beatlemethisbeatlemethat
Mar 25, 2001, 01:03 PM
Everyman Theatre, Liverpool
**
Lew Baxter
Friday March 23, 2001
The Guardian
Billed as an evening with playwright Willy Russell and friends, this event deteriorated into a media circus for the launch of Paul McCartney's new career as a poet. McCartney, it was announced, would fill the last spot in the event (ostensibly a tribute to Adrian Henri, the poet and painter who died in December), following contributions from the acerbic Newcastle poet Tom Pickard and the equally left-wing Adrian Mitchell.
Pickard treated the eager, star-struck audience to a rambling, incoherent performance. A few dour pieces about shipyards gave way to a graphic eulogy to fornication from his Fuckwind tome.
Mitchell regaled them with tales of his poetic adventures, recited with humour and passion, before conceding defeat and with a cheerful shrug announcing his protege.
Dressed in black, McCartney sauntered to the rostrum, fresh-faced as a cheeky choirboy, to read a handful of poems from his Blackbird Singing collection, published earlier this month. He began with a look at his Liverpool childhood, then became intense as he explained the background to the next poem, Jerk of Jerks, inspired by John Lennon's murderer. The same mood was adopted as he talked about coming to terms with Linda's death and how the introspection of poetry had helped. None really struck a chord.
On he trawled, reciting some pieces written as poems, others merely the lyrics of Beatles songs, such as Maxwell's Silver Hammer, which, despite the reverence in which they are held, are not the stuff of elegy or resonance on the page.
The finale, when all four "poets" recited from Henri's paean to love, Without You, only stressed the paucity of McCartney's grasp of the genre.
**
Lew Baxter
Friday March 23, 2001
The Guardian
Billed as an evening with playwright Willy Russell and friends, this event deteriorated into a media circus for the launch of Paul McCartney's new career as a poet. McCartney, it was announced, would fill the last spot in the event (ostensibly a tribute to Adrian Henri, the poet and painter who died in December), following contributions from the acerbic Newcastle poet Tom Pickard and the equally left-wing Adrian Mitchell.
Pickard treated the eager, star-struck audience to a rambling, incoherent performance. A few dour pieces about shipyards gave way to a graphic eulogy to fornication from his Fuckwind tome.
Mitchell regaled them with tales of his poetic adventures, recited with humour and passion, before conceding defeat and with a cheerful shrug announcing his protege.
Dressed in black, McCartney sauntered to the rostrum, fresh-faced as a cheeky choirboy, to read a handful of poems from his Blackbird Singing collection, published earlier this month. He began with a look at his Liverpool childhood, then became intense as he explained the background to the next poem, Jerk of Jerks, inspired by John Lennon's murderer. The same mood was adopted as he talked about coming to terms with Linda's death and how the introspection of poetry had helped. None really struck a chord.
On he trawled, reciting some pieces written as poems, others merely the lyrics of Beatles songs, such as Maxwell's Silver Hammer, which, despite the reverence in which they are held, are not the stuff of elegy or resonance on the page.
The finale, when all four "poets" recited from Henri's paean to love, Without You, only stressed the paucity of McCartney's grasp of the genre.