McCartney Checkmates Jacko, For Old-Times’ Sake
Look, let’s face it, Paul McCartney is fuming day and night about Michael Jackson. The former King of Pop has literally lived off of McCartney’s songs for the last 25 years. If Jackson (spurred by his attorney John Branca) had not purchased the Beatles catalog in 1984 out from under Paul and Yoko, The Other Thin White Duke would be living in a cardboard box by now. Jackson has leveraged Lennon-McCartney for hundreds of millions of dollars to sustain his crazy lifestyle.
So what’s McCartney to do? How can he upstage Jackson’s comeback this summer? It’s brilliant, really: Paul is playing two shows at Citi Field in New York, the new Shea Stadium. The shows are slated for July 17th and 18th, right after Jackson may (or may not) debut his comeback extravaganza in London at the O2 Arena on July 13th and 14th. Check, check-mate, Paul! Don’t mess with Macca!
And, get this: Paul’s shows, like Michael’s, are being produced by Randy Phillips and AEG Live. So Paul has taken the Jacko game, and done it one better because’realistically’McCartney’s return to ‘Shea,’ where the Beatles had their greatest live successes, is going to be a world event. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Ringo make an appearance since this fall the Beatles are launching a major promotional push with their ‘Rock Star’ game and all their remastered CDs coming on September 9th.
The only real question: will Phillips, the architect of all this, live through the summer? He’ll need his own Grammy award at this point!
