Paul McCartney's Nightclub Rejection, an Inspiring Moment of Failure

Little video doing the rounds of Paul McCartney of The Beatles being turned away at the door of Tyga's Grammys afterparty. (The club says it was all a mixup, but come on, that is a video of a very famous man being denied entry to a place he wants to go inside.) It's a TMZ video, so just know that before you watch it, and I'm going to be honest: I hate the cameraman responsible for it with my life. I want this fool to go to prison for his commentary. This man needs to be sent back to school and taught how to communicate with humans again. You are a parody of a human, unknown cameraman, you are possibly the worst man currently alive, and I include despots in that list, I always include despots:

I mean, can you hear him? Can you hear this guy? "What's your favorite Rolling Stones song?" he says, and Paul McCartney just

looks

at him.

I can hear this man's shit-eating grin. I can audibly hear it. I can detect his facial expression with my ears.

You just—

We will get to Paul McCartney anon.

—you just, it's just: you know the cameraman responsible for this had three thoughts going on in a loop in his head while this was filming, and they were:

i. "I am definitely going to be able to sell this video to TMZ, so I should mentally start spending the money now. I am going to spend this money on new wheels for my car. I am absolutely not going to spend this money wisely, at all." ii. "This question about the Rolling Stones is very funny and original and Paul McCartney has never heard this question before. I am a good and funny person and I definitely should not be shot in the head until I am killed." iii. "This video is going to go viral, and as a result of that I should be as obnoxious as it is possible to be out loud. I should sound like an alien making an impression of human bewilderment. I should sound as much as possible like the kind of person who, instead of laughing, actually says 'LMAO.' Because that is who I am. That is the person I was born to be."

But hey! We're here to have fun today! At Paul McCartney's expense!

Paul McCartney is a one thousand-year-old man with a successful line of vegetarian sausages and was also in a band once called The Beatles. He did some solo work, too, and the Frog Chorus, and now he has spent the last ten or so years pushing the very fucking limit of acceptable men's hairstyles and clapping slightly out of time in various activism videos that seem like a really good idea at the time but actually, as it turns out, were not a very good idea at all. Like, look:

The desperation, the urgency, of the words, "You can do it right now please." Look into those eyes and tell me that is a man not held captive by fame, a prisoner just needing to be let out. That developing this brand of vegetarian anti-patter is actually a deep howling cry for help. Please, Christ, please. Please pledge not to eat meat on Mondays. Please, please. Paul McCartney is dying in there. He needs this.

But so to the nightclub, where Paul McCartney is turned away, the moment Paul McCartney finally crosses over and touches his fingertips through the void and becomes—even if only briefly, even for a moment—human, in the same way that you are human, in the same way as me. Paul McCartney is made of the same blood and bones and flesh as all of us, he's just better at making music and having the same sad, tired eyelids of a dying dog that we are, and that makes him an icon. But when he gets turned away from Tyga's party with Beck and the drummer out of the Foo Fighters, he is saying: I know your struggles. He is saying: I am one of you. I have always been one of you.

We have all been turned away from a nightclub. Anyone who has not been asked to leave a nightclub hasn't lived. Anyone who has not walked away from a nightclub calling a bouncer a "prick"—not loud enough that the bouncer will hear you and do a little tight-trousered bouncer run at you and attack you from behind and break the vertebrae in your neck, but loud enough to make you feel good, to make a point, maybe you will kick an errant Coke can while you say "prick" to disguise the word but not the sentiment—anyone who has not done that has not, in my opinion, taken advantage of their whirl around the sun.

You might say: this is an embarrassing moment in Paul McCartney's life, documented and filed in the library of the internet for the ages. When we Google Paul McCartney in a thousand years' time, will we remember his work with The Beatles, his activism, his solo work? Probably not. We'll remember that time he, a 73-year-old man who really doesn't need to impress anyone anymore, got turned away from a Grammy party hosted by—of all the people in the world to host Grammy parties to get turned away from—Tyga, while some TMZ douche flatly says, "They won't let you in? What!" That this is his legacy, and it is an unfair one.

But in a way, McCartney's folly is a message of hope, a message of solidarity with a youth he is spiraling ever further away from. Even Paul McCartney can get turned away from a nightclub. Bear that in mind next time a bouncer looks at your shoes, ushers a few lads in trainers in past you, then tells you the place is full. Next time a bouncer has you and the girls shivering in the cold for an hour just to tell you there's a private party tonight and the cover fee has trebled. You are Paul McCartney, and Paul McCartney is you. You haven't failed, you haven't faltered. Paul McCartney can't even get into a party hosted by Tyga. It's the system that is broken, not you. All bouncers are bastards, and even professional vegetable-liker and knight of the realm Paul McCartney isn't safe from them. Every time you get turned away from an ID-only Wetherspoons, you are one step closer to becoming an icon.

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