Sir Paul McCartney performs at the American Airlines Arena in Miami on July 7, 2017.
It’s a special year when Paul McCartneytours.
That’s a fair comment for his fans around the globe and a gross
understatement to followers in Australia, who’ve waited 24 long years
for the Beatles great to grace these shores. The two-time Hall of Famer has gone all-in on this trek Down Under, exploring his career with in-depth interviews and traversing his catalog with marathon concerts. And when his One On One Tour dropped
into Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium on Saturday -- his first solo date in
the city -- McCartney was in a chatty mood as he took 40,000 fans (and
family members) on a journey through his career pre-Beatles to now and
shared the stories behind so many of those indelible hits and the
bandmates who’re no longer with us. McCartney promised a party and delivered one with a bumper setlist stacked with works from the Quarrymen’s “In Spite of All the Danger” through toBeatlesand Wingsstandards and up to his 2015 collaboration with Kanye Westand Rihanna, “FourFiveSeconds.”
Opening with “A Hard Day’s Night,” the hits kept coming
(“All My Loving,” “Lady Madonna,” “Elenor Rigby,” “A Day In The Life,”
“Band On The Run” and much more) and tributes flowed. As an outro to
Wings’ “Let Me Roll It,” McCartney hit a few lines of “Foxy Lady” on
lead guitar and recounted hanging out with for the late great Jimi Hendrix. The guitar virtuoso, we learned, was such a fan of Sgt Pepper’s, he
covered the psychedelic rock classic on stage in London. Never one to
hold back, Hendrix, according to McCartney, hit the whammy bar so hard
his instrument went out of tune and he had the cheek to ask Eric Clapton out of the audience to retune it for him. There were moving memories ofJohn Lennon
(remembered with a performance of “Here Today”), George Martin (“a
lovely bloke. He signed us to EMI, without him there would be no
Beatles. We have a lot to thank him for”) and George Harrison, whose Abbey Road classic
“Something” got a makeover with McCartney opening on ukulele for one of
the night’s highlights. McCartney’s retelling of Harrison’s obsession
with George Formby and his regular meeting with the comedy actor’s
fanclub was a fittingly hilarious homage to a musician who was close
friends with the Monty Python comedy crew and, through his Working Title production and distribution company, helped bring The Life of Brian, Time Bandits and Withnail and I to the big screen. It
was a night of laughter and dancing, of ’60s pop, rock ‘n’ roll, love
songs, fireworks (for “Live And Let Die,” of course), psychedelic
visuals and family. Seventeen family members were in the audience,
including McCartney’s wife Nancy, to whom he paid tribute with the song
“My Valentine.” Later, he performed “Maybe I’m Amazed,” a gem dedicated
to his late wife Linda and another special moment of the evening. At
75, McCartney shows no obvious signs of wear and tear, though he did
cover himself for any mistakes by blaming the many distracting signs
lining the pit. The singer wandered around the stage, reading as he
walked. “Shea 65,” read one (“before my time,” quipped McCartney).
“German girl would rather hug you than a koala,” read another. And
finally, “Can you sign my bot?” McCartney played it like a pro. “Ok,
let’s see it,” he said as a full stadium laughed along. McCartney
knows what his fans want and he’s comfortable with his past, even the
embarrassing moments. He told of his promotion to lead vocals on “Love
Me Do” to accommodate the harmonica. “You can hear the terror in my
voice,” said McCartney. In those early days, the Beatles had to take
their recording equipment into the Abbey Road Studios via the tradesman
entrance, he explained. How things change. And how some stay the
same. McCartney tapped into the zeitgeist with a performance of
"Blackbird," a song inspired by the civil rights moment, and asserted
John Lennon’s ”Give Peace A Chance" is “now more needed than ever.”
As the set proper came to its conclusion, McCartney
bolted back on stage holding aloft the flag of Australia alongside crew
members waving the Australian Aboriginal Flag, the Union Flag and a
rainbow flag, coming less than a week after the Federal Parliament
passed an historic law to legalize same-sex marriage. McCartney’s
encores are typically epic -- only a master with a catalog so deep can
hold so much back until the end. And with a mini-set of "Yesterday,"
"Get Back," "Mull of Kintyre," "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,"
"Helter Skelter," "Golden Slumbers," "The End," McCartney was just
showing off. It all could have turned out to be a damp squib had
Mother Nature called the shots. Just an hour before the gates opened,
Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology sent out a damning assessment of the
weather conditions. Severe thunderstorms were on the way to Brisbane,
with “large hailstones and damaging winds.” Those threat never came to
pass. A Beatle, it seems, can force back hail and storms and the worst
of the elements. The
Australian dates, produced by Michael Gudinski’s Frontier Touring
Company, move onto Sydney’s Qudos Bank Arena on Monday (Dec. 11) and
Auckland’s Mt Smart Stadium on Saturday.
In terms of IC project longevity Faul must be setting some record. Impersonating JPM for for over 50 years puts his cover-up in the annals of who killed JFK. I see he's still pushing the social agendas he's been told to; Climate Change and he's boo hooing's President Trump. What a piece of work.
Climate changes daily that's why we have weather reports. Always has always will. The Paris accord is nothing but a money siphoning project for NWO thieves. Read the entire protocol and you'll see.
Faul had better soft shoe it around Trump or he could get outed. There's a war going on right now with the CIA/FBI on the wrong side of Trump + military + MI + NSA.
Faul needs to stick to what he does best, impersonating JPM and taking his orders from the renegade IC that put him where he is along with the Rothschilds and Soros failing faction. He's getting old and his backers are being outed, it will be interesting to see how it all ends.
In terms of IC project longevity Faul must be setting some record. Impersonating JPM for for over 50 years puts his cover-up in the annals of who killed JFK. I see he's still pushing the social agendas he's been told to; Climate Change and he's boo hooing's President Trump. What a piece of work.
ReplyDeleteClimate changes daily that's why we have weather reports. Always has always will. The Paris accord is nothing but a money siphoning project for NWO thieves. Read the entire protocol and you'll see.
Faul had better soft shoe it around Trump or he could get outed. There's a war going on right now with the CIA/FBI on the wrong side of Trump + military + MI + NSA.
Faul needs to stick to what he does best, impersonating JPM and taking his orders from the renegade IC that put him where he is along with the Rothschilds and Soros failing faction. He's getting old and his backers are being outed, it will be interesting to see how it all ends.
Spot on!
DeleteLooky that big ol’ hooked nose from the July 17th show (blue jacket). That ain’t the guy in the black jacket. Different nose, different face shape.
ReplyDelete