GETTING READY FOR MCCARTNEY
We look back at his previous visits
More than seven years after Paul McCartney last performed here, Montreal is getting ready for another round of lung-shredding singalongs, tearful embraces and life-affirming memories.
Not to deny the fun of Ringo Starr’s All-Starr Band shows, but Sir Paul provides the last true emotional connection to a cultural and social phenomenon few seem inclined to let go of, including music lovers who were born long after the Beatles officially broke up in 1970.
McCartney, whose Freshen Up tour hits the Bell Centre Thursday, Sept. 20, continues to feed the unquenchable fire by giving fans everything they have come to expect: faithful renditions of Beatle evergreens, with Wings delights and solo favourites as a sweetener.
But it’s about more than a wellconceived set list and a stellar backing band. McCartney has sidestepped the self-parody of the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan’s obstinate refusal to play nice (youngsters might forget that both were in rock’s power triumvirate with the Beatles in the ’60s), and seems content to let the songs carry the show. And those incomparable melodies from rock’s most enduring catalogue are apparently enough to bring people to a place where life still has unlimited promise.
Hence the waterworks.
No one else from McCartney’s era is able to summon so much raw emotion in a live setting. And given that you’ll see more millennials at a McCartney show than at a concert by any other boomer act, the eye-dabbing can’t be entirely explained by nostalgia.
In a rave review of a McCartney concert in Sydney last December, Larry Heath of the Australian online publication the AU Review wrote of a man sitting behind him who had complained loudly in the early part of the concert about “being dragged along to see some daggy old guy.”
“By the end of the night,” Heath wrote, “he had tears in his eyes like the rest of us.”
It’s a defining element of a McCartney concert. The extent of his heartstring reach was nicely illustrated in his June Carpool Karaoke appearance on James Corden’s Late Late Show, as the host found himself wiping away tears after singing Let It Be with its composer.
In the segment, a surprise live performance at a Liverpool pub also had some stunned crowd members wiping their eyes. The broadcast has yielded more than 130 million views on Facebook and YouTube.
Such ways of measuring interest were not available in 1989 when McCartney made his first Montreal appearance — not counting two Forum shows with the Beatles on Sept. 8, 1964. Nor could you buy tickets by clicking on your phone. People lined up around the Forum the night before the box office opened, or hoped for the best with other physical ticket outlets, desperate to catch the ex-Beatle’s Dec. 9 solo debut here with wife Linda and band.
When McCartney took the stage that Saturday night, the city was in shock over the École Polytechnique shootings, in which 14 women had been killed only three days earlier. Consolation was virtually impossible, and the healing power of music was facing a massive challenge.
Opening with Figure of Eight from his then-current album Flowers in the Dirt, the impossibly youthful 47-year-old singer “basked in an ovation that had been waiting to explode for a quarter-century,” as Montreal Gazette reviewer Mark Lepage put it.
Montrealers who had either missed the sold-out Forum show or wanted to relive the experience expected to get a shot the following year when a July 18 return, this time at the Olympic Stadium, was announced. But the 30,000 tickets they snapped up still left sales some 15,000 to 20,000 shy of the hoped-for level.
time at the Olympic Stadium, was announced. But the 30,000 tickets they snapped up still left sales some 15,000 to 20,000 shy of the hoped-for level.
It was the only show of the tour not to sell out — much as the Beatles’ matinée gig here in 1964 had that rarity of rarities for a Fab Four stop: empty seats. (They never returned.) In the end, McCartney’s Big O date fell victim to “logistical problems” and the concert was cancelled.
Almost 20 years after the 1989 show, with a few of McCartney’s North American tours having bypassed Montreal, impatient local fans made a field trip to Quebec City, where he presided over a free outdoor show July 20, 2008, to help celebrate Quebec’s 400th anniversary.
Some 200,000 attended the event on the Plains of Abraham. Laughably, a separatist petition denouncing the show was signed by a few dozen people who questioned whether an “Anglo-Saxon idol” should play where they were
defeated by the British in 1759.
Facing a sea of glow sticks, cellphones and flicking red-light badges of Quebec City’s Festival d’été, McCartney kicked off the proceedings with Jet and played for more than two hours on a beautiful summer night. Michelle, which contains French lines, and Birthday, to commemorate the four-century milestone, were among the nonstop crowd-pleasers.
His second Montreal show came on Aug. 12, 2010, during the Up and Coming tour. Vacant seats were clearly a thing of the past, as McCartney delighted 17,000 fans at the Bell Centre with a three-hour set, supported by his astonishing longtime backing band. Drummer Abe Laboriel Jr., keyboard player Paul Wickens and guitarists Brian Ray and Rusty Anderson have now been with him for 16 years. They will soon have been playing with him as long as the Beatles and Wings put together.
Only a year later, McCartney, then on his On the Run tour, was back at the Bell Centre with a twonight stand on July 26 and 27 — both sold out. The set lists for the two three-hour shows were similar, and not even radically different from their 2010 predecessor. Only a few changes to the song selection were made over the two nights, but such small surprises are part of the excitement.
Year after year, tour after tour, unexpected gems from the peerless oeuvre get polished to keep fans coming back for more. Although you know you’ll almost certainly be singing along to Hey Jude, Let It Be and the Abbey Road suite, you never know when The Night Before, Things We Said Today or I’m Looking Through You will draw delighted gasps.
The set list has been tweaked since the last Montreal shows, but when McCartney faces his fifth sold-out Montreal audience, the belief that a sad song can be made better will surely remain intact. And you know that can’t be bad.