Looking ahead to Paul McCartney's Sunday gig, and remembering a past tour
LET'S FACE it: No one 50 years ago could have envisioned that Paul McCartney - the "cute Beatle" - would, in 2015, reign as one of the world's most famous and successful entertainers. After all, the mid-'60s was a time when teen-oriented pop acts were seen as here today, gone tomorrow commodities. (Come to think of it, some things don't change.) And it was a time when even the biggest names of that era - Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Jack Benny and the like - hadn't put in anywhere near 50 years, much less at the pinnacle of show business.
But here we are, just a few days away from Sir Paul's Friday performance at the Firefly Festival, in Dover, Del., and his Sunday concert at the Wells Fargo Center - both sold-out gigs, where tens of thousands of people will enjoy a three-hour performance by the 73-year-old musical titan.
However, for all his fame, fortune and universal reverence as, arguably, the most important (with John Lennon) musician of the past half-century, McCartney hasn't come close to having a smash hit record in the digital-download era on the level of, say, Taylor Swift or Beyonce.
So, what's the attraction? Will Sunday's gig, especially, be just another baby boomer nostalgia-fest? (At Firefly, he's sharing the bill with several generations' worth of talent.) Or does "Macca" still have relevance as a musician?
The former would seem more likely. Of the 43 songs in the set list at his most recent gig in France, according to setlist.com, only five - "My Valentine," "Save Us," "Hope For the Future," "Queenie Eye" and "New" - began life in this century. The rest of the tunes were from the Beatles catalog and McCartney's 45-year solo career.
But at least one local Beatlemaniac begs to differ. As WMGK (102.9-FM) afternoon host Andre Gardner sees it, McCartney's monumental career has not been all about ancestor worship. "He has evolved," said Gardner, who also serves as emcee of the station's long-running "Breakfast with the Beatles" Sunday morning Fab Fourcast. "Artists evolve, and Paul has certainly done that, I think, by visiting all the other areas of music that's what he's done. He's done techno, classical, standards. The guy can do it all. So he can seemingly endlessly pick from those influences and create wonderful new music."
By:Chuck Darrow
Source: Philly.com
