It wasn't my birthday, but....
Jun. 12th, 2016 07:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakSo, guess how I spent Friday night?
This is in fact the second time I've seen Paul McCartney live, but the first time was 26 years ago (gulp!), also here in Munich. That wasn't too long after he'd ended his decade of non-touring (aka the 80s), and they'd given him the smaller of the two available venues in the Olympiapark (the area explicitly build for the 1972 Olympic Games), the Olympiahalle. This time, it was the Olympiastadion. But first, have a look at Munich's Olympiapark, because it's drop dead gorgeous:
The stadion is located in the middle of the park, and when there are thousands of people drifting to it, pretty easy to find even for non-Munich people. The last concert I'd seen in the Olympiastadion, which as opposed to the Olympiahalle is open air, was Bruce Springsteen's, but the Boss had been unlucky with the weather - it had been freezing cold, and the Aged Parents, who'd been with me, were so miserable that we didn't make it through the entire concert and had to leave two thirds in. (No fault of Springsteen's! He and the band were heroic to perform in their t-shirts at wintery temperatures!) . By contrast, Paul McCartney managed to get a nice early summer evening, rainfalls earlier this week notwithstanding. He remarked on it, too, in German, no less; prepared or not, he kept using some German phrases throughout the concert, which of course the crowd loved (and which I don't think he did in 1990, other than the obligatory hello), and whether these were Hamburg leftovers or musical talent and careful rehearsal, he did far better with the ch than most English speakers do.
Paul started with "A Hard Day's Night"; there were 38 songs in total before the concert was over (Beatles, Wings, and some solo McCartney through the decades), and he played without a break, two and a half hours non stop and on stage all the time, something a lot of younger musicians wouldn't be able to do, let alone guys of 74. Which is the answer to the question: why doesn't he stop? He can do it, it makes him happy, and it makes the audience happy. (You bet Munich rocked along, or hummed along when the ballads came.) Why should he? He was born for this.
This was the best close up photo I got. My camera is okay, and I had a good seat, but it's not one of those paparrazzi things whereas my Aged Parent, who wasn't with me, has one of those.
He got rid of the blue jacket three or so songs in, observing wrily that this would be the only wardrobe change of the evening. Incidentally, re: the song choices, mostly the Beatles songs he played were the ones he'd sung the lead for originally, with a few exceptions, two wit, A Hard Day's Night, For the Benefit of Mr. Kite and Something (more about that one later). Here he's playing Can't Buy Me Love (he started out with a mixture of Beatles and Wings era rock songs):
Five of the songs he played were dedicated to people (four dead, one living), And I love her to the late George Martin, producer extraordinaire, who died in January this year. Which I thought was a telling choice - And I love her being the first of the classic McCartney ballads; adding the Middle Eight had been George Marti's suggestion.
Let's have a look at the overall stadion:
He was switching between various guitars and piano throughout the evening. The first time he went to piano was for one of the latest comppositions, My Valentine, which he said he'd written for his wife Nancy, who was in the stadion, too. I'd heard it before, of course, but being played live, the melancholic tenderness and hope of it was tangible.
Not too long later, he played Maybe I'm Amazed, written, as he said, for Linda, and one of my all time favourite love song. Now of course at near 74 he doesn't have the voice he did at 30 to make it a screamer, but the way he sang it with his older voice made it work in a different way - looking back instead of being "in the middle of something", and still wondering why she stayed. (If you know a bit about the hell of the Beatles breakup for all parties concerned and the public vilification of the wives especially, you're wondering, too.)
There was the occasional excentric song instead of beloved audience favourite, too, like Temporary Secretary (from the album McCartney II), FourFiveSeconds (the one he did with Kanye West), which performed sounds much more Blues Rock like than it did to me on the radio, and a wonderful, groovy version of Nineteenn hundred eighty five (from Band on the Run. He also played In spite of all the danger, aka the first song the then Quarrymen recorded (the way you did as a teenager in the 1950s, by paying for it; I don't think the general public heard that song before ca. the 1990s, and even now it's obscure unless you're a hardcore fan; Sam Taylor-Wood used it in her young John Lennon movie Nowhere Boy), aka the composition of a 15 years old (methinks that kid got talent), and lo, it worked. The audience loved all of it, but of course there was that extra quietness when he played songs like Black Bird:
And then he played Here Today, aka "the conversation we didn't get to have", as he put it, for John Lennon. You could have heard a hair pin drop in the big stadion:
(BTW, as opposed to Eleanor Rigby, where the strings were added via soundmix - understandably so, you can't play that song without them, imo -, Here Today was guitars only when he played it.)
