Dear Mr. McCartney

by Ignacio Peña
April 2010

Just wanted to say thanks.
Thanks for the songs,
for the memories,
for the life lessons,
the inspiration,
for your commitment to hard work,
excellence,
and the idea that we're here on this earth to continue growing,
to try it again even if you've already achieved all the measure of success anybody could dream of.
Thank you for not staying home,
for keeping it going,
for The White Album,
Let it Be and Abbey Road,
which probably wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for your continued insistance and focus on the bottomline: the music.
For your commitment to your wives and family,
for being honest about LSD,
for not letting drugs take over your life so that those of us who came afterwards could have the chance to experience the power of the music you've created live, straight from you.
For defying the odds.
For not telling John to fuck off when he had Yoko come out in the band shots,
and bringing a bed into the studio so that she could continue to opine and intrude in The Beatles... a whole year after having arrived in the picture.
Thank you for putting up with Yoko enough to go back to finish "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love".
For living with this bullshit notion that you were the sissy ballad Beatle when John never rocked as hard as you did in Helter Skelter, when you were the conceptual one, the more skilled musician and visionary artist.
For treating with humbleness the overmystification of John and the notion that he wrote a lot of the songs that you wrote and still finding it within you to love him after the harsch words and bitterness.
Thank you for being a bridge between generations, countries, ideologies, and competing factions. In McCartney world, as it should be in the real world, none of those divisions matter.
For all of this, you are admired.
And thank you for coming to Puerto Rico.

ip~