Paul McCartney is perhaps the world’s greatest living songwriter.
Roughly forty years have passed since The Beatles broke up and McCartney’s influence is still potent enough for Yesterday, a film whose plot line is built upon the absurdity that no one recognizes the band's music, to make roughly $17 million over opening weekend.
McCartney wasn’t even 30 years old when The Beatles ended their tenure and dispersed into various solo careers. Now in his mid-seventies, McCartney is still touring the world over, playing three-hour sets to four generations of fans. His creative (and physical) energy seem inexhaustible.
This spring, I had the opportunity to see McCartney play in Lexington, Kentucky on his Freshen Up Tour. Heading into the show I tried my best to suppress my expectations. How could any man live up to an entire lifetime of anticipation? My own parents, who introduced me to his music, hadn’t even seen him live. I almost felt as though I hadn’t earned it, but I wasn’t about to miss the opportunity either.
These guys could go out there and half-ass a few dozen classic songs every night and people would still make a mortgage payment to sit in the front row.
So there we are, standing in the two-hundred-and-something-th row of the steepest bleachers on which I’ve ever stood—a light breeze would have made my son an orphan—and then starts the soundtrack to every road trip my family took as a kid. It’s spot on. First song of the set is "Hard Day’s Night," and it sounds like every record or live video I’ve ever heard. The professionalism of McCartney’s band cannot be overstated. These guys could go out there and half-ass a few dozen classic songs every night and people would still make a mortgage payment to sit in the front row. Instead, they make every effort to be interactive with a colossal audience.
Local brass musicians were assimilated into their set and hidden in the crowd to be revealed only by spotlights as their parts came up. The band’s drummer, Abe Laboriel Jr., managed to make 20K people laugh using only non-verbal expressions. McCartney himself was not above singling people out for tasteful comedic effect, and even gave a shout out to his wife, who was in the audience, and sang a song for her like any good, living legend of a husband should. It was a surprisingly interactive show for what should have been irreparably impersonal.
Aside from the obvious entertainment value attending a concert, McCartney weaves something into his set I had not thought to anticipate: his immense breadth of experience. It’s one thing to watch a documentary about the sixties or read about world events and significant figures in a textbook or magazine. It's another to look at a man who is telling the story of when Jimi Hendrix, within three days of Sgt. Pepper’s coming out, taught himself the music and lyrics (mind you this is before YouTube tutorials) and then had the guts to play it on stage for The Beatles themselves. Or there's the time he met a bunch of high-ranking Soviet military officials backstage and they basically fan-girled him with stories about how they learn English from his songs. McCartney is part historical figure, part iconic performer.
McCartney’s ability to draw from his past invites new generations of listeners into a world we once knew—or we wish we knew—and this is the closest we will ever get.
Another example of this came before he played the song "Blackbird," when he reminded everyone about the political and social climate of 1960's America and how he wanted to write a message of hope, through music, to those who needed it most in those days. These aren’t just gimmicks used for entertainment value during a performance; these are genuine moments handed down to new generations of listeners through these first-person testimonies.
In hindsight, I think of how fortunate all of us are to still share space with some of the individuals who have shaped all that is good about the present we live in, or who know how to survive the storms we don’t even see coming yet. Everyday we walk down the street and pass people who have lived lives we know nothing about—people who probably have a wealth of information relevant to who we are and what we are going through.
It’s a given that a musician with a half century of experience playing live shows knows what he’s doing on stage. The veteran status of McCartney and each band member was evident in the way they used the subtleties of their instruments to cater to the crowd’s impossible expectations of how each song should sound. Their efforts proved successful. While, like many, I essentially came to hear Beethoven play his magnum opus while that’s still possible, I learned a great deal about the intimacies of McCartney’s ability to draw from his past in ways that invites new generations of listeners into a world we once knew—or we wish we knew—and this is the closet we will ever get.
Were I seeing another artist in those nosebleed conditions I may have failed to enjoy myself, but what McCartney accomplished brought me close to something resembling importance, even if I was all the way in the back. For me, that experience was worth every penny.
