McCartney: The rock’n’roll singer
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Back then there was Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, Roy Orbison, Eddie
Cochran, Chuck Berry, Elvis, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Haley,
Little Richard, rising up through a hurricane of sound, an unstoppable
force moving out from the backwoods of that massive cultural melting
pot, the USA, and slicing out a mighty path across a staggered,
awe-struck world.
Somebody named it Rock ‘n’
Roll and it rose high, to the heavens in fact, to screaming pitch, then
dropped just as quickly, with Buddy dead, Eddie dead, Gene badly
injured, Elvis in the army, Chuck jailed, Jerry Lee blacklisted, Bill
Haley faded and Little Richard converted. Good Gosh Amighty.
A
lot of people gave a sigh of relief. Now they could control it, tame
it, package it, write calmer, gentler songs for it. They had been
knocked back for a while there. Taken by surprise. But now they had a
handle on it. Had a grip. They would keep their beady eyes on those
spirited black folks from here on in. That poor white trash who knew no
better. No more surprises from the children of Rock ‘n’ Roll. No sir.
They had prayed and it had passed.
Good
in theory. Unfortunately, all those bullet-headed, red-necked morons
should have been looking over in the direction of John F. Kennedy
Airport, New York City, 7 February, 1964, as four long-haired boys from
Liverpool, England, stepped off a plane onto US soil and all hell broke
loose again…
This time for good.
Welcome
to several decades later and the Paul McCartney’s Summer Tour, where
the heart of Rock ‘N’ Roll still beats as strong and as pure as it ever
did, where it still gives as good as it gets, and where it still
follows the original belief that the audience is just as important as
the performer. Something rare these days.
But
why wouldn’t it be rare if it comes from McCartney? And why has he
always been so underrated as a live performer? Check out The Beatles
performing ‘I’m Down’ at the legendary Shea Stadium gig in New York in
late 1965, with McCartney on lead vocal and Lennon going berserk on a
keyboard, howling with laughter, or some of the early live performances
used on the Beatles Anthology, in which McCartney’s ability to rip out
Rock ‘n’ Roll numbers still seems to surprise more people than it
should.
Famous for their fifteen
minutes of drowned-out singing at the height of Beatlemania, even
McCartney seldom gets defensive about how good they could be. The Shea
Stadium gig, played to around 56,000 screaming kids over a crap sound
system, was everything Rock ‘n’ Roll was ever meant to be: fast, wild,
spontaneous, humorous, crazed, impassioned, FUN.
Then,
after pottering around the studio for a few years, coming up with
concepts like ‘Sgt. Peppers’ and ‘Abbey Road’, McCartney’s love of live
really took off again with Wings and from that point on there was no
looking down. I mean back…
Thursday, 25 March: PARIS BERCY. ‘McCARTNEY: BACK IN THE WORLD’:
I
had thought that there would be barriers up; some distance between the
fans and McCartney, but there was nothing. My friends and I just moved
up towards the front, no problems. The people up in the seats had paid
for their privilege. What were they planning to do, sit and think about
it?
But it was a long wait for the
kick off. Somebody told me that McCartney was waiting for Sting to
arrive and take his seat. I told somebody that Sting had arrived on his
bicycle and the security guard wouldn’t let him bring it into the
building.
When the start did come,
it was as a dream. A vision of images: bird-faced giants with huge
beaks, oriental dancers, old world folk in big wigs and gold costumes,
giant balloons following each other above our heads and around the
stadium as a contortionist on stage wrapped her legs around her head
and a character from a Maigret painting stood watching in a Bowler hat,
with a brolly over his head. It was exotic, surreal, magical… then Paul
McCartney appeared.
He was on
stage for three hours. He didn’t change costume or rest. He just
played, solid. Everything I had ever said—and argued—about his live
ability was validated. But there was more. McCartney mixed Beatles
songs with solo and Wings stuff, and it proved a lot. A friend once
told me that he liked McCartney’s work with the Beatles, but he
couldn’t listen to the Wings stuff. Fair enough, but it didn’t make
sense. There wasn’t much logic to the statement; more a strange kind of
prejudice.
I wish my friend had
been there to witness ‘Back In The USSR’ played back to back with ‘Band
On The Run’. A natural addition to the classic Beatles double-A side
studio tracks, ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and ‘Penny Lane’, these live
rock masterpieces seemed to belong to each other. Back to back. Hand in
hand. Rock and Roll. The idea that anybody could have picked one of the
two out for special treatment is ludicrous.
He
did EVERYTHING… from ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ to ‘Fool On The Hill’;
‘Yesterday’ to ‘Here Today’; ‘Live & Let Die’ to ‘Blackbird’; ‘Sgt.
Pepper’s’ to ‘Lady Madonna’; ‘Hey Jude’ to ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’; ‘My
Love’ to ‘Driving Rain’; ‘Michelle’ to ‘Sgt. Pepper (Reprise)’. It all
ended with ‘The End’, the last ever Beatles track from ‘Abbey Road’.
Stunning.
The audience were
shell-shocked. The big screens pummelled us with images: James Bond
movies for ‘Live and Let Die’, which ended in two huge blasts of flame
that literally hit the roof and made everybody—including
McCartney—gasp. ‘Something (In The Way She Moves)’, for George, of
course, with Paul strumming a Uke. Beautiful.
‘Hey
Jude’ went on for an age, the audience refusing to stop the sing-along.
McCartney loved it and got a well-earned, if short-lived, breather. It
is no exaggeration to say that when it was finally over, the audience
were as emotionally drained as they were physically exhausted. And
there was no maybe about how amazed we all were by what he pulled off
that night.
It’s hard to introduce
new material in this way, but Paul McCartney is a live act who belongs
wholly to the early Rock ‘N’ Roll traditions; and even though he has
spent huge parts of his career breaking those traditions through sheer
innovation, he will always return to them.
McCartney
was the kid who badgered Little Richard until he gave over his vocal
secrets, who knew all the words to Eddie Cochran’s ‘Twenty Flight Rock’
when he performed it for John Lennon at their first meeting, who took
out on the road with Wings in a little van, playing surprise
performances, cutting his Rock ‘N’ Roll teeth again after all the
studio-bound artistry of The Beatles, of which so much was his own.
Well,
he’s back in the world and back on tour and seeing him is something you
will always remember, just as missing out is something you may always
regret. Paul McCartney is a Rock ‘N’ Roll singer, a legend, in from the
very beginning, ripping it up, innovating, taking chances, making
magic, keeping the spirit alive, LIVE.