Paris

From Telerama, December 5, 2024 (auto-translated from French):

What is the intimacy of a concert in an arena of forty thousand people? A few notes strummed on a guitar before starting the song. A hesitation before playing a chord on the piano, a “one, two, three” exchanged, in addition to a look, between musicians who share the stage. To an impressive simplicity as well, a quality that has always seemed as natural to Paul McCartney as his genius for melodies. On Wednesday, December 4, the 82-year-old ex-Beatles, with a slender figure and a always bouncy step, gave the first of two French concerts of his Got Back world tour at Paris La Défense Arena.

It is past 8:40 p.m. when suddenly the silhouette of his legendary Höfner bass, with its all-female shapes, appears like a star on the giant screens. The appearance, almost supernatural, comes to an end to an amusing little pre-concert film. We saw an endless building parade to the sky, Jack and the Beanstalk, made of brick, then stones and finally very contemporary concrete, summing up an extraordinary life, from the childhood home in Liverpool to the trips with friends, John, George and Ringo, the separations and reunions, the new beginnings solo or accompanied by the Wings. The faithful foretaste of an evening that gives pride of place to his entire repertoire, from the oldest – In Spite of All the Danger, the first song ever recorded by the Beatles, in 1958, when they were still called The Quarrymen, after John’s band, and had pooled 1 shilling each to pay for the studio – to the most recent – My Valentine, song written in 2012 for his wife Nancy, present this Wednesday evening in the audience.

Thirty-six tracks, three hours of concert, which go by in the blink of an eye, Paul McCartney does not lack generosity. Would it even be possible to do less when you have composed so many classics? The case, of course, is well established. The band that accompanies him, united for several years now, with guitarists Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray (who looks like Steven Tyler, from Aerosmith), the mammoth drummer Abe Laboriel Jr, Paul “Wix” Wickens on keyboards and the brass trio Hot City Horns. To speak to us in French, Paul McCartney has not forgotten his cheat sheets stuck to his feet. “Hi France, it’s good to be back”; The rest of the exchanges will be mainly in English. But the playlist varies, at the margin, depending on the evening and the city.

Mexico City started with A Hard Day’s Night. In Paris, Can’t Buy Me Love, by the Beatles, opens the ball, followed by a Junior’s Farm written with the Wings, whose enthusiasm McCartney has often said he appreciates at the beginning of the concert. On the central screen at the back of the stage, animations scroll by, sometimes without much aesthetic coherence: a cartoon of the Fab Four with a rough line, moving archive images of John, George, Paul or Ringo captured in the exaltation of their early youth, 3D animations of Paris, his Moulin Rouge to illustrate Michelle’s romanticism,or flowers growing on ruins and Greta Thunberg’s face, a reminder of the ecological commitment of this long-time vegetarian.

But that’s not the main thing, which is in the air, in these songs that have been heard a thousand times but which reveal, listen after listen – and again tonight – their beauty, their treasures of ingenuity, mischief or grace, like Blackbird, played alone on the guitar by a suddenly strangely applied Paul McCartney, his voice fragile in the high notes, but the suspended time of his perfect picking. Or Let Me Roll It and its devastating and languorous riff, followed by the equally legendary one of Foxy Lady, signed by a certain Jimi Hendrix.

The Beatles had ended up giving up on the stage, simply unable to hear themselves there, in the middle of Beatlemania. Yet they had learned their trade there with joy, in the humidity of the Cavern of Liverpool or in the slums of Hamburg (Germany). With the Wings or solo, Paul McCartney would find the happiness of large gatherings. This is also the story told by the Got Back Tour, reducing the stage to a small club, its upright piano, its rudimentary drums for a few tracks (Dance Tonight, Lady Madonna or Now and Then, the last song restored thanks to artificial intelligence). Sometimes even a simple ukulele, a gift from George Harrison, with which he covers his sublime Something.

Then, returning to the stadium band on Jet, a Wings hit made for the crowds, or with Let It Be and Hey Jude, hits among the hits covered in unison, songs of comfort, therefore of hope, written in the most complete slump. He even dared to go on a pyrotechnic delirium on the James Bondian Live and Let Die, the only grandiloquent moment of a concert based on music more than effects, unlike many of today’s major tours. As if Paul McCartney was reminding us that success, to last, needs nothing but good songs. This is obviously the hardest thing to do.

From Telerama, December 5, 2024