Post by TotalInformation on Jun 2, 2004 2:55:06 GMT
DAILY MAIL (London)
May 28, 2004
Pg. 55
Roll up for the musical history tour
By RAY CONNOLLY
LITTLE by little, The Beatles' legend is being rewritten, their musical legacy re-divided. This is no one's fault, just the inevitability of what happens when two die, one retires and one goes on and on, singing and playing wherever anyone will listen.
And since Paul McCartney went back on the road two years ago, that seems to be just about everywhere.
To the survivor the spoils, you might say. Because although McCartney speaks fondly of his three former colleagues, he performs, with one exception, only those Beatles songs he wrote, or mainly wrote, himself.
And that inevitably appropriates to him a greater slice of The Beatles' memory than would be the case if, say, John Lennon were still around doing his old numbers, too.
It's a development that became more apparent this week when McCartney began the second stage of a European tour at a football stadium in Gijon, a small town on the Atlantic north coast of Spain.
THERE was once a time - while touring the world with his first wife, Linda, and second group Wings - when McCartney had to be begged to sing more than a couple of his old Beatles hits.
Those days are long gone. Now, it is his inferior Wings canon which barely gets a look-in. Out of a total of 36 songs played in Gijon, 26 had been written and recorded when McCartney was a Beatle. That means more than half his lifetime ago.
For older Beatles fans, this is a treat to anticipate. The tour makes its way through the capitals of mainly northern Europe for the next month, before heading towards a British finale at the Glastonbury Festival at the end of June.
I'm not sure, though, that the citizens of Gijon fully appreciated some of his finer works.
Songs such as For No One, I've Just Seen A Face, Follow The Sun and Drive My Car - which were being sung for the first time in public since they were recorded nearly 40 years ago - led to a distracting hum around the farther reaches of the stadium.
No matter. McCartney is an old trouper and soon recaptured attention with a driving Get Back, a firework show for Live And Let Die, and community singing with Hey Jude, Yesterday and Let It Be.
There's something extraordinarily moving about 50,000 people joining together in song.
It's almost a religious experience: the contented, shared joy of the common man and woman.
That's what McCartney brings on these tours. Each of those three hugely popular songs provides a different memory for each member of his audience.
Looking around as the people sang along, tears glinting in their eyes, you could see the years drain from their faces in the sheer pleasure of being able to relive for just a minute or two some moment of their lives.
All it takes is the right song, and McCartney has any number of those. With Eleanor Rigby, All My Loving, I Saw Her Standing There, Lady Madonna and Sergeant Pepper, he's like a modern Pied Piper - collecting not rats or children, but those perhaps heading towards a second childhood, or those who want to know what all that Beatles fuss was about in the first place.
The 22-year- old Spanish girl sitting next to me admitted before the show that she'd come only because she wanted to see something historic, as though McCartney was some specimen of dinosaur.
But as the show stretched to two-and-a-half hours, and towards 1am, and you got the feeling that the local authority might need a hook to get McCartney off stage, she cheered as loudly as anyone.
By sheer virtuosity and the number of hit songs performed, McCartney can batter even the greatest sceptic into submission.
But what of Paul McCartney himself? Why does he feel this need to keep proving himself?
Obviously he doesn't need the money or the fame. He suggests that he tours because he loves doing it. And I'm sure that's true; but it is, I suspect, only half an answer.
ONE McCartney eye has to be cocked on posterity. For years, he was compared unfavourably by some Beatles chroniclers with his songwriting partner and rival, John Lennon.
Deeply sensitive to any kind of criticism, he hated being thought of as the lesser of the two halves - though, for my money, he never was.
These tours, I suspect, are partly his way of saying to his detractors: 'Look, this is what I did - and what I can still do.' Yet by performing so many of his Beatles songs, numbers such as Penny Lane, Blackbird and Back In The USSR (which, it must be said, the audiences love to hear), he is inevitably reapportioned in his favour as memories of the other three grow dimmer.
McCartney isn't to blame. He's doing only what he always wanted to do - sing his songs and entertain people.
Perhaps, in the interest of balance, he could find space to include a couple of John Lennon's Beatles hits by the time he gets to Glastonbury: something like A Hard Day's Night, for instance.
