A FAN’S NOTES

Freshen Up: Paul McCartney Live in Edmonton

I punched the clock to close off another eight hours on the night shift. I grabbed my knapsack and then jogged the four or five blocks to the Montreal Forum. Tickets for a rock show would go on sale in 90 minutes, Paul McCartney. The queue, a double rank, snaked along Ste-Catherine, up Atwater and around the corner of the arena along de Maisonneuve, and then back down along Closse toward Ste-Catherine. I imagined a perfect rectangle of fans, those at the front of the line staring at the backs of those at its end. I did not get close enough to the box office to even fantasize about a pair of nosebleeds dangling over the steep bowl. That crushing disappointment occurred sometime during the mid-80s. I cannot remember the specific year and so I cannot say for sure which album he was promoting with that North American tour.

The Beatles formed in 1959. They recorded about ten hours of music over 12 years. McCartney has been an ex-Beatle for 48 years. Calculating how many hours of music he’s released in various guises since 1970 is beyond my limited arithmetic skill. Though production may have slowed to a trickle from time to time, the tap was never turned off. The only contemporary of McCartney’s who also continues to perform and release new material on a regular basis is Bob Dylan. These two artists are so prolific that their careers must be sub-divided into eras. The hardcore fan ideal of being a completist, owning everything, becomes a daunting snipe hunt, an expensive rabbit hole.

Dylan remains a human rebus. He’s always been his own man, a solo artist though a calculated projection of one of himselves without the baggage, bedbugs and beetles of being a former New Lost City Rambler, New Christy Minstrel or Weaver. Aside from Ringo Starr, the only person alive on Earth today who might understand McCartney’s vegan pothead may be Robert Plant. Plant has made some remarkable records with Band of Joy, Sensational Space Shifters and Alison Krauss but nearly 40 years on he’s still perceived as the golden god who shrieked centre stage for Led Zeppelin; a weight to be carried a long time.

Edmonton was the last stop on the Canadian leg of the ‘Freshen Up’ world tour. When McCartney was in his prime major acts did not cross Canada, there were only nerve-wracking encounters with customs officials preceding stray gigs in Montreal or Toronto, maybe Vancouver. That’s one reason why I’ve had to wait decades to finally see McCartney live and in concert.

He’s been playing music longer than I’ve been alive. I do not know life without the Beatles, Wings or McCartney. Last night he played songs from Egypt Station which was released last month and debuted at number one on the Billboard chart. He also played ‘In Spite of All the Danger,’ a song so primordial that neither Stu Sutcliffe nor Pete Best had yet to be recruited for John Lennon’s skiffle combo.

McCartney is a lot like Mick Jagger in that he is an astute business man. That acumen, which may have hastened the dissolution of the Beatles (try to see it my way), might account for the four songs in his three-hour set from the ‘white album’ which is being readied for a 50^th anniversary re-release. Then again, who wouldn’t want to hear ‘Helter Skelter,’ the Chuck Berry-Beach Boys mash-up ‘Back in the USSR,’ an alone and acoustic ‘Blackbird’ from an elevated platform and the stoned calypso of ‘Ob La Di, Ob La Da’ when decent seats cost $300?

I’ve come around to ‘Silly Love Songs’ over the years but was delighted he didn’t sing it; ‘Michelle’ and ‘Yesterday’ were difficult enough to squirm through. The miracle of McCartney though is that he appeals to everyone, his audience has no demographic; he is rock’s ultimate democrat. I love his Little Richard voice but I guess that diaphragm power is difficult to summon for a singer closer to 80 than 70. I suspect ‘Hi, Hi, Hi’ was the second song of the night for that reason. ‘I’ve Got a Feeling’ was early too. Pacing. I guessed correctly that the throat-shredding ‘Coming Up’ was out of the question this night. The joyous barks and squeals over the endless fade of ‘Hey Jude’ were carefully meted out. Then again, ‘Let Me Roll It’ with its nasty, hypnotic guitar lick fronting a chorus of voices behind which he could hide his own well-worn vocal cords was sublime.

 The weird and glorious thing about seeing McCartney in 2018 is that it’s 2018, a modest gift in the great scheme of things but a massive one in current pop culture. He is the most famous rocker on Earth and unquestionably the most beloved. Perhaps it’s the British music hall tradition, but my feeling is that McCartney has always written, sung and played to please his audience. When he thanked the crowd his words rang humble and genuine. Maybe he’s still amazed 60 years down the long and winding road. An assumed role of distant, arrogant tortured artist is anathema to him and that’s refreshing because the convenience surcharges on last night’s tickets cost more than the actual tickets I tried to buy in Montreal all those years ago.    

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