The long and winding road

I went see Paul McCartney at Earls Court on Monday night. Although I like the Beatles a great deal, I've never been what I'd call a big fan - my total Beatles collection consists of the CD of Please Please Me and a vinyl copy of A Hard Day's Night that I bought in the Soviet Union - and the only McCartney stuff I have is the new CD and an old 45 of "Mull Of Kintyre". I only bought the ticket about three weeks ago when some extra ones were released and I was able to get what I thought would be a good view.

Well, it was wonderful. I was 12 rows from the front and had a tremendous view. The music was fantastic. McCartney is in very fine voice and form and his band is really tight. The sound was extremely good indeed; unusual for Earls Court, famous for terrible sound. He took his time and was on stage for a total of two and three quarter hours. He aired a lot of his best-known solo and Wings stuff - "Band On The Run", "Jet", "Live And Let Die", "Maybe I'm Amazed", "Let 'Em In", "My Love", etc and a pretty respectable smattering of Beatles stuff. He was keen to play songs that the Beatles never performed live, so we got "She's Leaving Home", "Back In The USSR", "Blackbird", "Something", "Getting Better", "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (reprise)". "The Fool On The Hill", "Hello Goodbye" and "The Long And Winding Road". "Mother Nature's Son" is on the new live album though he didn't do it last night. We also got "Michelle", "Eleanor Rigby", "Here, There And Everywhere", "Can't Buy Me Love", "We Can Work It Out", "All My Loving", "Lady Madonna", "I Saw Her Standing There" and of course "Yesterday".

Highlights for me were a stunning "Live And Let Die", and the crowd going nuts for "Back In The USSR" and "I Saw Her Standing There". As I said, I'm not a huge fan (though inside Earls Court I ran into someone I know who is and owns everything the Beatles and McCartney ever did and has seen him a number of times, going back at least to Wings in 1976) and I've seen other legendary bands/artists, but there was truly something special and really quite emotional about being that close to one of the Beatles as he sang "Hey Jude", "Eleanor Rigby", "I Saw Her Standing There" and most especially "Let It Be".

Put it this way, there simply no one else who can play so many of the world's best known and best loved songs which he wrote, leave several times as many unplayed, and still pull out an encore containing "The Long And Winding Road", "Lady Madonna", "I Saw Her Standing There", "Yesterday" and "Sgt Peppers".

Absolute magic.