In 100 years, children will sing the songs of the Beatles. That is the legacy that he carries on his 82-year-old shoulders. Paul McCartney. It is a legacy that he shares with joy, as he did tonight at the WiZink Center in Madridbut that he guards with respect. During a show with a sensational production (rich sound, perfect equalization, large, clear screens and a stadium concert lighting display), the affable musician from Liverpool has barely changed the songs from his original recordings: They are more of a world heritage site than many cathedralsso he offered them just as we all have them tattooed under our skin, because they already belong more to the people than to him, and that is something he understood and accepted a long time ago.
The Beatles’ songs have been the backbone of the very long repertoire of the concert, which has lasted for two and a half hours and which has condensed the versatile compositional capacity of this, yes, genius, prodigy, legend, myth… Together with a classical format group with a rhythmic base, two guitars and keyboards, he has alternated bass, piano and guitars to perform 23 Beatles classics, from the beginning with a powerful and spirited Can’t Buy Me Love in a fast tempo, a resource that has been repeated in quite a few songs throughout the night.
The concert was not perfect, but it was fabulous, sung from beginning to end by the audience and with wonderful moments such as the four-song sequence before the encore. It has been beginning Get Back and the environment has literally been transformed with the tension of the song. He sang the sharp chorus and the people shouted it, bouncing off the ceiling as the rhythm resonated like a locomotive with the engines of a Boeing 777.
Get Back It’s a song to end concerts, an emotional shock, but the concert has continued with Let It Benow with McCartney sitting in front of one of his two pianosand that was the moment of truth, what the 15,600 people who filled the venue had come to hear, just this with this voice, this melody that produces a massive chill, and is even more exciting when it heads into the third chorus because you know it’s over, the moment is going to slip away and the wisp of magic will disappear and soon we will be back home. But, for a moment, the audience has lived in that wonderful suspended time.
There were some hard rock moments during the concert that climaxed with Live and Let Diewhich has been unleashed among a mass of flames, pyrotechnics and laser rays. And, after the roar, a beautiful lullaby that ends up rioting in a collective ecstasy: Hey Jude It was probably the longest song of the show, The people would have been singing the “na-na-na” of the chorus until they fell exhausted, they would have lived emptying their lungs over and over again with smiles on their faces. This song written for John Lennon’s son is a celebration of love, and that was the message of the entire show because that has been the main theme of his lyrics, love in all its forms and as a solution to all problems.
Before starting the encore has reappeared waving a flag of Spaina wink that it makes in each country, along with another from the United Kingdom and the rainbow of the LGTBIQ+ collective.
McCartney’s voice has been as good as the voice of a man his age can be.. He has suffered in the most demanding songs, on more than one occasion he has been far from what the melody asked for (to make up for it, the members of the group often dubbed his voices in the choruses), and after more than two hours of concert on those 82-year-old shoulders have broken when the encore begins with I’ve Got a Feeling. Why would I want to attack a song that is so complicated to sing? We knew it at the minute when John Lennon has appeared on the screens singing a verse, taken from the recording on the Apple rooftop in 1969. The idea of a virtual duet could have been translated into an artificial device that was cringey, but it has worked wonderfully. After a forgettable reprise of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Bandanother great moment of the concert was the performance dense and dark Helter Skelterserious rock with the solidity of a high atomic mass metal that balanced on the heads like an impenetrable wrecking ball.
The end of the concert went from less to more intensity with the last three songs of Abbey Roadchained in a great sound epic through all the styles of the night and culminated in The End: the end of all endings. It has been beautifulalthough they are not among his best songs. If anything has been emotional in that conclusion, it has been the farewell with a “Until next time” which sounded like optimism and hope, two feelings that define this man who always preferred candor to cynicism.
This Monday in Madrid was one of the last concerts of a great world tour that has lasted intermittently for two and a half years and is presumed to be the last of his career. Tonight he offers a second concert (the sixth in Madrid in his entire career, seventh including the one the Beatles offered in Las Ventas in 1965) and The 31,200 tickets for both shows were sold out in one fell swoop.. It was the right moment, when nostalgia defines our time as a universal anxiety attack. Nostalgia provides a refuge in times of uncertainty and lack of security, which is why there are now so many people listening to so much music from the past, old songs that may be a memory or a discovery but that transmit a feeling of protection: The Beatles are a safer value than a gold bar..
The first part of the concert was a bit irregular, with a predominance of Wings songs and some moments of seventies sound of rock without roll close to AOR. The rock stereotypes of moving your head back and forth, with the wind section as impetuous as it is inconsequential, have reached their worst representation in Jet and in Come On to Meone of the three songs of this century that have been played tonight, inanely elongated.
Among the new songs it has worked much better My Valentinethe ballad dedicated to his current wife, Nancy Shevellfull of surprising twists and an incredible melody. Pretty good in that section Let Me Roll Ita camouflaged blues, with a slow and dry tone, linked with an instrumental coda of Foxy Ladywhich he dedicated to Jimi Hendrix. And great, of course, some classics in short, agile and fresh interpretations like Drive My Car y Got to Get You Into My Life (well the horn section here), a very cheerful Getting Better (perfect vocal harmonies) and Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Fivein which he was agile on the piano, while the electric guitars provided, now, a well-understood fieryness.
Being one of the most important living pop composers in the world, if not the mostit is almost normal that many classics have been missed, even if the repertoire reached 37 songs. The most striking absence has probably been Yesterday, but also A Hard Day’s Night, Eleanor Rigby, Penny Lane o Here There And Everywhere. Sitting at the piano, he preferred to recover Lady Madonna underlining his air of music hall above the rock & roll chord combination, has dedicated Something to George Harrison with a sophisticated arrangement (from a campfire song in the forest with ukulele it has evolved into a great rock ballad) and has awarded a Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da party at collective karaoke.
Right in the middle of the concert there was a sensational stretch of acoustic performanceswith the musicians closer together in the center of the stage, surrounded by an image of a country house on the rear screen. These homey backyard songs have started with the lovely I’ve Just Seen a Facequickie, and a pastoral and endearing version of Love Me Do.
On a platform raised in the center of the stage, McCartney performed alone with an acoustic guitar and his elderly voice. Blackbird y Here Today’(dedicated to John Lennon), while a night sky full of stars was projected over the entire stage. This moment of radical intimacy, with nothing to cover him or camouflage his shortcomings, In that unprotected solitude Paul McCartney has been more giant than evermore real and beautiful. In 100 years children will still be singing their songs.