Author: Urban Bolta
Location: Ernst Happel Stadion / Vienna / Austria
Concert date: June 27, 2013
Attendance: 20,000
Despite claims that Sir Paul McCartney’s massive world tours are a thing of the past, the British musician has been roaming concert stages around the globe like crazy for the last four years. Right now he’s busy with the worldwide »Out There!« tour, which kicked off with three sold-out stadium shows in Brazil, followed by a quick hop to North America, before Mr. McCartney came back to the Old Continent – but watch out, for just three concerts! McCartney played Warsaw in Poland, Verona in Italy, and finally the capital of our northern neighbor, Vienna.
Paul McCartney celebrated his 71st birthday a few days ago. Together with drummer Ringo Starr, he remains the only living member of the Beatles, the most influential and important band of all time, so catching a show by the musician who, along with the late John Lennon, formed the backbone of the Beatles is pretty much an obligation for every music lover. The festive mood was in full swing on the Koncerti.net agency bus too, which Rockline took to the Austrian capital. A huge Wiener schnitzel, a mug of Ottakringer and hanging out with some of the big names of the Slovenian music scene made for a laid-back afternoon, before our little crew headed in the late afternoon to Vienna’s main stadium, named after the legendary Austrian footballer Ernst Happel.
Stepping inside the breathtaking venue, a real shock awaited us. The stage was set up across the stadium, so the organizer had resorted to the standard trick of making the place look fuller in case of weaker ticket sales. Almost half of the stands were closed off, and the remaining open space, meaning the floor and the other half of the stands, filled up nicely before the show. Still, the roughly 20 thousand people there were surely fewer than the organizer had wished for and expected. The gigantic stage was flanked by two big screens, which played a documentary of photos from McCartney’s long career before the concert.
The clock struck quarter past eight when McCartney and his band marched onto the stage without any fanfare and opened the show with Eight Days A Week. Starting with an upbeat tune was a bullseye, and it was a surprising pick in every way: not only does it come from the Beatles’ early days, McCartney had never played this song live before the current tour. Onstage, McCartney was backed by the same musicians we saw two years ago in Bologna: Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray on guitars, Paul Wickens on keyboards and harmonica, and Abe Laboriel Jr. on drums. They gave the boss rock-solid support the whole night, and drummer Laboriel was an especially lovable presence, keeping the beat on the hi-hat even during the breaks and waiting for McCartney’s trademark call of »one, two, three, four«, which kicked off most of the songs.
Besides All My Loving, another early Beatles hit, McCartney strung together a run of Wings songs in the opening stretch, the band he formed with his wife Linda in the early seventies. With Junior’s Farm, Listen to What The Man Said and Let Me Roll It, including a brief nod to Jimi Hendrix in the middle, the beloved Macca warmed up the crowd, who gave him a roaring ovation when he moved over to the piano for My Valentine. It’s the only track from his latest album »Kisses On The Bottom« in the set, and McCartney introduced it as a song inspired by his wife Nancy Shevell, whom he married two years ago. The four-song piano block was wrapped up by Maybe I’m Amazed with a fresh dedication, this time to his beloved Linda, with whom he was an inseparable couple until her death in the late nineties. As the story goes, that night in 1980 in a Japanese jail, when McCartney was arrested for marijuana possession, was the only one in their life together that they didn’t spend side by side.
Paul McCartney isn’t known for spectacular shows or rich visual extras, the way more and more stadium rock acts are doing it these days. He bets on his core mission instead – music itself. One of the few more monumental moments, even in a showman’s sense, came with the acoustic Beatles tune Blackbird, during which the front part of the stage rose high above the crowd, and from up there he set off a wave of emotion with the ballad. That only got stronger with Here Today, which had images of John Lennon flashing through our heads, since the song was written for him. It’s on the album »Tug of War« (1982), McCartney’s first solo album after John Lennon’s death, and the two of them were the most successful songwriting duo of the twentieth century. The acoustic numbers, where McCartney wasn’t backed by the other musicians’ backing vocals, proved that even with seventy-plus years on his back, McCartney’s voice is still damn good!
The middle of the show was tailor-made for the real Beatles connoisseurs, as it was made up of a few gems McCartney had never played live before. Your Mother Should Know, All Together Now and Lovely Rita followed one after another, and the highlight for the »Beatlologists« was Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! from the album »Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band« (1967). Why? Because it’s a John Lennon composition. It’s well known that McCartney only plays live those Beatles songs he wrote himself (even though they’re officially credited to the Lennon-McCartney duo), so a Lennon song in his repertoire was a first-class surprise. Despite decades of touring, Macca tries to avoid too much routine, and in Vienna he surprised everyone with a short take on Ram On, requested in Bruce Springsteen style by a fan with a sign. As on his previous European tour, the romantic Beatle once again played Something in memory of George Harrison, with a slightly sloppy acoustic ukulele intro, which was one of the few negative notes in an otherwise perfect concert.
The show moved into its final stretch, and of course McCartney saved the best for last! The atmosphere in the stadium had long been held hostage by nostalgic flirting with the musical heritage of the golden sixties and seventies, when McCartney fired off Band on the Run, Back in the U.S.S.R. and Let It Be one after another, the latter with him sitting at the piano again. The drama of the Bond theme Live and Let Die was amped up even more by a mighty blast of fire, and as the cherry on top of the main set, after two hours together McCartney scraped the bottom of the barrel for Hey Jude. The feeling of thousands of throats singing the famous »na-na-na-na« in sync is indescribable, and the goosebumps ran riot across my body long into the night!
When he came back onstage, a proper little Beatlemania carried on, interrupted only by the Wings song Hi Hi Hi. The crowd had long been locked in a trance of the hippie spirit, the constant companion of the Beatles’ cultural legacy, and another immortal classic, Yesterday, only boosted that otherworldly feeling. The punchy Helter Skelter forced the floor into some dance moves, before McCartney closed the show with the final parts of the album »Abbey Road« (1969), Golden Slumbers / Carry That Weight / The End.
A two-hour-and-forty-minute stroll through the career of the most successful musical act of the twentieth century felt like a moment in eternity, one you wished would never end. Even in the twenty-first century, Paul McCartney pulls off what some can only dream of – he brings together generations that seemingly have nothing in common. Over the decades, the Beatles and Paul McCartney with them have without a doubt made life better, or at least put a smile on the face of an endless crowd of people, myself included, so I probably won’t be able to wrap my head around it for a long time: that in my own earthly life I got the chance to meet his immortal musical legacy live myself.
Transport in the bosom of an always safe and pleasant atmosphere was once again provided by the agency Koncerti.net led by the fearless, rock-solid rock enthusiast, Concert Freak!
Setlist
1. Eight Days a Week
2. Junior’s Farm
3. All My Loving
4. Listen to What the Man Said
5. Let Me Roll It
6. Paperback Writer
7. My Valentine
8. Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five
9. The Long and Winding Road
10. Maybe I’m Amazed
11. Things We Said Today
12. We Can Work It Out
13. Another Day
14. And I Love Her
15. Blackbird
16. Here Today
17. Your Mother Should Know
18. Lady Madonna
19. All Together Now
20. Lovely Rita
21. Mrs. Vandebilt
22. Eleanor Rigby
23. Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!
24. Ram On
25. Something
26. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
27. Band on the Run
28. Back in the U.S.S.R.
29. Let It Be
30. Live and Let Die
31. Hey Jude
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32. Day Tripper
33. Hi, Hi, Hi
34. I Saw Her Standing There
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35. Yesterday
36. Helter Skelter
37. Golden Slumbers / Carry That Weight / The End
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