Paul McCartney Live @ The Palace of Auburn Hills
October 15th, 2005

The first thing I wanna say about this show is…

I’m a big Michael Jackson fan.

Michael is a deserving self-declared king of pop – more deserving than Lionel Ritchie, Todd Rundgren, Eric Carmen, or even McCartney himself. Jackson is funky and soulful and yet he has one helluva skin problem. But that never stopped him. He just developed his craft and nurtured his muse as he continued his skin treatments and painful reconstructive surgeries until he looked liked a post-punk Gothic Beatle. Sheer balls. Before that transformation Michael was actually black – and not a bad lookin’ guy. I always loved McCartney’s collaboration with him. Remember The Girl is Mine in the early eighties and the magnificent refrain
”The doggone girl is mine”
how cool is that?
and I adored Paul’s spoken interlude where he intones, ”Michael, we're not gonna fight about this, okay", with just the right amount of pathos…SHEER GENIUS

No matter that Michael took McCartney’s suggestion – during those wondrous sessions - to diversify his wealth to song publishing and bought the Beatles catalog right out from McCartney’s nose, talk about sweet kismet – a karmic turn of the wheel for Pete takin’ it square in the ass when Paul and the others dismissed him so ruthlessly. Sure Ringo was a better drummer, had gobs of personality and good humor, and could sing. He cut his chops with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes for several years (4 to be exact) pre-Beatles and sang Boys and Matchbox during a segment of the show called Starr-Time. But Best’s rudimentary drumming skills were typical of the time – and of young musicians everywhere. Maybe Pete was just not ruthless enough. Too nice to be a Beatle?
NAHHHH

I last saw McCartney 30 years ago in 1975 when he performed with Wings, a real band (sic), not just hired hands. With a few of my Bicycle Jim's buddies, the short-haired girls with tattoos and Bill Gerrish (my roomate at U of M), we tripped our way from Ann Arbor to Olympia Stadium in Detroit without incident. We were all pretty much thrilled. Denny Laine seemed to be Paul's right hand man (next to Linda) and had a prominent role in the show, singing his Moody Blues chestnut Go Now and nailing his glorious power rockin’ Time To Hide. The young guitarist prodigy Jimmy McCulloch played his ass off and sang his self penned anti-drug song Medicine Jar. In a terrible irony McCulloch died a few years later from a drug overdose.

McCartney did most of his (then) recent Venus and Mars album along with several songs from Wings at the Speed of Sound as well as select cuts from his 1973 masterpiece Band on the Run - note the obscure reference to Lennon's aunt Elizabeth in JET - whom John called "Mater" and if you'll recall the refrain, the lyric, "Ah Mater, want Jet to always love me", seems to be a tribute to Lennon himself and Paul's longing for their lost friendship. Though technically a triumph, this concert revealed McCartney's weakness as a front man. He seemed remote and uncomfortable (amazing when I think back on it - a Beatle uncomfortable?) and his voice had already suffered from his poor singing habits, screaming, over-singing and not taking proper care of his voice. Smoking & drinking, and touring incessantly had taken its toll. That beautiful high-pitched, several-octave, Little Richard-esque voice would never recover. The highlight of the show was McCartney's solo acoustic segment where he performed I've Just Seen A Face, Blackbird, Richard Cory, and Yesterday (& a few others). His performance was so powerful that many reviews at the time suggested that McCartney didn't need a band. I agreed to a point but felt Wings was a great band but that part of the problem was the arena itself - the huge expanse and dead space put considerable emotional distance between McCartney and his fans. I didn't know it at the time but as artists and promotors became ever more greedy, the distance between star and fan would increase exponentially and become an insurmountable obstacle to ever hearing powerful, creative music on an intimate scale where both the artist and the listener contribute to the overall experience of a performance. By the new millenium the trend was well established, concerts were loud affairs, bland and conformist, everybody would sound the same, unique musical expression would be swallowed whole by industry standardization...and Paul McCartney would sound like an enhanced industrial version of himself

