B J Conlee:
Bruce M.:
I must say I'm distressed to see people assuming that at age 75 Paul can't remember his own songs or how to play them. LOTS of people his age have perfectly fine memories. And we really have no way of knowing how good or bad Paul's memory is, but please lets drop the ageist stereotypes.
________________________________________________________ Bruce, I can only speak for my post but I wasn't attacking older people or saying that many seniors don't have fine memories. For God sake, I'm one of them. I'll be 70 in about 15 months (man that is depressing!). But I think it is a pretty safe bet that the mental prowess of the overwhelming majority of seniors (including me) starts to decline probably when one hits about 60. I know it was definitely true for me. One of the reasons I retired at 64 was that I found my job more and more difficult because I had to constantly learn new "technical" type products to sell. I could do it much easier when I was younger. Even now that I'm retired and well into my 60's, I find myself often forgetting certain words when I'm speaking. I know the word but can't remember it specifically. This is not an ageist stereotype. It is a fact. I'm an extrovert and talk with people around my age all the time (including all my senior cousins) and they 100% agree.. Sometimes I will bring up a person or a certain subject and forget why I brought them up in midstream. That's not uncommon for people my age. I'm just being realistic with my current capabilities. Mentally, I'm not nearly as sharp nor is my memory nearly as good as it was when I was in my 40's for example. This is not a stereotype but the truth for most seniors. Not to go political, but it is a shame that many of our congresspeople/senators (both sides of the aisle) don't realize that they should be already retired and hand these crucial jobs over to younger people whose minds are in their peak. Obviously they would have to be qualified no matter how old they are. As far as Paul goes, my point was that I don't expect Macca to make wholesale changes to his setlist. As an example and especially now at 75, I wouldn't expect half of the songs being "Solo" ones that he hasn't sung since he wrote and laid down the tracks upon the album's release. I didn't say that it would be impossible for Paul to remember them or impossible for him to play them, but it surely would be much harder. Because his memory isn't as good, it would take significant more time and I certainly wouldn't expect him to do it. It would be much more like work and I know I wouldn't want to do it. Furthermore, he is a very busy man with things going on all the time including writing new songs and guest appearances on other artists' albums etc. My point (and a few others) is to just take 3-4 songs that were "bigger" Solo songs (not obscure ones) and add them each year he tours. It would be relatively easy for him, for example, to play "My Brave Face" and "Put It There" since he played them on a full tour in 1990. I wasn't putting Paul down or saying in any way that he has mental problems. But because he is 75 this is just nature's natural course and there is nothing wrong with that. As a big time fan, I'm just being realistic as to what he can still do (even vocally) to make his setlist better for the hard core fans. I'm sure his mental capabilities for his age are fine and normal. As long as he still plays the "signature" songs, the 1st timers would also be thrilled.
Very good post BJ. One of the reasons I had hoped he would not tour much longer is that I did not want to see him get to the point where his memory affected his live performance. Sooner or later "Father Time" catches up to everyone - lol. He has written so many songs it is not realistic to expect him to remember them all even if he was a bunch younger. Do we really think that say 15 years ago he remembered all the words and how to play a song off "Press To Play" for example?