As is often the case with concerts, there is a variety of images projected. I found it interesting, though, that they were mostly abstract - for Here Today, for example, the moon -, except for Can't Buy Me Love (images of the Beatles in their black and white ca. 1964 glory), Maybe I'm Amazed (Linda's cover picture) and Something, which he played for George Harrison, of course, and which came with a montage of George photos, a lot of these showing George (and not just early Beatles George but late Beatles and solo George, shot, unless I'm mistaken, by Linda McCartney) smiling and goofing around as if to combat his image of dourness. (The last one was of George a year or so before his death, going by the hair style, and showed him with Ringo and Paul.)
The end of the main set of songs was Live and Let Die, and the James Bond song was of course the one which got the big special effects, laser and fireworks. Which works for this particular song like no one's business:
Fireworks!
And then, of course, the quieter additions once the band had taken its bows and the applause had settled a bit: Paul came back on stage alone and played Yesterday. This is where magic happens: when world's most often covered song still works, sung by its creator (and btw after those two and a half hours without a tremble in the voice) with no sign of worn out routine but as if presenting it anew. But he didn't finish there. The band came back as well, and we got the Abbey Road Medley to see us out, starting with Golden Slumbers, Paul at the piano singing Once there was a way to get back home.... We damm well near all hugged in the audience at this point.
Chances are, unfortunately, that there won't be a third time for me to hear Paul McCartney live in Munich. But I'm so glad I experienced this one.
This is in fact the second time I've seen Paul McCartney live, but the first time was 26 years ago (gulp!), also here in Munich. That wasn't too long after he'd ended his decade of non-touring (aka the 80s), and they'd given him the smaller of the two available venues in the Olympiapark (the area explicitly build for the 1972 Olympic Games), the Olympiahalle. This time, it was the Olympiastadion. But first, have a look at Munich's Olympiapark, because it's drop dead gorgeous:
The stadion is located in the middle of the park, and when there are thousands of people drifting to it, pretty easy to find even for non-Munich people. The last concert I'd seen in the Olympiastadion, which as opposed to the Olympiahalle is open air, was Bruce Springsteen's, but the Boss had been unlucky with the weather - it had been freezing cold, and the Aged Parents, who'd been with me, were so miserable that we didn't make it through the entire concert and had to leave two thirds in. (No fault of Springsteen's! He and the band were heroic to perform in their t-shirts at wintery temperatures!) . By contrast, Paul McCartney managed to get a nice early summer evening, rainfalls earlier this week notwithstanding. He remarked on it, too, in German, no less; prepared or not, he kept using some German phrases throughout the concert, which of course the crowd loved (and which I don't think he did in 1990, other than the obligatory hello), and whether these were Hamburg leftovers or musical talent and careful rehearsal, he did far better with the ch than most English speakers do.
Paul started with "A Hard Day's Night"; there were 38 songs in total before the concert was over (Beatles, Wings, and some solo McCartney through the decades), and he played without a break, two and a half hours non stop and on stage all the time, something a lot of younger musicians wouldn't be able to do, let alone guys of 74. Which is the answer to the question: why doesn't he stop? He can do it, it makes him happy, and it makes the audience happy. (You bet Munich rocked along, or hummed along when the ballads came.) Why should he? He was born for this.
This was the best close up photo I got. My camera is okay, and I had a good seat, but it's not one of those paparrazzi things whereas my Aged Parent, who wasn't with me, has one of those.
