Fist raised to salute. The violin-shaped Höfner bass hung from his shoulders. The medium-length hair is parted and surprisingly lush. That characteristic arch of legs leading the rhythm. From the sound system comes Can’t Buy Me Love. 60 years of pop music unfolding over the 15,000 privileged people who filled the WiZink in Madrid. Faces that show so much happiness that cannot be described. And this has only just begun. Paul McCartney, 82 years old, few living pop artists who have influenced so many people. Last night he was in Madrid to spread happiness. There were teenagers with their parents, couples of grandparents, also groups of young people. Happy, happy people, having the best Monday of their lives. There is no more effective medicine to overcome the bad face with which the world sometimes looks at us than two and a half hours with this optimistic and enthusiastic man, the guardian of the most relevant musical legacy in the history of pop, that of The Beatles.
McCartney did not appear last night lecturing from a watchtower of the essences of pop. He could have done it, for the work he treasures and for gallons. But no: everything was extremely warm, close, sometimes beautiful. Paul behaved at all times as a kind host, offering his diners the most exquisite dishes from his extensive menu, those songs that convey a sincerity that has long ceased to be popular. “Hello, Spain. Good evening, Madrid. I am very happy to be here again. Tonight I’m going to try to speak a little Spanish,” he said in Spanish as a welcome.
There was a fear of checking the state of her voice, always accompanied by rumors that claimed that she was doing well. There we were all stressed, hoping that the teacher’s trite vocal cords would hold up. And with warm throats in case help had to be provided. Everyone willing to collaborate. Shoulder to shoulder with Paul. But he didn’t need help. He endured a demanding program of around thirty songs without almost any moment of weakness.
He was accompanied by a band with unobtrusive instrumentation for this type of mega-show: two guitarists, a drummer and a keyboard player. When the star changed the bass for the guitar, one of the excellent axes took over the four strings. In some songs three winds were required: trumpet, trombone and saxophone. There were really rockin’ moments, like the end of Let Me Roll It, with Paul with his back to the audience to cheer on his drummer (Abe Laboriel Jr., also excellent on the backing vocals) while he scratched the strings of his guitar to the sound of Foxy Lady, by Jimi Hendrix.
Paul not only sang and brought out his best repertoire. In addition, he did not stop playing instruments throughout the recital. He supported the rhythmic part of a good handful of songs with his bass and applied himself to the piano, organ, ukulele and mandolin. He stood out especially with a colorful electric guitar from which he extracted fiery touches. guitar hero.
Paul dug into the copper of The Beatles, the holy grail of pop music. From there he rescued In Spite of All the Danger, the oldest song composed by him that was played last night, from the late fifties no less, from the time of The Quarrymen, the predecessor of The Beatles. The staging of this old piece was beautiful: he played it accompanied by some of his musicians, in an acoustic wave, all standing at the edge of the stage, the accordion especially shining. A tavern tune with a masterful pop structure that seems incredible that a teenager composed it. He chained it with the Beatles’ first hit, Love Me Do, that they could have saved singing, because the entire venue already did it. It must be exciting to be in Paul’s shoes singing Love Me Do At 82 years old and analyzing that guy who sang her at 20.
He included in this relaxed part, which was the best part of the concert, Blackbird, and here her withered voice perfectly accompanied the beautiful melody. If you concentrated and closed your eyes it seemed like he was singing it to you on a winter night while the fire in the fireplace crackled. As soon as he finished, and still with him alone on stage, he said: “I wrote this song for my great friend John.” and interpreted Here Today, that piece that he wrote, “between tears”, after Lennon’s murder and that sounded beautiful last night. There were more dedications. He reminded George Harrison (“my brother George”) Something, who started by himself with a ukulele. You had to hear the audience shout “I Don’t Know, oooo, I Don’t Know”. Then the band came in to turn WiZink into the most wonderful place in the world where you could be at that moment…
He also remembered the two women in his life, and he did not remember his other marriage, the one that united him to Heather Mills, with such an ugly end. To Linda Eastman he wrote Maybe I’m Amazed, the first big song he wrote after finishing the Beatles. The vocal demand of the piece did not deter this octogenarian Paul. To his current partner, Nancy Shevell, he dedicated My Valentine, a song with a beautiful melody, but one that integrated into such a colossal collection ended up tempering the climax. Only a few brief minutes of tranquility, because what remained was fireworks. Until Now and Them, Stripped of the responsibility of being a Beatles song of 2023, it fit perfectly into the night’s songbook.
When it was time to Get Back It was impossible to take your eyes off the images that were projected on the screen at the back of the stage. Color sequences from the last stage of The Beatles. Lennon dancing stupidly with Paul, Ringo and George moving their heads wildly, John jumping, George and John playing boxing, Ringo acting as Ringo and making strange faces… The four of them smiling, perhaps the last time before their bitter end. But Paul wanted to please us by changing the story and showing the happy twilight of these four guys who turned the lives of so many people upside down. Nice touch, Paul.
Lennon received more tributes. In I’ve Got a Feeling, For example, John appeared on the screen singing part of the song; It was when Paul turned his back on the audience to look reverently at his old friend. Okay, we’ve heard it a thousand times. Let It Be, But let’s see who is the iceberg that doesn’t get excited when attending its author’s performance a few meters away. Another of his canonical ballads was not missing, because no audience tunes in better than Paul McCartney singing Hey Jude. It’s hard to listen to it without feeling a sharp pang of longing. He didn’t even touch Michelle in Yesterday, two other of his classic ballads. He did well: it would have been a little mellifluous. In return, he pleased the coffee-loving public with unexpected pieces, such as Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!from the disk Sgt. Pepper’s, or that gem from his solo stage called Let ‘Em In. Surely the pyrotechnics were left over Live and Let Die, that stunned the protagonist himself.
The recital ended with a set of stellar Beatles songs: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Helter Skelter, Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight y The End. McCartney merged the last three into a coda of about 10 minutes that ended with some verses of The End that cannot better portray what was experienced last night: “And in the end, the love you receive is equal to the love you give.”
Tonight he repeats the concert. If you do not have a ticket, do everything legally possible to get one. You can’t have everything in life, but a Paul McCartney concert remedies many things.