done no more than just recognize John's talent and then be the session bassist on all those records...

But of course he also was great, and immensely competent, in his own right.

A cool moment happens in this clip at 8:44 in the guitar solo of "Maybe I'm Amazed" (one of McCartney's best songs, perhaps his very best song). The arranger abridges the guitar solo. The camera is on Paul's face as he notices, realizes the change, and moves from barely an instant of puzzlement to pleased approval and acceptance - and then moves on all within the course of perhaps one second.

Revealing of a great musician.

Later in the clip, watching the Obamas and Oprah and the whole house ecstatic over the "Hey Jude" outro, I had the realization that this community is what our previous political administration in the USA tried to extinguish in the Western world. The Beatles trans-Atlantic popularity was an incredibly powerful part of the social cohesion of the West, and indeed, a pillar of NATO through the Cold War years.

They tried to tear it down.

Na Na Na Na Na Na Na...

Powerful stuff.