#he spends half of your doc talking about tours and concerts and primrose hill and the saville and having an audience and

[sgt-paul]

should have posted this on the anniversary of the rooftop concert but posting it on the anniversary of the ed sullivan show the first live wings gig is pretty fitting as well, anyway i just have the urge to react to the sort of "paul is a nervous, anxious wreck and he doesn't want to go on the roof he is scared and he is pain, and he is fishing for excuses" trope i've seen spiral on here (thanks to PJ's ability to come up with the most tone deaf "insights") as i'm just.. i don't get what people are looking at lol.

like, how do we get from paul talking about wanting to perform and play live for the whole doc really to the "paul is waiting for someone to boycott the gig because he is afraid to play live" conclusion. we know he wants to perform and play live, he wants an audience etc, because not only is he consistent about this during get back (at the "meeting" before the concert when there's still some uncertainty around the whole thing, according to MLH he is the one telling the others that they should do it), he said it himself (1) prior to get back [the idea of singing live is much more appealing to us now] (2) he continues saying this after they have finished get back (we know touring was basically the only suggestion he's made to the band around the time of/at the divorce meeting too) and (3) 3 years later, just months after he's formed wings the first thing he does is bringing his original idea to life with their university tour. + (4) he's absolutely thriving when he is playing on the roof...

yeah paul shows that he is frustrated and nervous about the direction the project is heading into, but he is literally right, he is not "moaning about nothing", he is not in a "pointless anxiety spiral", he's not bringing up "excuses" because he has "stage fright". (i can get behind the idea that he would be nervy about playing live again because (1) duh, and (2) in regards to that he very openly and sensibly says that he thinks they've/he's "got a bit shy". but uhm, that's quite different from what people are trying project him). the sense you get from him is that for him, playing a few numbers on the roof, and a couple others in the basement in a rush, and then somehow stringing them together into an album is not enough, it's not it ["but for who is tommorow the day we've got to do it?, not for me"]. hence why john is saying to him that he's aware that doing only ~7 tracks instead of 14 is disappointing and he's not talking to paul about the "stress" of having audience, or doing the concert or playing live, whatever. he's quite literally said, that he wants to go out with a bang. he wants a big, proper end to the story, he wants something different and fresh, something good they can be proud of and satisfied with ["i just like making the best out of an idea"] and then he wants to close the project and move on. he's a perfectionist, and he isn't lazy to put in the work to achieve what he perceives to be "enough". (of course ringo's and glyn's upcoming commitments are considerable obstacles when it comes to the possibility of extending the length of the project, but to me it seems his idea was to spend one more week working on the songs/setlist and preparing a 12-14 song concert in a proper location - days before the roof he is still talking about doing it somewhere like the saville theatre). he clearly cares about the band's output, he is fully invested in creating something great - just like he was when it was about pepper or the mmt - and he doesn't want some half-assed end* to the project they have been working on for about a month, the project that could also easily turn out to be their last(!). *the half-assed end being the better than nothing rooftop gig they resort to, seasoned with the basement tracks. so he's trying to get the most out of it, he's trying to give the biggest ending to this project that he can think of. right until the last moment he's trying to get more out of it than what they have eventually ended up with, because he thinks the roof isn't enough and it's not the ending that he wants. but once it becomes obvious that the roof&basement combo will have to be the finale, he is determined to make it as good as possible.

also you can't say that his frustration, worry and dissatisfaction weren't justified lmao, because when you look at the not particularly ideal treatment let it be got in the end (enter spector and klein), or just them being not that satisfied with what they had ended up with (days before the roof they are already talking about starting the recording of a new LP and just like that within a few weeks they are already working on abbey road) and the end result being subpar to the white album or abbey road... yeah. you can see what his problem was at the time. it could have been a step forward, as the project had the potential.

(and like, he could not have known that 50 years later people would look back on the rooftop concert and hail it as this iconic farewell gig lol, and that the performance of those 5 songs we got from the roof would be considered so legendary etc)