I was looking forward to October 15th, even called the immensely talented power-pop king of hooks and melody Andy Reed (Haskels, Reed Brothers). He and his brother Jason (and wives and girlfriends) were goin' to the show and we were all fired-up and comparin' notes. Jason even downloaded the songlist. I asked Andy about the route back home. I always got stuck takin' a right out of the Palace onto Lapeer and the ramp to I-75 North was always blocked and before I knew it I'm in Pontiac for crissakes. Andy didn't know either. Oh well. Lisa and I left Saginaw at about 4:30pm with the intent of stopping for dinner. The first restaurant we tried, Joe's Crabshop, had a 90 minute wait; it was an hour wait at a nearby Steak House. We paused briefly but drove past Big Boy - yeech, though I s ecretly love those greasy burgers - to Great Lakes Crossings, a mammoth Museum Mall created in hell just to torture poor unsuspecting simpleton souls like me. I just don't understand the lure of such a post-modern monstrosity, though it seems credible that such extravagant mediocrity is intended to keep us in a herded and compliant state of submission, like a rock concert at a casino.
But that's another story
Anyway, Lisa and I eventually ate at Stir Crazy, a passable Asian diner, that couldn't hold a candle, or a set of chop sticks, to Forbidden City (on Bay & McCarty in Saginaw). We left just in the nick of time and got to the Palace at 8pm.

We claimed our seats, section 227 row 17 in the nose bleed section. We are so far away from the stage, we need binoculars just to see the screen...forget about McCartney, he looks like a pissant from my eagle's nest. And a huge rotating "disco-ball" cast a spooky surreal pale over the floor seats, giving the impression that thousands of fans are floating under a sea of green water.
Cool
Music begins at 8:30pm, a DJ appears to be spinning records at a console, sampling collages of McCartney songs and snippets of conversations. The screens display abstract paintings in progress that we watch to completion, presumably Paul's works. Finally the pre-show segues to another more stylized pre-show history with images of Paul's family, his birth certificate, his youth, the Beatles, Wings and so on. Important Rock-God minutiae for those who wanna know. Paul does a voice-over narration until the images speed up and a beautiful noise crescendos - the show has begun...

Paul opens with a rousing version of Magical Mystery Tour followed by a Beatlesque new song, and then the aforementioned Jet - a great start by anyone's standards. Paul introduces I'll Get You by saying, "If you remember this one you probably weren't there". And then proceed to pull out one gem after another...Drive My Car - "this is one we played at the Super Bowl", Till There was You - "a smoochie cabaret song", a powerful Let Me Roll It, and a rockin' Got To Get You Into My Life. McCartney had changed - duh - he was looser, not so distant from his adoring audience...he was accesible (to a point) and he was telling stories about his songs, his life. This reparte was well practiced and not entirely intimate nor revealing but it was a step way up from the walled-in superstar from 1975. And even though some of his new songs seemed strange (Jennie Wren ) or pedestrian (A Fine Line), McCartney was still able to pull it off with an effortless sincerity. This guy still wants you to love him... with a nod and a wink. Though he doesn't quite have the chops for Maybe I'm Amazed or Long & Winding Road, he redeems himself by his effort to please. His solo acoustic set, parallel to 1975, was particularly compelling, starting with his first ever pre-Beatle's recording In Spite Of All The Danger (with the Quarrymen) followed by Fixin' a Hole which I LOVED, the poignant For No One and I'll Follow the Sun, one of my early favorites.

I left at this point, tired but satisfied. It was heartening that a former hero of mine had held up so well. He's ten years my senior and looks good, too good and sounds wonderful despite a vocal range that has dropped at least two octaves. His familiar patter to the crowd suggests that he's found some comfort with himself despite the tension between his art and his bourgeois leanings. Part of me wishes that McCartney would drop the ruse, grow his hair out to a long shiny alabaster, grow back a pure white beard and take his rightful place as a super stoned and deranged hippie philospher, dispensing tabs of acid at his totally acoustic concerts and giving away his wealth like a modern day Andrew Carnegie. Well...Ok, not gonna happen, still its OK to dream. Even when the dream is over.

I talked to Andy Reed the next day and he told me about all of the gems I missed, over an hour's worth of music. So much for leaving early. But I have a habit of leaving early. Sometimes I leave so early I never get to the show. A few years back my wife and I pinched a coupla tickets for one of Cher's "Farewell Forever" Tours with Cindy Lauper. I love 'em both. So we drive down to the Palace and find a restaurant in Auburn Hills. As we finish our meal, I turn to my wife and ask, "You had enough"?
She nods
so we get in our car, turn around and drive back to Saginaw. Best show I've never seen.

Though I wasn't able to hear the music, I didn't miss a beat

Peace
Bo White