A look back at 10 pivotal experiences in the life of Paul McCartney
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10227/1079612-388.stm
Sunday, August 15, 2010
By Scott Mervis
The 12,603 people who witnessed the Beatles play one of the first
major rock concerts at the Civic Arena in September 1964 were lucky
to be there and earn those lifelong bragging rights.
But, really, how good could that show have been?
The Fab Four played only about a half-hour and you could barely hear
them over the screams -- according to many hazy memories.
Those in attendance, and the ones left outside, probably figured
they'd get another crack at the Beatles in another year or two.
Obviously that didn't happen.
By the time Paul McCartney got back to Pittsburgh -- 26 years later,
in 1990 -- the Beatles had been finished for two decades, and we'd
lost John Lennon and any hope of a reunion. On that tour with wife
Linda, though, Mr. McCartney chose to embrace his Beatles past to the
tune of almost 20 songs.
If the show Wednesday night, marking the grand opening of the new
Consol Energy Center, is anything like the other dates on his current
tour, there will be even more Beatles songs packed into the set --
and Consol officials promise you'll be able to hear them even better,
give or take the screaming.
The other good news is that, at 68, Mr. McCartney, along with having
his moppy hair intact, is still in fine voice and has the mojo to go
nearly three hours, even with "Helter Skelter" in there.
It's a testament to healthy living -- he has been called the "9-to-5
Beatle," after all -- and a career that hasn't suffered the extreme
ups and downs that most rock stars would have faced over nearly 50 years.
In light of his appearance, we look back at 10 of the moments that
have defined or influenced Mr. McCartney's career and public profile,
presented in chronological order.
1. DOING "LOVE ME DO": When manager Brian Epstein took the Beatles
into EMI Studios in September 1962 to record with George Martin, it
was assumed that the band would focus on cover material, as was the
practice at the time. Mr. Martin wanted the Beatles' first single to
be the Mitch Murray song "How Do You Do It?" but the band had other ideas.
Mr. McCartney had written the bulk of "Love Me Do" when he was 16,
and Mr. Lennon added parts to the middle. They sang it together, with
Mr. McCartney jumping out alone on the title phrase. The song that
established Lennon-McCartney as a songwriting team hit the British
charts as the band's first single in 1962 and went to No. 1 in the
U.S. when it was reissued in 1964. Mr. McCartney would say, "If you
want to know when we knew we'd arrived, it was getting in the charts
with 'Love Me Do.' That was the one. It gave us somewhere to go."
2. BLOWING SMOKE WITH DYLAN: On Aug. 28, 1964, Bob Dylan popped in on
the Beatles at their suite in the Delmonica Hotel in New York City --
and turned them on to weed. After that, Mr. Lennon would say, "We
were smoking marijuana for breakfast." It may have happened anyway,
but between Mr. Dylan and the drugs, the Beatles' output expanded
beyond silly love songs, starting with "Help!" and "Rubber Soul" in
'65 before going full-blown psychedelic with "Revolver." Mr.
McCartney would later cause controversy when he admitted to using LSD
in 1967, telling an interviewer, "After I took [LSD], it opened my
eyes. We only use one-tenth of our brain. Just think what we could
accomplish if we could only tap that hidden part. It would mean a
whole new world." Unlike Mr. Lennon, he mostly rejected harder drugs,
but the love affair with pot continued, as he's been busted several
times, most notably in Japan, where he was jailed in 1980 for 10 days
for carrying a half-pound of marijuana in his suitcase on a tour with Wings.
3. BELIEVING IN "YESTERDAY": It was a song the other Beatles didn't
even want to release, as Mr. McCartney did it solo with a string
quartet, and the band didn't feel that it was representative of their
work. In this case, they weren't the best judges of the public taste.
Released in the fall of '65, "Yesterday" was not only another No. 1
hit, it went on to become the most covered song in history, according
to the Guinness Book of World Records, with more than 3,000 versions.
It's been estimated that the song has been played more than 7 million
times on American radio.
4. SGT. OF "PEPPER": On a plane from Kenya to London in November of
'66, Mr. McCartney was struck by the concept of a fictional band
playing a live concert as another way for the Beatles to break away
from the past. " 'Pepper' was probably the one Beatle album I can say
was my idea," Mr. McCartney told Rolling Stone. Only a few of the
songs -- the title track, "With a Little Help From My Friends," and
the reprise -- followed the concept, and most were not far removed
from the material on "Revolver." Although he contributed "A Day in
the Life," "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" and "For the Benefit of
Mr. Kite," Mr. Lennon wasn't nearly as engaged in the process and was
never a big "Sgt. Pepper" fan. Nonetheless, it's hailed as a rock 'n'
roll milestone and in 2003 it topped Rolling Stone's list of the "500
Greatest Albums of All Time." (That's Mr. McCartney in photo from the
album jacket, below.)
