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There are legacy acts, and then there's Paul McCartney, an artist whose legacy is the sedimentary layer atop which all modern pop is built. At this point, his most well-known songs—many of which appeared in his career-spanning set at Moda Center last night—are as fundamental as nursery rhymes. How do you critique a performance of "Love Me Do," which is basically "The Wheels On the Bus" of rock'n'roll, or "Birthday," whose lead riff should eventually join "Happy Birthday" in the public domain? No songwriter is infallible, or beyond light ribbing—though the guy who direct-messaged violent threats to me on Twitter for basically poking fun at McCartney's signature bass guitar might argue otherwise—but some things are just undeniable.
Of course, the thing with songs we know at a near instinctual level is that, after a while, we know them almost too well. A lot has been made of McCartney opening this tour with "A Hard Day's Night," which he's never played outside the Beatles before, but every rock fan is born with that song somewhere inside them; that chiming opening chord is the slap from the doctor that welcomed us to the world. Maybe he hasn't played it for 50 years, but it's been running on a loop in the background of popular consciousness like an app that never got closed out. Hearing that famous chord ring through the Moda Center, the effect was of pleasant recognition more than a rush of history. Is it possible to feel anything other than warm familiarity for music that comes practically preloaded onto our collective psyche?
Then again, "warm familiarity," to a great degree, is what everyone comes to a Paul McCartney show to experience, and Sir Paul is nothing if not a "give the people what they want" type. In Portland, he presided over his three hour set like a museum docent guiding the crowd through an exhibit on his own life: telling stories, sharing old photos and videos, and playing just about every hit he has.
When I say the show was "career spanning," I mean it went pole-to-pole—from "In Spite of All the Danger," one of the first songs he, John Lennon and George Harrison ever recorded together, as the Quarrymen, to "FourFiveSeconds," last year's collaboration with Rihanna and Kanye West. It was dominated by the Beatles, of course, with a smattering of Wings, three tunes from 2013's New and, weirdly, 1980's "Temporary Secretary," his admirable but mostly failed attempt at writing a Kraftwerk song. McCartney—still boyishly exuberant at age 73—punctuated each performance by waving his arms triumphantly above his head or pumping his fist like Michael Jordan after draining a jumper, as archival footage, from Beatlemania and the Band on the Run years, projected onto screens around and behind him. In between, he recalled early recording sessions with George Martin and the time Jimi Hendrix covered "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" days after its release, and when he played Moscow's Red Square, becoming the first rock act to ever do so. It was humblebragging of the most entertaining order.
But as much as the night was unabashedly nostalgic, McCartney and four-piece band never sounded like wax statues miming through the standards. The early Beatles tunes, including "A Hard Day's Night" and "Can't Buy Me Love," jangled with garage-rock vigor. "Let Me Roll It," for which McCartney strapped on a splatter-art guitar and jammed through a coda of "Foxy Lady," smoked with blues-bar authenticity. The emotional high points came in tribute to McCartney's old bandmates: "Here Today," written in the wake of Lennon's murder, about "a conversation we never got to have," performed solo on a platform above the crowd; a rendition of Harrison's "Something" that began on solo ukulele—one of its author's favorite instruments—and grew into a stirring full-band arrangement.
The show wasn't without schmaltz (the Spanish-guitar-abetted "My Valentine," dedicated to McCartney's wife, Nancy, was accompanied by video of Natalie Portman and Johnny Depp doing sign language, for some reason) or bombast ("Live and Let Die" came with pyrotechnic explosions a degree or two away from singing the front row's eyebrows) or senior pop-star moments (he strained to reach those screeching high notes on "Maybe I'm Amazed"). But that's all part of McCartney's legacy, too. It culminated in the standard "hands across the world" singalong of "Hey Jude," something we've all heard and seen so much that it's little more than a soccer chant at this point. But it doesn't matter. That chorus hits, and suddenly, you're na-na-naing along with thousands of other people—whether you're the truck driver that was sitting next to me, or Corin Tucker across the aisle. Because, somewhere deep down, you know it's what you're supposed to do.
All photos by Emily Joan Greene.
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