The fab one

Here’s me calling myself a music journalist when I’ve not once seen Paul McCartney play in Ireland. I guess this is pardonable given that the only time Macca’s actually trodden the boards here was in November 1963 when The Beatles performed their legendary gig in the Dublin Adelphi which, facts fans, was where Arnott’s now is.

History will be re-written when McCartney brings his Back In The World tour to the RDS, but just in case The Pale is hit beforehand by an earthquake/ tidal wave/plague of locusts I’ve availed of one of Mr. Gerry Ryan’s very generous offers and come to see his sell-out show at the 15,000-capacity Manchester MEN Arena. Never mind the official £45stg asking price, there are local radio reports of tickets changing hands outside the old railway terminal for up to three hundred quid. It’s a result that 48 hours earlier the touts could scarcely have expected with McCartney pulling an even bigger gig at Sheffield’s Hallam FM Arena due to a chronic throat infection.

Asked later about this Lazarus-like recovery, McCartney PR man Geoff Baker reveals: “The doctor actually told him to cancel tonight’s show as well, but Paul being Paul, he thanked them for their expert opinion and ignored it! We were saying, ‘You could cut 45 minutes out of the set’, but he was, ‘No, I’m doing all three hours.’ The only concession he’s made is dropping ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’ and ‘I’m Down’ which have got too many high notes. He hasn’t told me what he’s putting in instead, but the band and him were rehearsing a bunch of songs at soundcheck.”

While probably quite tame compared to the Beatlemania that enveloped him during the ’60s, the atmosphere around the venue is electric, with one particularly excitable bunch of 50-something female fans jetting in from Reykjavik for the occasion.

God knows what dubious sexual favours would have been offered if they’d known that myself and my Irish meeja colleagues had been granted a pre-show audience with Sir Paul.
After persuading the Rotweiller-like security that, no, we’re not members of an Al-Qaeda assassination squad, we’re ushered through to the VIP car-park where a very glamorous looking Heather Mills is stepping out of a top of the range Beamer. Not being quite so glamorous – or Mrs. Paul McCartney – there’s another wait before we’re ushered into the giant back-stage area which appears to be hosting a roadies’ convention. If big bunches of keys and sweaty builders’ arses were your bag, you’d be in heaven.

While I’d love to hang out with these highly sartorial and fragrant gentlemen, there’s the small matter of a Beatle to meet. A fucking Beatle! In a world where the second girl to be evicted from Big Brother passes as celebrity, Paul McCartney is as intercontinental-ballistically famous as it gets. His Fab Four achievements aside, 2002 saw Macca net $126.1 million from his shows in North America, Mexico and Japan where he couldn’t leave the hotel for fear of being mobbed. Which is pretty good for a 61-year-old father of four whom the hip music press have deemed to be past his sell-by date.

Not being short of a bob or two – his personal wealth is currently valued at £700 million – Macca has laid on an Indian-style reception room complete with incense, scatter cushions and lashings and lashings of Cobra beer.

The latter is being freely availed of when Geoff Baker arrives in and, after exchanging pleasantries, tells us that our chinwag is likely as not off.

“You guys being from Ireland he was really keen to do it but he’s due on in an hour and his voice isn’t much more than a croak,” Baker says, aware that no amount of sugar coating will stop journalistic hearts from breaking. “We’ll see in a little bit, but I think we’ll have to wait till Dublin.”

I’d never say this to a PR person but if I was one of the most famous entertainers on the planet, I wouldn’t spit on a bunch of scurvy hacks, let alone ratchet to them before a gig for which I’m desperately trying to save my voice.

The Clarkian gob is well and truly smacked then when, five minutes later, Macca saunters in wearing a red t-shirt and blue pin-stripe number that you just know cost more than your monthly wage cheque. There’s an overwhelming sense of big deal about meeting the man responsible for ‘Yesterday’, ‘Hey Jude’, ‘Let It Be’ and, well, about a hundred of the other greatest songs ever written.

Like Tom Jones, David Bowie and Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney is in far better nick than he has a right to be with the only betrayals of his age a few laughlines and the whiff of Just For Men.

“The Dublin show is a special one for me ’cause it’ll be the first time I’ve played ‘Let It Be’ – which is about me mum – in Ireland,” he confides. “I always get a sense of her being on stage with me when I’m singing it, but her coming from there, it’s going to be even stronger.”

‘Let It Be’ is one of 19 tracks on the Back In The World live album that sports the reversed McCartney-Lennon songwriting credit. It’s a move that’s angered a lot of Beatles fans including Noel Gallagher who told hotpress recently: “It’s not gone down too well in fucking Liverpool, that’s for sure. It’s quite sad that being the greatest living bass-player in the world, and an equal half of the greatest songwriting partnership ever, isn’t enough for him.”

Sir Paul’s response to the furore is a simple: “I think it’s fair and accurate for the songs that John declared were mine to carry my name first.”

There are 864 other questions I’m dying to ask, but with Macca’s minder shooting me a glance that says, “Try and you won’t be able to type the answers”, I decide to leave ‘em for another day. There’s just time for a communal “thumbs aloft” photo and, that’s it, he’s off.

With his Liverpool King’s Dock show not happening till June 1, tonight has assumed the air of a homecoming with as many Scouse accents as Manc ones audible. Hell, I even spot Ron Dixon from Brookie walking down the aisle with a jumbo-sized popcorn.

I doubt if even the Gladwys Street end at Goodison Park could match the roar when the house-lights dim and Macca… doesn’t come on until we’ve been subjected to 15 minutes of performance art wank! You may feel differently about marauding troops of pierrots, ninjas, geishas and stilt-walkers but it’s not rock ’n’ roll and I don’t like it!

All is forgiven, though, when a guitar-toting McCartney emerges from the centre of the giant video screen and launches into a version of ‘Hello Goodbye’ that sounds as factory fresh as it did in 1967.

“It’s good to be talking again”, he quips, visibly relieved that the voice is holding out. There are a couple of wobbles – most notably during an acoustic ‘We Can Work It Out’ – but otherwise you’d never guess that he’s been chain-gargling Benylin.

Having spent the ’70s and ’80s trying to distance himself from the past, Sir Paul is now sufficiently at peace with his back catalogue to include 23 Beatles songs in tonight’s set. Although his four-piece band help him unleash the likes of ‘Birthday’, ‘Back In The USSR’ and ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ with the prerequisite amount of bluster, it’s the stripped-down moments that work best.

Blessed with the sparsest of accompaniments, ‘Fool On The Hill’ and ‘She’s Leaving Home’ are achingly beautiful. ‘Eleanor Rigby’, ‘Michelle’ and ‘Here, There And Everywhere’ are three more understated triumphs, with their co-author alternating between piano and acoustic guitar.

There’s no need for Billy Connolly to look to his laurels quite yet, but McCartney proves to be a more than able raconteur with stories about Japanese masseuses, pretentious ’60s student parties and deviant sexual practices that used to be, and maybe still are, popular in Liverpool. He also touchingly pays tribute to John Lennon with ‘Here Today’ and George Harrison who, having been outed as a George Formby fan, has a ukulele version of ‘Something’ played in his honour.

All of which pales into insignificance compared to a closing salvo that takes in ‘Live And Let Die’, ‘Let It Be’, ‘Hey Jude’, ‘The Long And Winding Road’, ‘Lady Madonna’, ‘I Saw Her Standing There’, ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’.

Andrew W.K. fans may argue the toss, but there isn’t a songwriter, dead or alive, who can rival that canon.

Especially when it’s communally sung by an audience that knows it’s been in the presence of greatness.