5. "PAUL IS DEAD": As the story went, Mr. McCartney actually died in
a car accident in 1966 and was replaced with a double. The clues were
everywhere, including the cover of "Abbey Road," on which he's suited
and barefoot, and at the end of "Strawberry Fields Forever," where
Mr. Lennon was alleged to say "I buried Paul." (He didn't). The
rumors sent journalists scrambling for the truth and inspired a Life
magazine cover headline: "The Case of the Missing Beatle: Paul Is
Still With Us." It's one of the great all-time urban legends.
6. THE MEDLEY: The "Let It Be" sessions in January 1969 had been so
unpleasant that by the time they got to "Abbey Road," they knew it
was the beginning of the end. Mr. Lennon contributed the opening
track "Come Together," "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" and "Because";
George Harrison, frustrated by his third-rate status in the band,
stepped up with two classics in "Something" and "Here Comes the Sun";
and Ringo Starr lightened things up with "Octopus's Garden." But what
made "Abbey Road" a favorite among Beatles fans and the 14th best
album of all time, according to Rolling Stone, was the ingenious
16-minute medley Mr. McCartney assembled with Mr. Martin basically
out of scraps of songs. Beginning with "You Never Give Me Your
Money," moving to a few Lennon castoffs and climaxing with four
McCartney songs, it's one of the most thrilling, trippy and complex
bursts of creativity in the Beatles catalog, and a clear high point
in Mr. McCartney's career.
7. FINDING HIS WINGS: Reasons for the Beatles' breakup are many and
varied, starting with the creative rift between Mr. McCartney and Mr.
Lennon, and proceeding to the Yoko Ono factor, the death of Mr.
Epstein and Mr. Harrison's frustrations at not getting his songs
recorded. Tired of playing second fiddle to Mr. McCartney and eager
to move on to the Plastic Ono Band, Mr. Lennon was the first to
indicate he wanted out, in September 1969. Mr. McCartney was the
first to issue a solo album (in April '70), one that conflicted with
the release of "Let It Be," causing more hostility within the band.
He played all the instruments himself on "McCartney," which is
highlighted by the enduring classic track "Maybe I'm Amazed." Mr.
McCartney filed papers to dissolve the Beatles in early 1971 and then
formed Wings, which peaked with "Band on the Run" in 1973, the same
year it released the explosive "Live and Let Die" for the James Bond
movie. The 1975-76 Wings Over America tour put him back on the
concert stage in a big way with 66 shows on three continents.
8. MOVING TO ACTIVISM: As a kid, Mr. McCartney wasn't only influenced
by Elvis and Little Richard. He was also moved by the film "Bambi,"
from which he took the message that hunting was not nice. The Beatles
were never all that political, until "Revolution" and Mr. Lennon's
fierce anti-war stance. Mr. McCartney's issue would become
vegetarianism and animal rights, with late wife Linda, who wrote
vegetarian cookbooks and started a meatless food company. The singer
has been an outspoken supporter of People for the Ethical Treatment
of Animals and has said, "If anyone wants to save the planet, all
they have to do is just stop eating meat." His activist work extends
to fighting Third World Debt and the anti-landmine campaign, of which
former wife Heather Mills was a proponent.
9. "IT'S A DRAG": He had a built-in critic in Mr. Lennon, who was
fond of referring to certain songs such as "Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da" as
"granny music." In the early '70s, they swiped at each other with a
pair of dis songs, Mr. McCartney's "Too Many People" and Mr. Lennon's
much more scathing "How Do You Sleep?" Happily, they had reconciled
and they were hanging out in the mid- to late '70s, and they were
even watching "SNL" together in April 1976 when Lorne Michaels
offered them $3,000 to reunite on the show. Four years later,
accosted by reporters coming out of a studio session, Mr. McCartney,
seeming distracted and annoyed, delivered the memorable sound byte
about the shooting death of Mr. Lennon: "It's a drag, idn't it?" It
was one time when Mr. McCartney hit the wrong chord. Eight years
later, when the Beatles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame, Mr. McCartney shunned the event because of "business
differences," perpetuating an image of him as a sometimes aloof figure.
10. THE CONCERT FOR NEW YORK CITY: Relatively speaking, Mr. McCartney
kept a fairly low profile after his '93 tour. During that decade, he
even ventured into classical music, which is rarely an
attention-getter for pop stars. A month after 9/11, he returned to
the spotlight as the organizer and headliner of The Concert for New
York City, a healing session with the likes of The Who,
Jagger/Richards, David Bowie and Jay-Z. His set included "Yesterday"
and "Let It Be," with the injection of a new song, "Freedom," he was
moved to write after watching the attack from a plane at JFK Airport.
The concert became the spark for his Driving USA Tour in 2002, his
first in almost a decade, and he continued to tour throughout the
'00s, including his high profile halftime gig at the Super Bowl and
the Live 8 concert. During that show, he enlisted help from U2's The
Edge to decipher the guitar opening to "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts
Club Band" so he could play it live for the first time. Still going
strong, six decades into his career, Mr. McCartney looks out at
arenas filled with fans of all ages -- from the folks who bought the
45 of "Love Me Do" to the kids who managed to activate Beatlemania in
the Beatles "Rock Band" game.
--
Scott Mervis: [email protected]; 412-263-2576.
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