Don Bradman, the greatest cricketer of all time, was once asked if he reckoned he could have maintained his batting average of 99.94 against the fearsome West Indian bowling attack of the time. Oh no, he said. Not a chance. He’d probably be hitting in the 50s, like the very best batsmen of the time. But then again, he added, he was in his late 60s so it was unrealistic to expect better.
Seeing the Stones is the only thing that compares to the human-jukebox effect of McCartney live
That’s the position Paul McCartney occupies in the world of pop. No, at 82 years old he is not going to make a new Revolver or Abbey Road. And no, he can’t do the Little Richard scream like he used to 60 years ago. But he is still, as they say in sport, the Goat. The undisputed champion of the world. One of the four men who invented the concept of the guitar band as we now know it, writer of dozens of the best-loved songs in the world.
Consider this: McCartney played for the best part of three hours on the last night of his Got Back tour, and these were among the songs he either wrote or had a large part in writing that he did not play: ‘Yesterday’, ‘Eleanor Rigby’, ‘I Saw Her Standing There’, ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’, ‘The Night Before’, ‘Paperback Writer’, ‘Michelle’, ‘We Can Work it Out’, ‘Penny Lane’, ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’, ‘Hello, Goodbye’, ‘She’s Leaving Home’, ‘A Day in the Life’, ‘The Fool on the Hill’, ‘Back in the USSR’, ‘Birthday’, ‘Why Don’t We Do it in the Road?’, ‘The Long and Winding Road’. Clearly, for almost any other artist those songs alone would be a greatest hits set of astonishing magnitude. That’s how far ahead of the game McCartney has been. And those are all songs from his first flush of creativity with the Beatles – never mind the 54 years since.
McCartney has spent many years pretty much unifying the concept of ‘The Beatles’ under his oversight. And frankly, why not? It meant a setlist that was not all his own. Songs by Lennon and Harrison were played, too, and often beautifully: the swell of Harrison’s ‘Something’, from the ukulele opening to its grand ballad, was breathtaking, no matter that he’s been playing it that way for many years. He opened with a Lennon song – the frantic ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ (and imagine being able to open a show with the most famous single chord in pop!) – and returned to his old bandmate several times.
As the joke goes: Wings are the band the Beatles could have been. So we got ‘Live and Let Die’, accompanied by what felt like every explosion from every Bond film erupting non-stop all over the stage, and ‘Jet’ and ‘Junior’s Farm’. And we also got ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’, which was released on McCartney’s debut solo album back in 1970. Seeing the Stones is the only thing that compares to the human-jukebox effect of McCartney live.
And for the encore, a treat to send Beatlemaniacs home feeling the road was very much not long and winding: Ringo Starr got up on stage to play along to ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)’ and a desperate, pummelling ‘Helter Skelter’. There was already an excellent drummer on stage – part of the frankly brilliant four-piece band behind McCartney, who were joined sometimes by three horn players – but who cared? Not until this O2 gig just before Christmas had I ever seen genuine hysteria for two men with a combined age of 166 before.
It does the Damned no disservice to say they do not have as many good songs as McCartney. But like McCartney – who was long under-appreciated – the veteran punks have rather revived themselves in recent years, releasing some sprightly new albums and instilling in their fans a sense that they’ve steered clear of the dangers of the cabaret form of their genre.
Not that the Damned have reinvented themselves: Captain Sensible still looks ridiculous, Dave Vanian still looks like the suburbs’ most stylish Transylvanian immigrant, Rat Scabies still makes his drums sound like a looming apocalypse. The set leant heavily on the past, too, especially their early 1980s psychedelic period.
The sound was a little too muddy from the balcony, and there were times when the songs blurred. But there are some very good songs in there: the Damned have always seemed to be viewed as the younger cousin of the Clash or Sex Pistols, but the encore combination of their epic ‘Curtain Call’ and their still-thrilling debut single ‘New Rose’ was perfect.
The Damned are a good band, and an important band. But McCartney is McCartney, the only man ever to average 99.94 in pop music. And if it wasn’t for ‘The Frog Chorus’, he’d be at 100.
Comments