Last night Sir Paul, the most famous popular musician in the world alongside Bob Dylan (arguably) was married in London to an American heiress, and celebrated at his home in St John's Wood, with Mark Ronson DJing. Rather incredibly, when the party (which featured among others Twiggy) ran on past 1 am, neighbours called the noise inspectors, who came and (one presumes politely) asked one of The Fab Four to turn it down. Given that he is a Beatle, and gave the world such joy for decades with his music, it seems utterly petty to complain. The last song was 'Hey Jude', and the music stopped at 2 am. So much for Swinging London.
POETRY, POLITICS, PROVOCATION AND POPULAR CULTURE SINCE 2005 - 20 YEARS AND over 10 million visits - British Library-archived
Comments
Actually, the most remarkable aspect of this business is that a) there are noise inspectors, and b) they did something about the racket.
Poor old Macca! I suppose that the party will just have to continue at one of his numerous other mansions!
Best wishes from Simon
The Beethoven analogy is false: if this were some Beatles reunion (unlikely, obviously!) then perhaps it would be different, but it was presumably just the usual over-amplified playing of recordings. (Actually, I imagine Ludwig's neighbours were probably less than chuffed with hearing the grumpy deaf old geezer bashing out the Hammerklavier sonata on his battered Broadwood in the middle of the night.)
Do you think that if it were not Macca having this party that the noise till the early hours would still be acceptable? What difference does it make that he wrote some good songs a long time ago? And don't you have to get up for work in the morning or does a lack of sleep not bother you?
I go on because this is increasingly a major issue in our technological society: our ability to force our noise down other people's earholes, and the psychological effect that imposition has on the victims.