Paul McCartney - The US Tour 2005

16.09.2005, Miami, FL; "American Airlines Arena"

Magical Mystery Tour (back from 1993)

Please Please Me (new addition)

English Tea (band comes back) (new song)

Yellow Submarine (short version)

I'll Follow The Sun (with reprise)

Follow Me (new song)

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer, Saturday, September 17, 2005

Magical Mystery Tour.

Those three words said it perfectly. It was, after all, the first song in the first show of Paul McCartney's "Us" tour, which started Friday night at Miami's AmericanAirlines Arena.

The mystery is in how a 63-year-old man is still so lithe, so liltingly sweet of voice, and, yes, so darned cute.

And the magical part? Well... have you ever seen Paul McCartney?

As expected, the evening was a jaunt into the former Beatle's musical closet, from his work with his legendary first band, his Wings work and his solo classics. But also a place to introduce the sold-out crowd of the faithful to songs from his new album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard.

And the crowd — mostly shiny-eyed Baby Boomers and, in some cases, their equally shiny-eyed children and new keepers of the Fab Four flame — was appreciative of the newer songs, like the pleasant Fine Line and the soft, if shaky, Jenny Wren.

But they were there to celebrate in McCartney's rich back catalog, to beam nostalgically and waltz in their seats to Til There Was You, to point and pump their arms during Jet, and to sing blissfully along with the poignant The Long and Winding Road, as the once and future Cute One provided the earnest backing on piano.

And McCartney, smiling broadly and soaking up the goodwill, was only too happy to oblige. From the Paul-narrated video of old family, Beatles, Wings and solo clips that preceded his entrance, to the many sing-alongs, he seemed happy to conduct that trip down memory lane salted with the occasional new song, as long as everyone had a good time.

"Hello, Miami Beach!" he yelled, after a well-received version of Wings' Jet. "Hello, Florida! Hello, America!"

Of course, McCartney wasn't actually in Miami Beach, but in Miami. But he's a knight, so I think he's allowed.

It must be a musically interesting place to have nothing else left to prove to anybody, but still producing major albums. Maybe that accounts for the ease that McCartney has as a live performer. If you're there, you already love him. You know most of the songs, and most of the words of those songs.

So the man seemed content to just spin out whatever he wanted, telling stories along the way.

McCartney preceded In Spite of All The Danger, the first song that The Quarrymen, the Beatles' earliest incarnation, recorded with a story of how each of the five members paid a pound each to record it, and then kept it each a week. He played the softly brilliant I Will and explained that he did so because a guy in a Mexican restaurant told him his daughter had played it in her high school show.

The only time that McCartney's voice faltered was during the aforementioned Jenny Wren, a song about a girl dreaming for a perfect world. Some of the notes seemed to elude McCartney, but by the time he trilled Blackbird or led a giant screaming sing-along on Band on the Run, the perfect notes were back.

Not that the crowd ever left. They were with him all the way.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/local_news/epaper/2005/09/17/m5c_mccartney_0917.html

In concert Friday night at Miami's sold-out AmericanAirlines Arena on the opening night of a trek he simply dubs the Us Tour (``It's all about us, we're all in this together''), it was classic Paul McCartney fans came to hear and classic Paul McCartney is what they got -- all the way back to the earliest Beatles songs and before.

That meant a lot of good day sunshine songs, heaping doses of silly love songs and plenty of she loves you yeah, yeah, YEAH!.

The man dug out a pre-Beatles song -- the 1958 Quarrymen tune In Spite of All the Danger -- for heaven's sake!

Quite the contrast from McCartney's critically-hailed new CD, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, which came out this week and contains some of his most somber reflections to date. For a man known for, and criticized for, optimistic pop much of the CD has come as a surprise -- and perhaps accounts for the overboard praise it has received.

