At 74, McCartney says he may need to slow down

Paul McCartney performing in Paris in May.
Paul McCartney performing in Paris in May. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

NEW YORK • Paul McCartney has kept a packed touring schedule in recent years, but the 74-year-old singer says he may need to slow down soon.

Asked by Rolling Stone magazine if he could imagine touring in the same way at 80, the legend replied: "Unimaginable - and unseemly."

But he added that, when he was 17, he thought a 24-year-old at his fellow Beatle John Lennon's art school was old.

"People say age is a number. It's a big number the older you get," he said in the interview published on Wednesday.

"But if it doesn't interfere, I'm not bothered. You can ignore it. That's what I do." He has said he was drinking heavily and almost quit music after The Beatles split in 1970.

But he has embraced touring with renewed vigour in recent years, playing with only occasional months-long breaks since 2009.

McCartney, who has spent decades on the road with The Beatles, Wings and as a solo artist, remains one of the world's biggest concert draws.

He is playing a nearly three-hour, 38-song show on his current One On One global tour, which continues in various American cities through October.

The set list on this tour is stocked with 23 Beatles songs and six Wings tracks.

It reaches back to In Spite Of All The Danger, one of the first original songs recorded by The Quarrymen, the pre-Beatles band featuring John Lennon and McCartney. It includes three songs off McCartney's most recent studio album, New, from 2013, along with FourFiveSeconds, his 2015 collaboration with Kanye West and Rihanna.

In October, he will play the Desert Trip festival alongside The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, The Who, Neil Young and Roger Waters.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, NEW YORK TIMES

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on August 12, 2016, with the headline At 74, McCartney says he may need to slow down. Subscribe