When I found out I would be able to go to the Paul McCartney show at Dodger Stadium, his last performance of the “Freshen Up” tour, I knew I would come out of it wanting to write something. A show review would be lame, and probably five pages too long considering his 36-song-set list. Anticipating an editorial piece, I began to brainstorm some titles. After attending the show, I am ashamed to share the title I was planning to use: “When It Isn’t Good, But It’s Legend.”
I was expecting the show, as a show, to be great. I was expecting having a blast and I was expecting the tears that I did in fact shed. But I wasn’t expecting 77-year-old Paul McCartney, with two of his grandchildren sitting in the audience, to actually sound good.
The story I would have written would definitely not have made Paul sound like a has-been, but simply like an old rock star who, even without his history of drug use and voice strain, is simply putting on this show for his longtime fans who are paying to be in McCartney’s presence. An audience who needed to see for themselves this left-handed legend play his famous redish-orange Hofner bass backwards. The crowed would leave with an adrenalin rush, vowing never to forget the time they saw Paul McCartney at Dodger Stadium, but also perhaps saying, man, that voice is done.
As I walked out of the stadium last night, heart still pounding from the beat of the music, I knew that I would not be able to tell this story, simply because it is not what happened.
At 8:27 p.m. the audience sat tight and patiently waited for the show that they were told would begin at 8 p.m. sharp. We all enjoyed the graphics on the screen, sang along to the old Beatles songs echoing through the stadium, and sipped on our beer; or rather got a refill after sucking down a pint unknowingly through the excitement and anxiety of being in the same vicinity as a Beatle. (Don’t be fooled- this was my third McCartney concert, and no, I’m still not over it.)
Suddenly the song that was playing- some journalist I am, I don’t remember because I was too busy breathing in one nostril and out the other- transitioned into the orchestrated ending of “A Day In The Life.” The crowed went suddenly silent, before growing even louder than before.
Everyone at the concert was a true fan (who else would pay the absurd amount of money they were charging for tickets) and knew that at the loud bang and fade of the organ, our savior would enter the stage.
Paul opened with “A Hard Day’s Night,” a Beatles hit that, oddly, was not Paul’s song, but his writing partner John Lennon’s. As I sang along to the tune, the fact that I was singing over a real Beatle and not over the record I’ve heard so many times hit me like a ton of bricks. This is something so special that not nearly enough people will get to experience. After all, there are only two Beatles left, and healthy as they seem to be they are both pushing 80. Can you imagine a world without any of the fab-four who changed music forever in it?
I mean, we’re living in strange, hard times already, but at least we have the founder of Meet-Free Mondays. We have the 79-year-old badass promoting “peace and love, peace and love,” all over the internet. We are living in a world that’s still got two of the members of the band that refused to play for segregated audiences in the 60s, the band that played a free, surprise concert on a London rooftop. The band that you can listen to when you’re sad or happy, stressed or excited, want to feel like you’re at a circus or feel like you’re at a live show or feel like you’ve just entered into an alternate universe and you’ll come back whenever you so please thank you very much.
And here he was, a quarter-founder of it all, standing right in front of me, speaking words of wisdom, LET IT BE for crying out loud!
13 songs in and not a cracked note so far, McCartney began to play the intro to “Maybe I’m Amazed.” My dad looked at me and shook his head. “I don’t know why he still does this one.” We stood there waiting to see McCartney’s vocal chords fly out of his mouth and into the crowed, where some crazy fans would fight over it and the winner would take it home in his or her purse.
Yet there he was, playing and seeing and screaming- but it a good way. Pushing it- of course! But doing it all the same. Hitting the notes and feeling the words, the rock n’ roll scream was still there.
Last time when I saw McCartney play this live, only two years prior, I was convinced he gave it everything he’s got, and that that MUST be the last time he does that one live. I’m pretty sure I had the same thought when I saw him six years before that. But if we’ve learned anything about Paul McCartney over the past 60 years he’s been in the spotlight, it’s that there’s nothing this man can’t do or won’t get done. This is the PR Beatle we’re talking about. This man is here to impress; to make writers like me feel bad about even for a second thinking he might not sound as good as he used to.
He continued to play classics from “From Me To You” to “Blackbird,” with some surprises and stories along the way. He played tribute songs for the late Beatles, George Harrison and John Lennon. He played “In Spite of All The Danger,” the first song the Beatles recorded before they were the Beatles (“The Quarrymen,” a name they luckily changed soon after), and Paul told a lovely tale about why he’s the one to sing the solo line, “Love Me Do” while John whistled away into his harmonica. “George Martin wanted the harmonica to come in on the “1,” and John couldn’t do the two things at once, so George turned to me and he said, ‘Paul, would you mind singing the ‘love me do’ line?” Paul recalls being so incredibly nervous, he says he can hear his voice shaking during that one line every time he hears the song.
“Hey Jude” is always a live Paul highlight. I have never seen so many people holding hands and swaying and signing at the same time. There were kids there who must have been seven years old, and adults there probably in their 70s, all signing, “na, na, na, na, na, na, na, hey jude!” Those two minutes of absolute unity and togetherness were two minutes that will stick out in my mind forever. All of these people from different walks of life, all here for the same person, for the same reason, for the same music, for the feeling of togetherness that you can’t find anywhere else. For a few moments it felt like nothing bad could ever happen to us- at least, not while we were all swaying together singing along with our idol. Nothing else mattered except those “na na’s” and that moment.
Paul invited Ringo Starr to the stage to join him, something I was beginning to think and accept that I would never see. Ringo banged happily along to “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Reprise,” and “Helter Skelter.” Before leaving the stage, he threw his drum sticks out into the crowed (could you even IMAGINE), and shared a cute embrace with McCartney. “Peace and love, everybody!” Yelled Ringo. “Peace and Love Ringo…Forever!” Paul yelled back as he exited the stage.
Paul closed with the end of the Abbey Road medley, “Golden Slumbers,” “Carry That Weight,” and finally “The End.” All songs he has played hundreds of times for hundreds of different live audiences, yet every time there’s something special about it. You never wish he would play something different, and McCartney never seems bored or ungrateful to be playing it.
Three hours seemed to go by like three minutes, and before I knew it the show was over. Off he went, that beautiful, graying, left-handed musician, leaving me to wonder if I will ever get the chance to see him live again. I walked back to the car with wet eyes and a full heart, grateful for a show so good and a man so legend, and confident that the power of Beatles, and the power of music will live no matter what, simply because it must.