He performed a smattering of tunes from the disc to, at best, polite reaction. The CD's opening Fine Line, with Paul on piano, proved to be fan's cue to head to the bathroom, window. Acclaimed, though it may be by besotted critics, most of this new music will probably be forgotten by the time his next mega tour rolls around, although the sweet acoustic numbers Jenny Wren and English Tea proved appealing. This was a night when one-quarter of the Beatles, the Cute One, came to reclaim his legend as one of pop music's most popular composers. A point he needn't have made with a self-aggrandizing 10-minute pre-concert videoclip of his history. We paid $250 bucks a pop to see you, Paul, we know you're important.

It wasn't always McCartney's modus operandi, of course. At one point in the '70s McCartney was so gung-ho on establishing an identity post-Fab Four he buried himself in his band Wings and eschewed Beatles material in concert. It wasn't until his successful Wings Over America Tour in 1976 that McCartney finally gave in and folded some Beatles tunes into the mix -- and even then he avoided the most popular anthems he ladled freely Friday: the opening Magical Mystery Tour, a snippet of the Ringo-popularized Yellow Submarine, Penny Lane et al.

Now, it could be argued, he's gone full-tilt crazy on the stuff, stockpiling his show with one Beatles number after another, ignoring most of his solo material at its expense.

Granted, most fans came to hear stuff like Back in the USSR. Not Back to the Egg.

The gimmick, as on his previous tours in 1990 and 2002 was in dusting off favorites he has never performed live and, given that the Beatles retired from touring in 1966, this left plenty of material to unearth. Stuff like I'll Follow the Sun, The Music Man's 'Til There Was You, the late-period Beatles I've Got a Feeling. So much so he could still be out there on the Miami stage playing by the time you read this and someone out there may still gripe, ''Where the hell's Helen Wheels?'' (At 42, weaned on Wings, count me as one.)

No prob, mate. We got Wings' Band on the Run, which brought fans to their feet even more than for some of the Beatles hits, and a punchy Too Many People, which McCartney misidentified as a Wings song. (The 1971 record was credited to Paul and late wife Linda McCartney.) Wings' Jet was done with an arrangement just the way you remember it 31 years ago. McCartney is not big on reinvention.

This, naturally, seemed fine for most fans gone giddy in Paul's presence.

''I'm a big Beatles fan for life,'' said Fort Lauderdale fan Russell Rand, 55, who has a hand-painted, 25-year-old classic of his own: a multi-colored, satin Sgt Pepper coat he was hoping Sir Paul would wear.

It would make up for Rand's big mistake. ``As a kid, 40 years ago, I could have seen the Beatles in Hartford, but I thought they were a girl's band. I learned better.''

McCartney's new band is for everyone. Fine musicians, the four-piece, including drummer Abe Laboriel, keyboardist Paul ''Wix'' Wickens and guitarist Rusty Anderson, lent muscle to AM radio hits like Maybe I'm Amazed and Let Me Roll It. McCartney, ever the professional, started this tour off with numbers tailored not to tax his voice, saving rockers like Got to Get You Into My Life for later in the set. The staging was simple and the off-the-cuff flavor was endearing. McCartney flubbed the lyrics to the 1968 Beatles tune, Blackbird, and quipped, ``How long have I been singing this? At least you know it's not on tape!''

Will you still need him, will you still feed him at 64, as he asked in song all those years ago? He's nine months short of that milestone and judging by the quicksilver sales of those $252 concert tickets and $37 concert T-shirts and $11 Corona beers, plus the genuine good time he delivers on stage, it's safe to assume we'll be feeding and needing this man even when he's 84.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/entertainment/12668203.htm?source=rss&channel=miamiherald_entertainment

It took more than an hour to find a parking space around the American Airlines Arena last night for the first night of Sir Paul's "Us" Tour in Miami, and then another 20 minutes to convince the dedicated but insistent security staff that I had, indeed, been cleared to bring my laptop into the building to file my review and that I was not, in fact, some sort of renegade fan site Web master or eeevil tabloid drone trying to illegally broadcast the fabulousness.

