PAUL GETS BACK
BUOYED BY CRITICAL APPROVAL AND TOURING WITH A STRONG NEW BAND, AN EX-BEATLE IS BACK IN STRIDE
England was basking in an unseasonably warm and bright afternoon one play last week. Paul McCartney, however, was spending it enveloped by darkness and fog, as he had done for most of the preceding month. Yet the famous ex-Beatle’s mood could hardly have been sunnier. On Soundstage 6 at the Goldcrest Elstree Studio complex north of London, shrouded by dry ice, McCartney enthusiastically kicked into a performance of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. He was rehearsing for his most significant career move since the breakup of The Beatles in 1970. Buoyed by the critical success of his latest album, Flowers in the Dirt, and excited about the sound of his new band, McCartney is embarking on a world tour that opens this week in Oslo with a two-hour concert featuring many of The Beatles’ greatest hits—some, like Sgt. Pepper, which he has never before performed live. McCartney, 47, says that he finally feels comfortable performing Beatles material again. “It was just too painful, with all that went on after the breakup, to chirpily sing a little Beatle song,” he told Maclean's last week in an exclusive interview. “But time is a great healer.”
The Paul McCartney World Tour, which travels to Toronto on Dec. 7 and Montreal on Dec. 9, is a promising new chapter in the career of one of rock’s legendary performers. In a wide-ranging interview, he said that he had gained a new confidence since the June release of Flowers in the Dirt, which has won him back the critics’ favor. The album is partly the result of a collaboration with acerbic British rocker Elvis Costello, whom McCartney credits with helping him to sharpen his songwriting. But McCartney revealed one concern on the eve of his first tour in 13 years—a continuing struggle over control of some of The Beatles’ material. McCartney told Maclean’s that on the American leg of the tour, he intends to meet with singer Michael Jackson to complain about the way the American singer, who owns the rights to 159 Beatles songs, has allowed some of them to be used for TV commercials.
Like The Rolling Stones’ current Steel Wheels tour, the McCartney tour promises to offer something for young and old alike: a smattering of new songs among a wealth of classics, from I Saw Her Standing There and Can’t Buy Me Love to Get Back and Hey Jude. Although more modest than Steel Wheels in terms of pyrotechnics and audience size—the largest will be in Toronto’s 60,000-seat SkyDome—McCartney’s tour features some dazzling effects of its own. Each two-hour concert opens with an 11-minute film retrospective of McCartney’s career— projected on three giant screens and with synchronized images and music—compiled by director Richard Lester, who made The Beatles movies A Hard Day’s Night and Help! Later in the show, as the band performs Back in the U.S.S.R., a massive Soviet flag with flowers instead of a hammer rises from the back of the stage. And as McCartney sings his 1973 composition Jet, a replica of a Harrier bomber projects out from the stage and drops a load of roses on the audience.
During the rehearsal last week, McCartney and his talented new band ran through many of the 30 songs that each concert comprises. The group, which has been together since January, consists of musicians with whom McCartney has been making records for the past two years. Joining him and his 47-year-old wife, Linda, are Hamish Stuart, 39, formerly of the Average White Band; Robbie McIntosh, 31, a onetime member of The Pretenders; and Wix (Paul Wickens), 33, and Chris Whitten, 30, both of whom played recently with American singer Edie Brickell. The band gives a tougher sound to McCartney’s solo material, including Band on the Run and Live and Let Die, and a fresh approach to Beatles songs. On the tour, McCartney plays bass, piano and guitar. He performs on the electric guitar for the first time since The Beatles appeared in Hamburg in the early 1960s. And his vocals in the rehearsal had much of the raw energy that characterized his early singing.
The new band may be the best outfit McCartney has worked with since The Beatles. Stuart, who plays guitar and bass, is an adept singer who effortlessly provides harmony to McCartney. McIntosh offers guitar work that ranges from crisp leads to rugged solos, while Whitten provides a steady backbeat on drums. And Wix takes keyboard prominence over Linda, who has often been criticized for a lack of musical ability. Part of McCartney’s new assurance, as he embarks on his tour, clearly stems from the strength of the band. And last week, sitting in his trailer outside stage 6— where the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies were made—McCartney told Maclean’s that he is very comfortable working with those musicians. Dressed in a grey T-shirt, navy trousers, paisley suspenders and black suede shoes, he looked youthful and relaxed. “We enjoy each other,” McCartney said. “Everything seems easygoing. And whenever we sit down and play music, it seems to sound good.” He added: “This band’s good enough to learn a song fairly quickly. In fact, they know them better than I do.”
But the band’s talent is only part of what is propelling McCartney to new heights. For the first time since his days with The Beatles, McCartney has two consecutive albums that have fared well critically. Late in 1988, he made Back in the U.S.S.R., a collection of rock ’n’ roll standards that he released exclusively in the Soviet Union, on the state-run Melodiya label. But it quickly became a collector’s item in the West, selling for up to $250, and drew acclaim from Western critics for its full-blown versi...
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