PAUL : FENWAY PARK, BOSTON

July 9, 2013 - Fenway Park - Boston  

 
 
SOUNDCHECK SETLIST

1. Matchbox
2. Honey Don't
3. Blue Suede Shoes
4. Coming Up
5. Penny Lane
6. C Moon
7. Celebration
8. San Francisco Bay Blues
9. Ram On
10. Midnight Special
11. It's So Easy
12. Yesterday
13. Lady Madonna

 SETLIST SHOW

1. Eight Days A Week
2. Junior's Farm
3. All My Loving
4. Listen To What The Man Said
5. Let Me Roll It/Foxy Lady
6. Paperback Writer
7. My Valentine
8. Nineteen Hundred And Eighty-Five
9. The Long And Winding Road
10. Maybe I'm Amazed
11. I've Just Seen A Face
12. We Can Work It Out
13. Another Day
14. And I Love Her
15. Blackbird
16. Here Today
17. Your Mother Should Know
18. Lady Madonna
19. All Together Now
20. Lovely Rita
21. Mrs. Vandebilt
22. Eleanor Rigby
23. Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!
24. Something
25. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
26. Band On The Run
27. Back In The USSR
28. Let It Be
29. Live And Let Die
30. Hey Jude
 Encore 1
31. Day Tripper
32. Hi Hi Hi
33. I Saw Her Standing There

Encore 2
34. Yesterday
35. Helter Skelter
36. Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight
37. The End

Paul proved a pumping, powerful rock 'n' roll heart can overcome the years. 

 

Last night, Paul became the oldest performer to headline Fenway Park. Based on his enduring passion to play live, I won't be surprised when he breaks his own record in 2020.

Unlike Mick and Keef, Macca has been a loving custodian of his body and mind. Ages ago he traded smokes and hard drugs for tofu and lentils. I know, not very rock 'n' roll. But you wanna know what is? Marathon sets lasting three hours and three dozen songs.

Now in his seventh decade on stage,Paul packed his latest Fenway show - he sold the park out twice in 2009 - with Beatles classics, Wings hits, and a few odd nuggets (John's "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" ).

Paul did so many things well it's hard to find an entry point, so I'll start with a simple moment: "Lady Madonna, "Maybe I'm Amazed," "Your Mother Should Know," "All Together Now" too.

Other talents on display: Paul plays a mean, mean guitar - on "Let Me Roll It," he tore up the Zep-like riff and detoured into Jimi Hendrix's "Foxy Lady." His lesser album cuts stunned - for five minutes I was convinced "Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five" was the world's best song. His band (including Berklee-grad drummer and ace harmony singer Abe Laboriel Jr.) can flip from mop-top Fab Four to acid-trip Beatles in an instant.

But it was the monster numbers most came for - "We Can Work It Out" may have the best bridge in pop but it's no match for the sonic (and literal) fireworks of "Live and Let Die."

Paul closed the main set with the Homeric trifecta of "Let It Be," "Live and Let Die" and "Hey Jude." There was hugging, there were tears, there was a 35,000-strong singalong.

 
There was a lot going on at Fenway Park during the Paul show Tuesday.Paul employed many of the standard trappings of stadium shows including huge video screens, showing psychedelic images as well as clips of McCartney through the years from cute Beatle to Wings-man to elder statesman. There were flurries of confetti and elaborate lighting schemes. For an exhilarating tear through "Live and Let Die," there was a riot of pyrotechnics and fireworks. 

As enjoyable as those production elements could be, all the magic that McCartney really needed was right there within his own power.

Thanks to his unparalleled repertoire, his miraculously still-marvelous voice, and the skills of his crackerjack, four-man backing band, even the most intimate moments - a delicate, solo acoustic "Blackbird" or the chills-inducing "Eleanor Rigby" - were as captivating as brawny, spectacle-assisted rockers like "Back in the U.S.S.R."

The always affable McCartney pinwheeled through his career playing more than three dozen songs, telling a few stories about them along the way, and bantering with the all-ages crowd in a two-hour, 40-minute set.

Beatles songs came in all of that band's flavors including the whimsical - "All Together Now," "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" - the pensive - "The Long and Winding Road" - the early favorites - "And I Love Her," "Eight Days a Week" - the fidgety rockers - "Paperback Writer," "We Can Work it Out," "Day Tripper" - and on and on.

McCartney lovingly tipped his cap to his former bandmates, singing the clear-eyed but poignant "Here Today" for John Lennon, and "Something" for George Harrison, on Harrison's beloved instrument the ukulele.

Wings fans got their due with spins through tunes like "Band on the Run" and "Junior's Farm," and McCartney managed to wedge the heartfelt "My Valentine," from his most recent album, "Kisses on the Bottom," into the jukebox that had the sold-out crowd singing along for most of the night.

Not enough can be said about McCartney's four-piece, who provide their leader with everything from a celestial choir to white-hot guitar solos to crisp and hard-hitting time-keeping to ably serving as cheerful onstage foils. McCartney may be in a class of his own, still in possession of that ineffable quality that manages to be both mythic and accessible, but his band - for whom he has clear affection - plays a major role in keeping him on his toes. 

That Hippie Penny Lane