Sorry for spacing on doing Friday fanfare. Still coming down off the high of finishing Leverage: The Zoo Job, I guess....

Anyhow, finishing up the tribute to Sir Paul McCartney after he turned 70 last week, we'll go with an actual Beatles song, in this case my favorite one: "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" from Abbey Road.

I gotta tell you, I have similar feelings about the Beatles to them that I have about The Band -- they ended it just when they were getting great. Not that they weren't great before, but in both of these classic "B" bands, you can see the progression of them all getting better as singers, as songwriters, as musicians -- just more and more together and complex and wonderful.

And then it ended. Yes, The Band did continue after The Last Waltz, but that was a group that was truly those five guys, and once you removed one (in this case, Robbie Robertson, who pretty much forced the group to break up against their will -- which was why the other four got back together in fairly short order), it was a lesser product. Still a great band, but not The Band. And then Richard Manuel died, and then Rick Danko died, and... Yeah.

As for the Beatles, their early stuff is a delight, but once you get to Sgt. Pepper and Let It Be, and holy crap, Abbey Road -- they were really on the verge of transcendence, and instead they split up. Each of them gave us excellent music away from the Beatles, of course -- all four of the Fab Four have a body of work created since 1970 that is enviable to most musicians, even without factoring in what they did with the Beatles -- but you just wonder what kind of magic might have been made if they had managed to keep it together after Abbey Road.

Le sigh.

Anyhow, here's my favorite Beatles song, also one of the last songs they ever recorded. Yes, I know that it's one of John's songs, but it highlights one of Sir Paul's underappreciated talents: his skill as a bass player. The bass on this song is hauntingly magnificent. (Kudos also to the late Billy Preston's keyboard work.)