I’ll admit it. I’m not a fan of the Beatles. Well, to clarify, I like the Beatles’ songs, but not the versions that they recorded. A while back, a friend of mine was going out of her way to try to attempt to convince me that I should like the Beatles (and their solo projects, which by the way, I do enjoy my Paul McCartney solo stuff) and introduced me to this song.
“Magneto and Titanium Man” is the B-side to the “Venus and Mars/Rock Show” single from 1975 by McCartney. When I first heard this, I was flabbergasted. He’s giving a shout out to two super villains.
There is an absurdness to the fact that this song exists, and it leads me to more questions. How did this song come about? Does McCartney have a secret love of comic books. Being that he grew up in England, why wasn’t this about Marvelman/Miracleman?
Sadly the internet doesn’t shed any light onto this, and unfortunately neither did VH1’s Behind the Music. Even Wikipedia, the greatest resource in the world, didn’t add anything substantial to the story, other then it was played while he was on tour with a backdrop projecting images of the characters on it.
What Wikipedia did add was this:
Following the group’s performance at the Los Angeles Forum in late 1975, Paul met backstage with Jack Kirby, the artist who co-created Magneto. Kirby presented McCartney with an original drawing of Magneto capturing the “band on the run”, Wings.
If this is true and really did happen, I would love to see a picture of this. I bet McCartney would be shooting out ‘kirby crackles’ out of his guitar.
Ridiculously Awesome 