Beatlemania returns as Sir Paul gets back to the Cavern
Sir Paul Mccartney The Cavern, Liverpool
It was impossible to escape a sense of history seeing a Beatle in the Cavern. The crowds thronging Mathew Street in Liverpool were thrilled just by their proximity to this cosmic showbiz event: the biggest star in pop history in the smallest venue in his home town. Down four flights of stairs, in a dank, dark, hot and sweaty rock-and-roll cellar packed with 350 lucky ticket holders, Sir Paul Mccartney did what he always does: thrilled a crowd with the greatest catalogue of pop songs ever heard.
The Cavern is where it all began, as walls dripping with memorabilia made clear. “This is an insane thing for me,” said Sir Paul, 76. He reminisced about how, when The Beatles played here first, “we didn’t know if we had a future. But we did OK.” It was a typically faux modest understatement, expertly timed to charm a crowd and get an easy laugh.
Chatty and personable, Sir Paul reminisced about his years in The Beatles, telling the stories behind songs and trying to articulate the feelings that the occasion engendered. The closest he probably came to capturing how surreal this event felt was when he mouthed “wow” after the crowd lustily sang In Spite of All The Danger, an obscure ditty he wrote aged 14 with George Harrison, and six decades later it was being bellowed like a sacred anthem.
This isn’t actually the same Cavern where The Beatles began. That was demolished in 1973. It was rebuilt in 1984 to cash in on the huge nostalgia industry around the band. It has been estimated that one in 10 jobs in Liverpool is connected to the Beatle tourist trade. Buskers and tribute acts were plying their trade outside while the real thing was plying his inside. Frankly, some of them sounded more like Sir Paul than he does these days.
If the Cavern isn’t quite what it was, neither is Sir Paul. He looked great, trim and fit for a septuagenarian, if inevitably a bit wrinkled and jowelly.
But his voice has long shown signs of wear and tear, thinning out, losing the soft round timbre of his low notes and stretched to breaking point in his upper range. But the extraordinary thing is, it really doesn’t matter. Sir Paul is a consummate musician with a fantastic band, and he swathes his vocals in harmonies and complementary notes so that the musical effect is undiminished. There is something bold and even heroic about the way he refuses to modulate melodies or drop the keys songs are in (which many older performers do) but continues to tackle everything with the vigour of his youth.
He clearly still loves to play, and his smiling band evidently love to play with him. And with a history this rich, the songs do all the heavy lifting for him. He played a dozen Beatle classics, half a dozen Wings favourites and a smattering of solo favourites. By the time he ended with a rip-roaring
Helter Skelter, the crowd were in ecstasy. And, naturally, he found time to fit in four new songs, because Sir Paul is still a working musician with a product to promote.
Perhaps the oddest thing about this gig was that, in many ways, it felt like business as usual. Sir Paul was supposed to play for an hour but was enjoying himself so much he played for nearly two in a dripping sweatbox, with damp patches spreading under the armpits of his blue button down shirt. He was relaxed, chatty and funny and knocked out one fantastic song after another. Many peers have retired and others are dead, but Sir Paul is still doing what he’s best at with the energy and commitment of someone determined to squeeze every drop of life and pleasure from this thing.
This return to his beginnings did not feel like the end of something. There was no sense of coming full circle; it was more like another stop on a very long and winding road.
‘Buskers and tribute acts were plying their trade outside the Cavern while the real thing was plying his inside’