Macca J!

I was reminded of the amazing "hey let's all enjoy the pandemic like Spring Break for a few weeks and then it will all be over!"-era The Last Dance this morning, how Michael Jordan made his teammates better every day and basically horse-whipped them into being eternal champions. This was somewhat against their own wishes, as most people don't care to be driven by a lunatic to go 100% every moment of every day at work. But if he hadn't done just that, what would history look like - would Scotty Pippen be called a champion? Steve Kerr? Horace Grant, etc etc etc? Now they can look back on it all and appreciate it, but at the time they somewhat resented it.

Which brings us to Paul McCartney, who I am hereby officially decreeing to be the Michael Jordan of rock and roll. After Revolver and retiring from touring in 1966, The Beatles were ready to, after going non-stop for almost a decade and showering the world with enough albums and singles for a lifetime, kick their heels up and rest a little bit. Sure they'd record again, but they wanted to go at a more leisurely pace and see what else was out there in life to enjoy.

But not McCartney. Every other Beatle has gone out of their way to bitch and moan about how Paul would nag at them to get back to work, dragging them back to Abbey Road for yet another project. It's kind of funny whenever you hear Ringo tell the stories over and over now, but what if Paul hadn't pushed them to keep working so hard? There'd be no landmark Sgt. Pepper, no sprawling White Album. No bare-boned Let it Be, no majestic Abbey Road. No Hey Jude, Lady Madonna, and on and on. Even if they had stopped in 1966 the Beatles' legacy would have been cemented, but we'd be without such incredibly cultural-shifting pieces of art - jut try imagining the world around us without them existing as part of it. And we have Paul "I Wanna Be Like Mike!" McCartney to thank for it all.

Wrong Mike, dummy.