GOT BACK caused PETE’S EYEBROWS to form a HIGH ARCH
It started to rain whilst we waited for Sir Paul McCartney to arrive on stage. But what the hell? If we’re going to enjoy some Liverpudlian music, we may as well embrace some Liverpudlian weather. Take the very, very good with the not so very bad.
The mood in Allianz Stadium was expectant. It was like a footy crowd, on a cold winter’s night (in October!) but with everybody cheering for the same team.
Around us was an eclectic bunch. All of us too young to remember the Beatles in their prime. I mean, I wasn’t even five weeks old when The White Album was released and the Beatles were already well into their post-break-up bickering phase by the time they entered my consciousness.
Yet here we all were, waiting to see a Beatle perform live. Perhaps our last opportunity to do so. There was a couple in Sergeant Pepper suits. A dude at the end of my row who I could have sworn was Bruce Springsteen. A family baffled by the seat numbering system or which bay they were in…
Families. Friends. Fans.
And then there he was! The rock god before his worshippers! Yet as unassuming as the dude who checked our bags on the way in.
His octogenarian voice may be past its “best before” date, but McCartney still has the X-factor. There’s still a chuckle in his eyes. A cheeky strut to his impish stride. Clearly a showman. Clearly a man who knows he’s a cultural icon. But clearly a man who also knows we were all just there to have a good time.
And, man, did we have a good time!
Opening with Can’t Buy Me Love, McCartney and his band hit all the high notes of what he calls “old song, new songs and inbetweeners”. There were lights and lasers. Fire and fireworks. Old memories recalled and new memories created.
I wondered what it must have been like, back at the dawn of rock-n-roll, seeing the Beatles in a music hall with primitive sound systems and screaming girls…
My guess is nothing like this!
By the time McCartney started crooning Hey Jude, deep into the third hour of the show, we were all deep into our whimsical fantasies of times past; of a lifetime accompanied by tunes sung by John, Paul, George and Ringo. Old friends.
Looking around me, I was struck by the number of misshapen, middle-aged men dancing arrhythmically and bellowing out of tune; behaving like they were in their teens at the Ed Sullivan Show. I was almost embarrassed for them. They were north of 50, for the love of God!
Until I realised I was one of them!
But what the hell!
There was an 81-year-old man on stage demonstrating that if you’re young at heart you’re never too old to forget yourself and let your dearly departed hair down.
Y’know, I can still remember the day when my father brought home his Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band album and placed it on our home record player. It was ten years ago, that day, that Sergeant Peppers was first heard to play.
And I was only in fourth class.
Soon my boyish imagination was awash with marshmallow pies, meter maids, a girl leaving home, a hole which needed fixing, ten somersaults performed on solid ground and, of course, a girl with kaleidoscope eyes. To mention nothing of four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire…
Sergeant Pepper’s was the first album I ever loved. During school holidays, when my parents were at work, I took it out of the record cupboard and played it every morning. After a time, I could hum the tunes to myself as I fell asleep at night.
The lyrics still whisper from the walls of my parents’ house. The rhythms remain in the woodwork.
And Paul McCartney’s songs live in our hearts. The new, the old and the inbetweeners.
It was a privilege to see him perform live. A night of nostalgia and new music and fun and melancholy and joyful sing-a-longs which we will never forget.
This review was based on the “Got Back” performance at Allianz Stadium, Sydney, on 27 October 2023. For more information on the Sir Paul McCartney’s “Got Back Tour”:
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