Did McCartney know, at this point, that he was more than a standard celebrity, someone destined to be forgotten when the next hot bands came along? Did he know that he was going to be an icon of British creativity whose stature would be similar to that of Shakespeare or Dickens? Did he know that, in the distant future, the twentieth century would be boiled down to the time of Einstein, Hitler, the moon landings and the Beatles? Or that it would be normal for people from around the world to know his name, centuries after he was dead? If so, how could anyone live with this knowledge? It is one
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