Rarely do musical entertainers fully deserve the lofty pedestal and level of adoration bestowed on them. Eventually, fleeting fame and Father Time take their toll, unhealthy personal lives show up, and these stars end up tabloid fodder, in rehab, or sleeping on a relative’s couch. One in particular has retained his health, status and talent… and though rarely… does come down and entertain the lucky in his flock. Rarely would a music show snob of my caliber (41 years and counting!), pay what I paid for a pair of tickets to a rock show. Fulfilling a sixteen year-old promise; I kept the concert a secret from my unknowing wife, a life-long and still-very-loving Beatles fan… (What fun!) Precious tickets in my right hip pocket, we motored south to Nashville in her little yellow Mini for a soul-enriching evening with Sir Paul McCartney.

After crab cakes at South Street, I sprang the tickets on her… (Yes, the look in her eyes and on her face alone was worth the expense of the evening). “Not only are they for Paul McCartney…. they are for TONIGHT!!” After she caught her breath and told me how cool I was a few times, we were off.

Paul and Linda McCartney came to the Nashville area one other time, in 1974, but didn’t perform. They stayed for six weeks on songwriter Curly Putnam’s farm outside of Lebanon. The family and band were “relaxing, riding horses and rehearsing”. He “crashed” the Grand Ole Opry, was visited at the farm, and played with such luminaries as Chet Atkins and Roy Orbison. He and his band Wings were recording for Band on the Run and Paul wrote several songs about the stay there, including Junior’s Farm. The concert on Monday night was his first in our very musical city of Nashville.

I saw Elvis perform at an arena in Detroit, the year before he died. Bridgestone Arena in Nashville had the same excited-almost-breathless vibe before the show Monday Night. Sir Paul didn’t need an announcer booming that he had JUST ENTERED THE BUILDING, he just sauntered onstage smiling and waving. The house was packed, Love poured from the rafters, it took several minutes to get his first song started…the standing crowd just couldn’t seem to quit applauding. He walked the stage waving… his face making a few of those “Paul faces”. His smile seemed to erase his wrinkles and left you wondering how a 68 year old can still be CUTE!?? He’d run his hand through his hair throughout the show and it would fall right back to same place it did in ’64. Several generations of young girls have sported long term, more-than-musical crushes on the Beatles, and the all-too-cute Paul in particular My wife’s dreamy smile that night is locked in my memory as a mix of adoring high school sophomore and the Mona Lisa. She wore the same glow from the time Sir Paul walked on stage until the red, white and blue confetti fell and he left the stage for the final time, carrying roses. (Cha Ching!!)

Paul had me by about the third song. Any critical ideas that I might have harbored were pinned to the mat early on. My mind cynically wandered to the ticket prices again, only to find the numbers gone, and in their place, a small pile of hapless pennies. Sir Paul had given me my money’s worth in very short order. Whose band is on top of the heap: Beatles/Stones? Sorry Stones Fans…I’m looking at it. Sir Paul still has his chops…in spades!… His talented band…This enchanted music!…I’m watching the Best Rock Band in the World!! Thank you Jesus…tonight I feel very lucky to be in this arena!

People-tripping at concerts is big fun. The crowd Monday night was incredible, 3-4 generations in attendance. There was gray hair a-plenty but surprisingly, less than half the crowd. There were lots of people in attendance who weren’t alive when the Beatles were together. This was not an “Oldies Show”; these people were here, paying big money, to hear music that is still alive and vibrant 46 years later.

Macca (Sir Paul) did several of his recent songs, but also delivered 23 crowd-pleasing Beatles songs. (It was incredible). Each song seemed recognizable in about three notes and I was suddenly 16 or 18 or 23 or 25; the magic in the music just put me in that place. At one break, he slipped off and went into Tequila, on a lark, and seemed amused and a little surprised that it came out. It sounded great. (And I was there!!) I’d never seen him play lead guitar before. He played Hendrix’s Purple Haze through and told a cool story about Jimi on stage one night. His guitar wouldn’t tune to suit him so he asked Eric Clapton to come out of the audience to tune it for him. (Shy Eric declined.) Paul’s banter between songs was as arrestingly charming, witty and as full of charisma as it was in ’64.