He got rid of the blue jacket three or so songs in, observing wrily that this would be the only wardrobe change of the evening. Incidentally, re: the song choices, mostly the Beatles songs he played were the ones he'd sung the lead for originally, with a few exceptions, two wit, A Hard Day's Night, For the Benefit of Mr. Kite and Something (more about that one later). Here he's playing Can't Buy Me Love (he started out with a mixture of Beatles and Wings era rock songs):
Five of the songs he played were dedicated to people (four dead, one living), And I love her to the late George Martin, producer extraordinaire, who died in January this year. Which I thought was a telling choice - And I love her being the first of the classic McCartney ballads; adding the Middle Eight had been George Marti's suggestion.
Let's have a look at the overall stadion:
He was switching between various guitars and piano throughout the evening. The first time he went to piano was for one of the latest comppositions, My Valentine, which he said he'd written for his wife Nancy, who was in the stadion, too. I'd heard it before, of course, but being played live, the melancholic tenderness and hope of it was tangible.
Not too long later, he played Maybe I'm Amazed, written, as he said, for Linda, and one of my all time favourite love song. Now of course at near 74 he doesn't have the voice he did at 30 to make it a screamer, but the way he sang it with his older voice made it work in a different way - looking back instead of being "in the middle of something", and still wondering why she stayed. (If you know a bit about the hell of the Beatles breakup for all parties concerned and the public vilification of the wives especially, you're wondering, too.)
There was the occasional excentric song instead of beloved audience favourite, too, like Temporary Secretary (from the album McCartney II), FourFiveSeconds (the one he did with Kanye West), which performed sounds much more Blues Rock like than it did to me on the radio, and a wonderful, groovy version of Nineteenn hundred eighty five (from Band on the Run. He also played In spite of all the danger, aka the first song the then Quarrymen recorded (the way you did as a teenager in the 1950s, by paying for it; I don't think the general public heard that song before ca. the 1990s, and even now it's obscure unless you're a hardcore fan; Sam Taylor-Wood used it in her young John Lennon movie Nowhere Boy), aka the composition of a 15 years old (methinks that kid got talent), and lo, it worked. The audience loved all of it, but of course there was that extra quietness when he played songs like Black Bird:
And then he played Here Today, aka "the conversation we didn't get to have", as he put it, for John Lennon. You could have heard a hair pin drop in the big stadion:
(BTW, as opposed to Eleanor Rigby, where the strings were added via soundmix - understandably so, you can't play that song without them, imo -, Here Today was guitars only when he played it.)
As is often the case with concerts, there is a variety of images projected. I found it interesting, though, that they were mostly abstract - for Here Today, for example, the moon -, except for Can't Buy Me Love (images of the Beatles in their black and white ca. 1964 glory), Maybe I'm Amazed (Linda's cover picture) and Something, which he played for George Harrison, of course, and which came with a montage of George photos, a lot of these showing George (and not just early Beatles George but late Beatles and solo George, shot, unless I'm mistaken, by Linda McCartney) smiling and goofing around as if to combat his image of dourness. (The last one was of George a year or so before his death, going by the hair style, and showed him with Ringo and Paul.)
The end of the main set of songs was Live and Let Die, and the James Bond song was of course the one which got the big special effects, laser and fireworks. Which works for this particular song like no one's business:
Fireworks!
And then, of course, the quieter additions once the band had taken its bows and the applause had settled a bit: Paul came back on stage alone and played Yesterday. This is where magic happens: when world's most often covered song still works, sung by its creator (and btw after those two and a half hours without a tremble in the voice) with no sign of worn out routine but as if presenting it anew. But he didn't finish there. The band came back as well, and we got the Abbey Road Medley to see us out, starting with Golden Slumbers, Paul at the piano singing Once there was a way to get back home.... We damm well near all hugged in the audience at this point.
Chances are, unfortunately, that there won't be a third time for me to hear Paul McCartney live in Munich. But I'm so glad I experienced this one.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-12 02:25 pm (UTC)Great review.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-12 02:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-06-14 09:36 am (UTC)Paul is a real pro -I'm really impressed by his stamina.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-14 03:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-06-18 03:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-06-18 06:18 am (UTC)