Just a few thoughts to share about Macca's Atlanta show Tuesday night.

Long set - 36 songs - about 2 hours and 40 minutes long.

The stage itself was like a video screen, nice effects. Like a head-tripping light show in the 60's wanted to be. Fire (including some green fire) and pyro on "Live and Let Die". Like the Stones, he includes several warhorses. Also, like the Stones, there are many first-timers who really flip for these. "Jude", "Yesterday", "Let It Be", etc. He's also playing 3 or 4 from the new CD. He seems to be ignoring the Wings era for the most part.

However, he is mixing in some good stuff that he's never (or rarely) played live before. "Helter Skelter", "I Got A Feeling", "She Came In Through The Bathroom Window", etc.

Great show - All that said, it still felt like a warm-up for me for the real event -


The Rolling Stones - Atlanta, October 15, 2005

"No Anchovies, Please"

Who plays in his band? These young dudes again? The BIG guy on drums?

Amen. The stage, lights and effects were great. Paul was very good, particularly on the acoustic numbers. Sound was a bit muddy at peak volume. Drummer is fantastic, guitar players are good not great, and the keyboardist was sometimes flat. Every song was just like the album. The lack of any improv, minimal jams, and Paul's lack of charisma were drawbacks. Paul acts 63 while Mick acts 33.

I have seen Santana, Doobies, Toby Keith and Alice Cooper this summer and frankly this was the most stiff and somewhat plastic of them all. The Beatles and Paul were just never really a great live band. Good music but he simply doesn't rock much at all. Chick night out for silly love songs.

A warm up for the Stones indeed, may they kick my ass in 4th row next to the walkway.


Here is the AJC review:

McCartney and peers still rockin' for the ages

> By PHIL KLOER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
> Published on: 09/20/2005

Seems like only yesterday. Paul McCartney was a 17-year-old bass player in a band called the Quarrymen, visiting his friend John Lennon at art school. He saw a student who was 24 and thought, "God in heaven, that guy is sooo old! It must be terrible to be that old."

Not long after that, Lennon and McCartney formed a quartet that enjoyed a fair measure of popularity in the '60s: "We thought the Beatles might last 10 years," he recalls. "We thought it would be pretty unseemly to still be playing rock 'n' roll at age 30."

The irony is not lost on McCartney that he is now 63 and still playing rock 'n' roll, tonight in Philips Arena. He's well aware that next summer he turns 64, and everyone is going to have a veritable Olympics of irony-pumping, playing that silly old song he wrote about old folks sitting around by the fire, knitting and gardening. "Will you still need me, will you still feed me. ..."

But he's not going to get too serious about it, either: "We're gonna say to the audience, 'Do you remember this one? 'Cause if you do, you're pretty old!' " he jokes in a telephone interview. "I just figure as long as I enjoy myself, [aging] is something I can't do much about, except just to go with the flow."

Once people thought that rock 'n' roll was a young person's game. Then the first generation of really big rock stars got old, and they didn't stop rocking. Mick Jagger is 62 and Keith Richards is 61; they've taken the Rolling Stones back on the road. (They'll also hit Philips, on Oct. 15.) Bob Dylan is 64 and hardly ever leaves the road on his "Never Ending Tour." Pete Townshend is 60 and dying to get back out there and attack his guitar if he can reassemble something fans will buy as the Who.

Tongue-wagging about "geezer rock" and jokes about Mick using a walker — contemporary echoes of McCartney's "pretty unseemly" comment — may still circulate a bit. But rockin' past retirement age has become accepted as just another way to fill an arena.

McCartney's Philips gig, with a top ticket of $252, is just the third stop on his new tour, which began Friday in Miami. He is rolling out a number of Beatles songs he's rarely if ever played live, including "I've Got a Feeling," "I'll Follow the Sun" and "Fixing a Hole." The best of his Wings period is also represented by "Jet" and "Band on the Run," and he also does a few songs from his new CD, "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard," which was released last week to mostly positive reviews.

It's a safe bet few fans are spending more than $250 to hear the new CD, though. McCartney knows there are songs he has to play — "Hey Jude," "Let It Be," "Yesterday" — and he doesn't mind.

