McCartney proves himself elder statesman

By Mark Guarino
Daily Herald Music Critic
Posted Wednesday, October 19, 2005

http://www.dailyherald.com/search/searchstory.asp?id=108304



Try tying the strings between songs on Paul McCartney’s supersized set list Tuesday and there will be knots.

Of the almost 40 songs performed during his show at the United Center, a raucous howler (“Jet”) sat nearby a classy Broadway standard (“Till There Was You”), a power pop gem (“Drive My Car”) followed a more opaque pop arrangement (“Follow Me”), and a rocker McCartney wrote in 1958 as a 16-year-old (“In Spite of All the Danger”) was accompanied by a rocker he wrote as a 62-year-old adult (“Fine Line”).

The widely different tiers of McCartney’s career are unprecedented. Today at age 63, he is enjoying another new tour (his last, in 2002, followed an absence of nine years) that gives him another chance to step into the role as one of rock’s few elder statesmen who hasn’t run from a challenge.

Although this tour’s ticket prices ($85-$250) and luxury car sponsorship reflect an artist ready and eager to take advantage of what the market will bear, the show at least had a semblance of not following the boilerplate expectations of your average Beatlemaniac.

Album sales of “Chaos and Creation in the Backyard” (Capitol) have not been stellar, even though it is his most inspired and vulnerable album in years. He worked some of those new songs into the mix, demonstrating they had a place in the long (and, yes, winding) road to now.

Despite being typecast as an upbeat pop cheerleader, McCartney has long produced songs with themes of isolation and confusion at their core. The jewel of Tuesday’s show was “Jenny Wren,” a new song McCartney performed with an acoustic guitar, aided by the accordion of Paul Wickens and drummer Abe Laboriel’s tense, low beat. With McCartney’s falsetto vocals, the song was laced with sadness that hung over the crowd.

Unlike his last outing, the majority of songs McCartney chose to play didn’t follow convention. They included “Too Many People,” one of the few and lesser-known Wings songs played, “Fixing a Hole,” stripped to piano, and “I’ll Get You,” a 1963 Beatles rarity (“We reckon if you remember this one — you weren’t there,” he assured the crowd).

As much as those were pleasures, what were not were the songs his four-man band tried replicating to a fault. This duty was mainly put upon Wickens, who tried the best he could delivering horns (“Got to Get You Into My Life”), strings (“The Long and Winding Road”), the signature French horn solo of “For No One” and other well-known arrangements that are intricate to the Beatles songbook. His synthesizer recreations sounded corny at best, garish at worst. Would hiring a small horn and string quartet have cost that much?

McCartney rotated between performing solo with guitar and piano and recruiting his band once again for a closing parade of Beatles hits. His casual swagger, corny jokes, stylish posturing and many anecdotes throughout the night were reminders of his showmanship — how making people feel they’re there in his living room — is still a rare art.

He is the elder statesmen of rock & roll & I'm gld he's playing I've Got A Feeling, Helter Skelter & Too Many People on his latest U. S. tour even though I'm not going & looking forward to the concert special on TV.