The tragedy of Paul McCartney is that he didn’t die when he was supposed to. Had he been killed in a car crash in early 1967, as was rumoured to be the case for several years, he would have gone out at the top of his game and rightfully taken his place in the pantheon of cultural heroes who died too young, alongside the likes of Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Jimi Hendrix and our own Michael Hutchence and Bon Scott.