"There's a lot of stuff the Beatles never played live. (They stopped playing live in 1966.) So the last time I would have sung some of them was making a record, and the tape went up on the shelf. And I've never revisited it since. And this applies to Wings, as well. So there's a huge volume of work we've never gotten round to that are begging to be done live. Some of them are just like, 'Play me onstage, please.' "

At 63, McCartney doesn't flinch at the word "legacy."

"I'm very proud of it," he says. "People talk about songwriting, and they talk about a gift. Some gift! Who gave me that? I'm very lucky that we [he and Lennon] wrote some kind of OK songs in the beginning, and then we wrote some really pretty good ones, and then we wrote some very good ones. It may sound conceited, but I think John and I did some seriously good work. I say I'm a lucky guy and I'm blessed."

He's also, however, had to live somewhat in Lennon's shadow since his former partner was shot and killed in 1980. Lennon's dramatic martyrdom accelerated the too-easy conventional wisdom that Lennon was the brilliant, iconoclastic revolutionary, and McCartney the cute one who wrote pretty melodies and had a better head for business.

The truth is more complex. McCartney, after all, is the one who's served jail time for pot possession; who wrote the Charles Manson-inspiring "Helter Skelter"; who was the subject of one of the all-time Hall of Fame urban legends, the "Paul Is Dead" myth of the late '60s. Maybe not a revolutionary, but more than the cute one.

But it didn't reflect well on him when he tried to re-list the credits on some of the songs he had primarily written to say McCartney-Lennon instead of the longstanding Lennon-McCartney. He talked about doing it on the Beatles' "Anthology" project and actually did it on a 2002 live album.

"That really came out all wrong, I must say. It got all out of proportion."

He says one of the reasons he did it was because Lennon used to get embarrassed when he would walk into a restaurant and the pianist, in tribute, would start playing "Yesterday," a McCartney song. Also, he adds, he thought it would help people understand which songs were mainly his, and which mainly Lennon's.

"But it became contentious, so I dropped the thing like a little hot potato. Lennon-McCartney. It's a brand, like Gilbert and Sullivan. I don't think people understood where I was coming from. So I thought, 'Fair enough. Let it be.' "

Elmo Lewis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> > >
> However, he is mixing in some good stuff that he's
> never (or rarely) played live before. "Helter
> Skelter", "I Got A Feeling", "She Came In Through
> The Bathroom Window", etc.
>

So if Macca can do it - so can our boys. Capiche?

Steven: You made some good points in your post, particularly pointing out the McCartney is no Mick Jagger on stage. Your description of the different experiences in seeing Paul vs. seing the Stones is spot on and well put. One point where we differ: the songs being "every song was like the album" is a good thing not a bad thing. In fact it is fantastic, and that's what makes Paul's show every bit as much a must see as the Stones.

Good comments by all.

The big guy playing drums for Paul is
Abe Laboriel ...
He rocks!



[www.drummerworld.com]




Marv Peck

Y'all remember that rubber legged boy

"One point where we differ: the songs being "every song was like the album" is a good thing not a bad thing. In fact it is fantastic, and that's what makes Paul's show every bit as much a must see as the Stones."

To me it's boring if the songs sounds like the studio version....

It's exactly what I like Stones for - you hear a new version at every consert... like Keith has said, every time he plays a song, he plays it another way, developes the number.... that's what interesting with music, makes it non-predictable....

Of course Stones could play the studio version at every show, but to Keith it would become extremely boring - then it could just as well be a play-back show, with out any challenge at all....

Hmm I think the stones have sounded almost exatley the same live since 1995.

Keith can extend JJF or play with Satisfaction if he wants, they are his songs. Paul's band is very wise not to rework Beatles songs. In a sense they are just a very good cover band today. It makes them VERY predictable however.

Steven Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Keith can extend JJF or play with Satisfaction if
> he wants, they are his songs. Paul's band is very
> wise not to rework Beatles songs. In a sense they
> are just a very good cover band today. It makes
> them VERY predictable however.


I think it´s a drag when they do ten minutes verisons of the War Horses... zzzzz..
Thats why I prefer when they play those songs as opening numbers or early in the sets..
the lst 2-3 numbers on the setlist always goes on forever..