IS THIS THE END OF THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD?

PAUL McCARTNEY WILL PERFORM IN SCOTLAND

EVEN for age-defying rock stars, there comes the inevitable swansong. The final curtain of the last performance before shuffling off into some kind of Valhalla-style afterlife, where tales are told of glory days, of the debauchery and excess all areas that is part and parcel of touring.

In the last 12 months, Elton John, Ozzy Osbourne, Neil Diamond, Kiss and the grizzled remnants of Lynyrd Skynyrd have announced end-of-the-road tours. Paul Simon has already embraced the sound of silence with a final show in September in New York while fellow 1960s luminary Joan Baez is also packing away the touring set list for good.

But for all those happy to exit stage left after decades of strutting vanity, there are still others who continue to rage against the dying of the light and the onset of their twilight years.

Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Robert Plant, Neil Young and Bob Dylan are still rocking well into their eighth decade, having long ago sold their souls for rock ’n’ roll in some kind of Faustian pact.

It’s hard to imagine James Paul McCartney making a deal with the devil to prolong a career that now stretches back 61 years to the day he first met a fellow teenager called John Lennon on hallowed ground at a church fete in Liverpool. But a rummage around his attic for a Dorian Gray-type image might offer up a clue.

On Friday, December 14, the former Beatle brings his Freshen Up tour to Glasgow’s SSE Hydro, the latest staging post of a 24-show itinerary that takes in the US, Japan and Europe. By the time it reaches its climax next June in Phoenix, McCartney will have turned 77.

A born performer, the musician has never met a stage he didn’t like. Still driven by a relentless work ethic, he steadfastly refuses to surrender to the notion that it might be time to finally hang up his famous Hofner bass and swap the life of a pensioner rock star for a rocking chair.

“I was talking to Willie Nelson, about this whole retiring thing, because he’s older than I am, even,” McCartney said recently. “And he says, ‘Retire from