Gig Review by Catherine Hickley Dec. 3 (Bloomberg)
Hamburg is where it all started for the Beatles 49 years ago, and it’s the city where Paul McCartney last night began his first European tour in five years. “The Reeperbahn?” he asked the audience, referring to the main street in the red-light district where the band played their first gigs in seedy, smoky strip joints. “Not tonight.” The enthusiastic — if sedate and middle-aged — audience at Hamburg’s Color Line Arena comprised some Beatles’ friends from the very early days, when the band was living in squalor in the back room of a cinema and playing grueling six-hour sets at the Indra and Kaiserkeller clubs. McCartney said hello from the stage to “Astrid and Klaus.” Astrid Kirchherr, the photographer who was engaged to the original Beatles’ bassist, Stuart Sutcliffe, and Klaus Voormann, the musician and graphic artist who designed the cover of the “Revolver” album, sat in the box next to me. Kirchherr, a little severe-looking with glasses and a gray crop, smoked silently and smiled sporadically through the show. In 1960, the Beatles didn’t know enough songs to fill a whole evening. McCartney, now 67, has learned a few more since then. And those days of playing for hours on end in shabby bars were good stamina training.
Dapper and chirpy in a dark suit, he sustained an energetic and flawless performance for 2 1/2 hours. Most of the songs were Beatles’ compositions, including audience-pleasers like “Hey Jude,” “Let It Be” and “Eleanor Rigby.” A smattering of colloquial German, a relic of those days, was delivered with charm and received with enthusiasm. Roller-Coaster Ride McCartney whisked the audience from the quiet melancholy of “Yesterday,” played alone with an acoustic guitar, to the madness of “Helter Skelter” — complete with vibrating bass, thrashing percussion and vertigo-inducing roller-coaster rides beamed onto a screen behind him. Even ultimate studio tracks like “A Day in the Life” sounded note-perfect, with all the complexity of the studio recording, though missing the plaintiveness of John Lennon’s voice. McCartney trotted out one classic after another — “Blackbird,” “And I Love Her,” “Paperback Writer,” “Back in the U.S.S.R.” and “Lady Madonna.” There were some odd choices too, for the man crowned by Guinness World Records as the most successful songwriter of all time. Why “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”? Surely this wasn’t one of Macca’s finest. Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance” is also low down my list, though it’s the kind of sing-along anthem that gets a crowd going. Hendrix and Clapton It was a nostalgia trip. McCartney reminisced about Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton.
And of course, ghosts had to be laid to rest: He paid tribute to the two Beatles who are now dead. His rendition of “Something” for George Harrison, played first on the ukulele and then with full accompaniment from the band, sounded more sincere, less trite than his awkward homage to John, “Here Today.” Non-Beatles fare included an explosive “Live and Let Die” with fizzing fireworks, a couple of songs from his “Fireman” album and his new single, called “(I Want to) Come Home,” the theme tune for Robert de Niro’s latest film, “Everybody’s Fine.” Last night’s performance was a world premiere, but like other McCartney songs of the last 30 years, it was somehow familiar on the first hearing. Tickets for the London concert on Dec. 22 sold out in four seconds, according to the organizers. McCartney plays Berlin tonight, Arnhem on Dec. 9, Cologne on Dec. 16 and 17, and Dublin on Dec. 20 before the London finale. Information: http://www.paulmccartney.com/home.php.
(Catherine Hickley writes for Bloomberg News. Opinions expressed are her own.) To contact the writer on the story: Catherine Hickley in Berlin at chickley@bloomberg.net.
Tags: paul_mccartney
Loading ...