So understand that when I tell you that the two and a half hour concert was worth every traffic snarl-up, wrong turn and frustrated explanation, you know I'm not messing with you. Here are some of the highlights that didn't make it into the review:

- With all of the screens, flashing lights and brilliantly colored plumes of pyro smoke, the most wonderful special effect was what lead guitarist Rusty Anderson called "the magically appearing piano." It would levitate out of the floor, whose twinkling tiles, like something out of Michael Jackson's "Billy Jean" video, slid wonderously back.
And oh, the wonderous work Sir Paul made out of that magical instrument. "Maybe I'm Amazed" was so beautiful and obviously heartfelt. I couldn't stop thinking about his late wife Linda, who the song was written for, and about how simply brilliant a love song it is. It admits the tenative nature of vulnerability, the fear of needing someone and the need to give into it. And it always makes me cry. It did last night, too.

- You ever notice, then, how different those grown-up Paul lyrics are from the youthful confidence of his early Beatles lyrics, that are all "I love you forever?" The funny thing is that last night, they sounded just as sincere coming from the mouth of a bright-eyed 63-year-old than the more realistically adult songs did. He did the early Quarrymen song "In Spite of All The Danger" that confirms the singer's loyalty as long "as you are true to me."
Very simple, and very sweet. And it was obvious how much Sir Paul enjoyed tripping through his back pages.

- The "Storytellers" vibe continued through the rat-a-tat-tat middle section. Paul introduced "I'll Follow The Sun" with a story about writing it in his parents' house. He seemed to be having as much fun singing it as the crowd did singing along, because he kept pausing, and then happily repeating, the last refrain of "Tomorrow may rain,so I'll follow the sun." Yay!

- His likability is all-consuming. During "Blackbird," he actually messed up, and then paused.
"How long have I been singing this? Is this the first night, or is this the first night?" he asked. "At least you know it's not on tape."

- "Back In The USSR" was a sing-along high point. I'm sure there were many people who knew all the words, and some people, like me, who were going "La, la, la, la, la, la, la la...BACK IN THE USSR!"

- Speaking of sing-alongs, the Magically Appearing Piano made its triumphant return for "Hey Jude," which was one of those emotionally buoyant moments that everyone was waiting for, and which let all that expectation and happiness and goodwill just flood out all over everyone. Everyone in my section was all smiling and "Na-na"-ing, and trying to make eye contact with their fellow concertgoers, who were, at that moment, not strangers but dedicated members of the Na Na choir. It was beautiful. And it withstood all the easy, cheesy usual Concertisms like "Now, just the guys!" and "Just the ladies!" because it was Sir Paul asking and you loved it, and you didn't want it to end, either.

- Other beauty moments from the first encore: "Live and Let Die," a gloriously over-the-top glam rock moment of huge flames. The lyrics don't make much sense, but which, at the same time, just seems like permission to tear it up; "Yesterday," which as always was lovely; the naughty gender-bendy steadiness of "Get Back;" "Helter Skelter," which Paul said had never been played in America.

-And then, there was the equally beautiful second encore, which began with Sir Paul, wearing a "No More Land Mines" shirt from wife Heather's famous crusade, running onto the stage waving a huge American flag. We tripped back down Memory Lane into "Please Please Me."
Then another piano, this one painted in "Sgt. Pepper"-y bright colors, appeared, and Paul told the lighting folks, who he referred to as "Mr. Lighting Man," that he wanted to do a little experiment. As the lights went down, he lit a white candle, whose image flickered behind him on the screen. Could it be..."Let It Be?" Yes, it could! And it was, at once, serene and powerful.

- He ended with a speeded-up "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," whose telling lyrics explained that it was time to go, even though no one seemed to want to. As he left the stage to a shower of red, white and blue confetti, Paul seemed exhilarated, a little tired but, I guess, confident that this little experiment had worked.

- One more thing: Those girls who always see on the "Ed Sullivan" footage screaming like they're crazy? I get that now.

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