Technophobe McCartney yet to play Beatles game

Paul McCartney has revealed he has still not played 'The Beatles: Rock Band' - and fears he would be hopeless.

The musician said he thought the computer game – which goes on sale this week - looked too tough.

In an interview with NME, out tomorrow, McCartney admitted: “I haven’t tried it. When you go to a demo they play it and I go: ’God, that looks hard’.”

The Fab Four’s bass player and vocalist pointed out he often took a while to get to grips with new technology.

“I think you either don’t embrace the modern day or you do embrace it,” he said. “For instance, I held out on mobile phones for years. I could see everyone using them, I thought they were poncy. But then I got one and thought: ’This is good’.

“So I’m not a dinosaur, I probably resist most trends until I think: ’I’ll have a go at this’ and the Rock Band thing is similar because I’m not a video gamer.

“I go to people’s houses and they’re whacking away the Wiis, and I can see the fun, and I’ll have a couple of games and get beaten instantly and think: ’I don’t like those games any more’.

McCartney said he understood that some purists might not see the point of allowing The Beatles music to be used in the game but thought it would encourage younger fans – and it also bypassed the stand-off over Beatles downloads.

“I started noticing lots of young kids were playing it, and for me the most interesting thing is that it will introduce Beatles music to people who might never have heard it because they game all the time, they don’t listen to the radio, they haven’t got much of a record collection,” he said.

“Then the other interesting little side-effect that’s come up is that we were having problems with iTunes – well, not iTunes, EMI was the problem – with downloading, which we’d like to do because that’s how a lot of people get their music.

“We’ve kind of bypassed that because now you can do it on Rock Band.

“I always liked that, when you’re told you can’t do something, and suddenly there’s a little route round the back.”