Paul McCartney has hearing aid difficulties too

I think about a musician about the same as my own situation, I was forced to retire because of my hearing loss, but I quickly learned that my job wasn’t my only reason to live. My family and friends became more of my life. I have the time to give back now that I didn’t while working. I have the time for so many things I didn’t have while working. But it did take a few months for that to sink in.

There’s no problem here. I just don’t think that because someone is an actor or musician or well known for whatever reason makes them anymore of an authority on hearing loss than anyone else. Unfortunately most people when they reach 70 or 80 will have some kind of hearing loss for one reason or another. Nobody really gave any thought to protecting their hearing. I just don’t think being a celebrity makes their hearing loss any more important than anyone else. I just wonder if our hearing aids fell out of our ears, which I don’t recall ever happening, would we just roll our eyes or would we turn white as a ghost and say to ourselves, please don’t be broken

@hass5744 said:

I just don’t think being a celebrity makes their hearing loss any more important than anyone else. I just wonder if our hearing aids fell out of our ears, which I don’t recall ever happening, would we just roll our eyes or would we turn white as a ghost and say to ourselves, please don’t be broken

I took the tone of this tongue-in-cheek article to be that hearing loss is the Great Equalizer. It doesn’t matter who you are, you won’t escape hearing loss, hearing aids, and their associated foibles.

YMMV, clearly.

Yes I agree with you hearing loss is an equalizer. An officer that i worked with and was part of his team while in the Navy in Washington DC. I got out even over his protest. He went on and became an Admiral. It was his hearing loss that finally got my hearing loss recognized as truly be service related. We keep in touch and trade hearing loss and hearing aid tips. He is even working to get the disability benefits for the whole team increased.

@Morgan1946: [No, but somebody noticed that it was a gold-plated HA, and decided to make a deal out of it! ]

I saw the engraving… did he pick it up himself or did one of his people? I’m thinking he forgot to put a handful of spares in his pocket that morning.

I guess you’re joking that he carries spare hearing aids? But what engraving?

I could stop in to any VA Audiology Clinic in an emergency while traveling

I read he just tossed it in the garbage and his people handed him a new one

What we have here is proof that humor or sarcasm just isn’t very obvious when texting.

We’re talking about the guy that changed Beatles songs that said Lennon /McCartney to McCartney /Lennon

Sympathy to Sir Paul and all. At a live music event I was recording for broadcast I got too near a PA, harmed my hearing there and then. So I too wear aural blobs.
I still love music of all kinds, and yearn for more folk in HA design and practitioner training to become more live-music aware.
With notable exceptions, many recent ‘clever’ hearing aids, while brilliant on speech-in-noise, do harm to live music, as so many of us know.
I kid you not, on music a ten-dollar BE aid from Amazon actually out-performs a smart aid I tried. Even has a good and quick comfort limiter. It is clunky for sure, but undistorted and musical in my opinion. There is even some bass, below 100. And you can get the next higher model, with tone control for the senior years roll-off, for 20 dollars! Makes one think.

As all of my audiologists have told me over the last 17 or so years, hearing aids have always been strictly created for understanding the spoken word. Most hearing aids just don’t have the frequency range for music. As someone that struggles understand what what is being said I really like the progress in speech understanding. Would I like to be able to enjoy music, of course I would but it isn’t my primary need.

I always appreciate cvkemp reminding us of this important distinction. Nobody goes looking for hearing aids due to not hearing music. It’s the difficulty hearing and interpreting speech that drives people to hearing aids after suffering the decline for a period of time.

I really miss hearing familiar music the way I remember it. But we’re all here for speech. That’s the trade-off.

And on topic as an example…after the middle crescendo of Day In the Life before Paul wakes up there’s an alarm bell. Gone. Maybe barely possibly perceptible with the hearing aids but that’s maybe…if I concentrate.