Steve Jobs on Paul McCartney: Hearing the Songs Live
What Jobs talks about
Jobs recalls being in the audience at a Paul McCartney show and being struck by how powerful it was to hear the songs performed by the person who wrote them. He says the experience mattered both for older listeners and for young people hearing those songs live for the first time.
He compares the moment to hearing Bach perform his own work in a park on a Sunday, framing the concert as something that connected generations to the original creator. The reflection is brief, but it shows how deeply Jobs valued direct encounters with great work and its maker.
Jobs speaks throughout.
In his words
“I was in the audience watching the show.”
“It was fantastic.”
“Why is he doing this?”
“It occurred to me that he probably wanted to give some of us older people a chance to experience the performance of these songs by the guy that wrote them.”
“That really made me think of what it must have been like at a performance in a park on a Sunday to hear Bach playing his work on a harpsichord.”
Key points
- Seeing McCartney perform felt fantastic and memorable.
- He wondered why McCartney was doing the show.
- The performance let older fans hear the songs again, maybe for the last time.
- It also let younger people hear the songs directly from the writer.
- He compares the experience to hearing Bach perform his own work.
- The moment made him think about the lasting power of live performance.
Full transcript
I was in the audience watching the show. It was fantastic. And I was thinking to myself, why is he doing this? It occurred to me that he probably wanted to give some of us older people a chance to experience the performance of these songs by the guy that wrote them. Maybe for the last time in our lives. And to give young people a chance for the first time in their lives, maybe the only time in their lives, to actually hear these songs by the person that wrote them. That really made me think of what it must have been like at a performance in a park on a Sunday to hear Bach playing his work on a harpsichord. It was pretty great.
Transcribed from the audio with OpenAI Whisper. Timestamps link to the video above. Errors are possible.