By Daniel Wirtheim, Features Editor

Published in print Nov.5, 2014

As I was making dinner last week I thought “there is no way a band like The Beatles could exist today.”

Then I followed that train of thought to the conclusion that bands like today could not exist in the 60’s. It’s not that the inspiration or power of music is lost that’s always there, it just takes a keen ear and a passion for discovering it.

I have a theory that the best music is played in depressed little bars with only ten folks actually paying any attention to the sad, dreary-eyed woman pouring her heart out.

A friend of mine who grew up in the 60’s, Dave, rents an apartment next to Elsewhere, the living art museum on Elm Street.

“You’ll never guess who was here, at the museum this morning,” he said, shaking his head and walking toward me, with a childish smile on his face. “Sir Paul himself. He was walking down Elm Street this morning, looking in the window.”

It turns out that Dave didn’t really see McCartney, but had only heard of the incounter, speculated. I do not think Dave was lying, although I suspect it could have been a fabrication of his wishful thinking.

The only thing that made me believe the news was that it was the day that Paul McCartney was coming to Greensboro.

I knew it was already sold out, and I didn’t want to go anyways. I didn’t want to see how expensive the tickets would be and I didn’t want to be depressed, like the time I saw The Who (the band) limp around the stage to a slideshow of themselves in the 60’s. But that’s not to say that I have no respect for McCartney.

Of course, I’m much more of a George or Ringo guy myself, but Paul has always had a lot of appeal.

He’s mysterious. The guy has a whole Internet site dedicated to the idea that he is actually dead, and a perpetrator has been playing Paul since 1966. What’s more is that he’s too nice. Rock and roll is about hedonism, how McCartney gets away with being a rock legend and writing such cheery tunes as “Martha My Dear” is beyond me.

I remember the first album I bought. It was The Beatles Greatest Hits and I was six years old. If I remember correctly, I actually wanted an Eminem album, but I had no money of my own, and my mother thought that The Beatles would provide a better listening experience. But those 20 or so songs took me places, as they have for many people over many years.

Now, The Beatles seem less like a former band and more like a force of nature, something much more visceral and abstract, something that never really dies but instead lives on for eternity in the form of screen printed lunch boxes and six dollar t-shirts. Maybe it’s my own jealous mind (I often fantasize that I wrote every Beatles song) that makes me wary of McCartney. It seems that he was some sort of machine, programmed to write the best songs of all time.

I suppose it has something to do with McCartney coming from a time when musicians expected to get paid for their work. McCartney was from a time when rock music was nearly considered high art, and carried strong cultural value. Even today, The Beatles are very stingy about putting their work on the Internet. This is hardly the way musicians who I know work.

Since the Indie rock movement, there’s almost an obligation to offer free, or super cheap downloads via the Internet. Sure, the music is not as structured, or as grandiose, but there’s something beautiful about watching my neighbor’s band perform, or reading poetry in Black Santa.

It’s how rock and roll was meant to be. It doesn’t require money, a brief case or a marketing firm, just an electric heart.