The giant screens panned the crowd and a lot of people held up signs. Toward the end of the show, Sir Paul called a ten or twelve year old boy up on stage from the crowd. The kid’s sign said that he wanted to play a song with him. On not being able to find out what instrument the kid played, Paul found out that the kid was from Mexico, and didn’t speak English. Paul interacted with this kid like a very cool grandfather. Moving along with the show, Macca spoke to the kid in Spanish and told him to just groove along with the song. The song was the rollicking Get Back; the crowd and Sir Paul were surprised when the kid stepped up, joined Paul at the mike and sang great back-up on the chorus. Paul lowered the mike for him and seemed to really enjoy making this enchanted memory for the kid. Mid-show Paul told of a girl in the crowd who held up a sign saying: “I have your Hofner tattooed on my back. Would you sign it?” He clarified to the curious crowd that his Hofner was his original bass. Toward the end of the show he called her on stage. She was surprisingly a pretty twenty-something. She was trembling and just short of hyperventilating; he gave her a hug, turned her around and signed just under the Hofner bass tattooed in the middle of her back. I feel sure that she went to the nearest tattoo parlor; and that Macca’s autograph is now permanent. (What a souvenir.)  

Pop culture and music has several rewards for excellence…Oscars, Grammys and such. A precious few get the distinction of creating a James Bond theme. Sir Paul’s Live and Let Die was the vehicle for the pyrotechnics Monday night. Five foot plumes of red flames and a real fireworks display created a musical cacophony that made one’s senses race. As the flames died down, the music soared in tempo.  The song and the fireworks ended in a loud BOOM. The camera panned up to Paul who was leaning over the piano on his elbows, both fingers in his ears, smiling and shaking his head.

In 1965 Brian Wilson, mastermind of the Beach Boys, decided to quit touring and get serious in the studio. It seems he was tweaked and challenged by the freeform creativity shown in the Beatles’ Rubber Soul album, released that year. Brian experimented with several things including layers of sound, life sounds, and even included barking dogs. His final product was Pet Sounds, his swan song. In 1966 the Beatles quit touring to get serious in the studio. On hearing Pet Sounds for the first time, Paul McCartney called Brian Wilson from his car phone and told him that he’d created the greatest album ever done. He hung up and called his Liverpool Mates immediately back into the studio. In June of 1967, through their own experimentation, they released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and totally changed the Rock World forever.

The Beatles have set the Rock Music bar very high. Paul McCartney set the bar for the Beatles very high. I, like most Beatles fans blamed Yoko for the break-up of the Beatles. The Fab Four were together 24/7… for ten years. We are lucky they didn’t kill each other. They couldn’t set foot out in public without causing mayhem. Through their philosophical and quirky differences, they created a musical similarity that can only be imitated. Though the band dissolved in 1970, the Beatles heavily dominated the Rock World and charts for many years, leaving loving legions of Beatles fans with an enormous body of work.

“Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs”,  John snidely remarked to the press, after the breakup. Paul’s musical volley in a question: “What’s wrong with that?”…indeed seems to happily have been the last word. At a time when even The Eagles are cancelling shows for lack of ticket sales, Sir Paul goes on the road and sells out every show. The magic and the mystery of this Beatle and his performance run as deeply as music itself. Why Nashville…why now? Questions like these brought to mind my next birthday of three-score-and-four. In the afterglow, on exiting the arena, I turned to my date and sang: “Will you still need me…will you still feed me when I’m sixty four?” She just continued to smile.

About the author: Pennman bought his first 45 at age nine and has been hooked on rock ever since. He has spent much of his disposable income on music, especially live performances. He writes reviews of the shows he sees and keeps a keen lookout for upcoming shows in or near Bowling Green. He has a BA in Communications, specializing in journalism, and has dabbled in music himself, both as a player and instructor. Find more of Pennman’s work at www.associatedcontent.com/user/165511/pennman.html or visit him at www.myspace.com/pennman_bg or www.facebook.com/pennman