"Now, It's Time...To Say Goodnight...Goodnight...Sleep Tight...."

Spoiler alert.

Blasphemy is about to be committed.

I got my very first guitar, a Sears Silvertone six string acoustic, for Christmas in 1964. I asked(pleaded)for it, putting aside Tonka trucks and baseball gloves, solely because of Paul and his mates coming into my living room via Ed Sullivan that previous February night and changing the history of pop music.

Forty six years, several hundred songs, a couple of hundred demos and a couple of dozen songs recorded later, watching the video of this performance (and other recent live appearances), I find myself reminded not of that time and that hero but another.

Babe Ruth. After he left the New York Yankees.

Old, tired, still giving his all to a worshiping crowd and, simultaneously, eliciting huge waves of love, respect yet a soft, unspoken sadness at the figure of a childhood hero who was doing his best to swing for the fences with a spirit still willing but a flesh obviously weak.

And leaving legions of once young, now grown up, fans with a memory not of a bright, blazing star, but a dimming,faltering light.

Thanks for everything, Sir Paul...

...most especially making good on the promise that "a splendid time is guaranteed for all".