Paul McCartney isn’t all that
My wife and I couldn’t be any farther apart on musical tastes. She likes more mellow artists and tunes, I’m a musical mutt but prefer hard rock and lately early rap. There’s little common ground. I’m a huge Joe Walsh fan, she loves Paul McCartney who I think is the cheesiest songwriter in the history of music. Don’t judge me too harshly. The Beatles tunes are classic but ok at best for me. I prefer the Rolling Stones to the Beatles. Now it’s ok to judge me.
Last summer we made some compromises when it came to going to concerts. We saw Walsh, then McCartney, then Springsteen, and ended with Don Henley. We called it our “Jurassic Rock Tour”; might as well see them now, they’ve been dying off faster and faster these days. Not a bad summer I must say, even the McCartney concert was pretty good. I surprised her with tickets since she endured the Walsh concert. Bruce Springsteen was our only total agreement and, yes, the concert was incredible. Henley was meh, too soft for me but still a decent show. Anything with a harder edge just isn’t her thing so the Walsh concert wasn’t all that enjoyable to her. She did make one funny comment that the ages of most of the men at the show were probably the same as their waist sizes.
Neither of us grew up in musical families but I ended up being a musician via school and garage bands and still play and compose to this day. I have a home studio that I run part time and recently joined a local band. We’ve been in some serious discussions about music and rarely have they gone well. I’m a “musical snob”, over analyzing songs based on arrangements, vocals, mixes, etc. She dings me on it often. Over the course of our marriage I’ve been tapering off the comments about her tastes and it’s worked occasionally.
This has also been the cause of some nasty arguments. Like I said, we couldn’t be further apart when it comes to music. It made me think on how it affects our relationship. It certainly plays a role.
What she likes about us and music is that we actually can find a bit of common ground. She’s 6 years older than me and has thought in the past that our tastes would be markedly different. However, I have a sister that’s a bit older than her and I was exposed to the music she listened to, in turn, the music my wife listens to. Some of the common ground is what we listen to during our morning coffee. Pandora has become a friend of ours. Just the fact that we can create our own “stations” is joyful. Coffee time usually means it’s jazz time on Pandora, just light background music. I push for Springsteen or Tower of Power (not a fave of hers) but it can be a little too loud at 6:45am. Slayer, Metallica, or Dr. Dre in the morning also doesn’t suit her, but to me it’d be heaven.
I don’t believe in opposites attracting at all but our different tastes in music is certainly that and it works. She very much enjoys McCartney, ELO, the Bee Gees, Chicago, and (gasp) corporate rock like Styx or Journey. Kill me. She puts up with my varying tastes and genres such as alternative and hard core jazz like Miles Davis or the Jimmy Rowles (no relation) Trio. She also likes hearing me play which thrills me to no end. I sometimes keep an acoustic guitar in our living room and just goof around on it, she likes that the most. I recently learned Yesterday and Blackbird (there’s that damn McCartney guy again!) and We Just Disagree by Dave Mason, the latter is appropriate in regards to our tastes and it’s one of my favorite tunes. However, I REFUSE to learn any Journey or Styx. That ain’t happening. No. Never. Ever.
I think what really makes it all work out is her enjoyment of my enjoyment of playing. A quiet calm comes over the room and she compliments me and asks if I’m making it up as I go along, sometimes yes other times I’m totally ripping off some melody but playing it in a different arrangement (I won’t tell her that).
When I asked her about what it meant to see McCartney, the first thing she said was she was in disbelief. She didn’t think she’d ever see one of his concerts, appreciated his professionalism, sense of humor, polished band, stage show, and of course the songs. She also mentioned how grateful she still is that I got the tickets. I admitted earlier that the show was pretty good but I should have said it was awesome. His song catalog is so vast that there was no way he could have played more than a small fraction of his hits. He even played about a half dozen tunes off his new album appropriately titled NEW and they were ok. I went and got my t-shirt during those as I knew there wouldn’t be anyone standing in line. I chose a shirt from his Wings era mainly because it didn’t have his name on it, just says Wings on the front, she got a retro shirt from the ’76 tour before the show.
For the most part the musical side of our relationship has healed some thanks to Paul McCartney. I’m still not allowed to say anything negative about him in her presence due to an agreement after a fight about it and I’m ok with that. His cheesy music brought some extra peace to our marriage. He just might be all that now that I think about it.
Thanks for reading this little piece. Please feel free to click the heart below and comment. I also write a blog called “Cubicle Cultures” that talks about life at work and what we experience within the three walls we call a home away from home.
