Over a decade ago, the Grammys decided to do concert tribute to the Beatles and enlisted Maroon 5 to help with the festivities. The band’s covers of “All My Loving” and “Ticket to Ride” were passable. (A major improvement, we’d say, from whatever this George Michael nonsense was from the 2023 Rock Hall induction.) Adam Levine managed to snag some time with Paul McCartney after the special and, as he recalled in a chat with Howard Stern, took a friendly amount of heat from his hero for what went down on that stage. “I’ve been scared a handful of fucking times, and that was definitely one of them. You can be too cool, but not always,” he recalled. “Paul took me in close and said, ‘You know, we did it better.’ I thought it was so funny. I cracked up and said, ‘No shit.’” A few months later, Macca cornered him at a party to apologize if his words came off too catty. “He said, ‘Hey man, I just wanted to let you know if that bothered you, I’ve been thinking about this, I didn’t want to insult you or anything,’” Levine said. “It was something like, ‘If I insulted you, I apologize.’ I was like, ‘Oh my God, you’re good, dude. You’re Paul fucking McCartney.’ It shattered in a great way your heroes being who they are.” Ringo, it’s not too late to add “This Love” to the All-Starr set list and even things out.