Every fan loves that one, and Paul used to sing it very well.
May 28, 2004
Pg. 55
Roll up for the musical history tour
By RAY CONNOLLY
LITTLE by little, The Beatles' legend is being rewritten, their musical legacy re-divided. This is no one's fault, just the inevitability of what happens when two die, one retires and one goes on and on, singing and playing wherever anyone will listen.
And since Paul McCartney went back on the road two years ago, that seems to be just about everywhere.
To the survivor the spoils, you might say. Because although McCartney speaks fondly of his three former colleagues, he performs, with one exception, only those Beatles songs he wrote, or mainly wrote, himself.
And that inevitably appropriates to him a greater slice of The Beatles' memory than would be the case if, say, John Lennon were still around doing his old numbers, too.
It's a development that became more apparent this week when McCartney began the second stage of a European tour at a football stadium in Gijon, a small town on the Atlantic north coast of Spain.
THERE was once a time - while touring the world with his first wife, Linda, and second group Wings - when McCartney had to be begged to sing more than a couple of his old Beatles hits.
Those days are long gone. Now, it is his inferior Wings canon which barely gets a look-in. Out of a total of 36 songs played in Gijon, 26 had been written and recorded when McCartney was a Beatle. That means more than half his lifetime ago.
For older Beatles fans, this is a treat to anticipate. The tour makes its way through the capitals of mainly northern Europe for the next month, before heading towards a British finale at the Glastonbury Festival at the end of June.
I'm not sure, though, that the citizens of Gijon fully appreciated some of his finer works.
Songs such as For No One, I've Just Seen A Face, Follow The Sun and Drive My Car - which were being sung for the first time in public since they were recorded nearly 40 years ago - led to a distracting hum around the farther reaches of the stadium.
No matter. McCartney is an old trouper and soon recaptured attention with a driving Get Back, a firework show for Live And Let Die, and community singing with Hey Jude, Yesterday and Let It Be.
There's something extraordinarily moving about 50,000 people joining together in song.
It's almost a religious experience: the contented, shared joy of the common man and woman.
That's what McCartney brings on these tours. Each of those three hugely popular songs provides a different memory for each member of his audience.
Looking around as the people sang along, tears glinting in their eyes, you could see the years drain from their faces in the sheer pleasure of being able to relive for just a minute or two some moment of their lives.
All it takes is the right song, and McCartney has any number of those. With Eleanor Rigby, All My Loving, I Saw Her Standing There, Lady Madonna and Sergeant Pepper, he's like a modern Pied Piper - collecting not rats or children, but those perhaps heading towards a second childhood, or those who want to know what all that Beatles fuss was about in the first place.
The 22-year- old Spanish girl sitting next to me admitted before the show that she'd come only because she wanted to see something historic, as though McCartney was some specimen of dinosaur.
But as the show stretched to two-and-a-half hours, and towards 1am, and you got the feeling that the local authority might need a hook to get McCartney off stage, she cheered as loudly as anyone.
By sheer virtuosity and the number of hit songs performed, McCartney can batter even the greatest sceptic into submission.
But what of Paul McCartney himself? Why does he feel this need to keep proving himself?
Obviously he doesn't need the money or the fame. He suggests that he tours because he loves doing it. And I'm sure that's true; but it is, I suspect, only half an answer.
ONE McCartney eye has to be cocked on posterity. For years, he was compared unfavourably by some Beatles chroniclers with his songwriting partner and rival, John Lennon.
Deeply sensitive to any kind of criticism, he hated being thought of as the lesser of the two halves - though, for my money, he never was.
These tours, I suspect, are partly his way of saying to his detractors: 'Look, this is what I did - and what I can still do.' Yet by performing so many of his Beatles songs, numbers such as Penny Lane, Blackbird and Back In The USSR (which, it must be said, the audiences love to hear), he is inevitably reapportioned in his favour as memories of the other three grow dimmer.
McCartney isn't to blame. He's doing only what he always wanted to do - sing his songs and entertain people.
Perhaps, in the interest of balance, he could find space to include a couple of John Lennon's Beatles hits by the time he gets to Glastonbury: something like A Hard Day's Night, for instance.
Every fan loves that one, and Paul used to sing it very well.
