Camden New Journal - Music: Paul McCartney

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The Review - MUSIC - grooves with CHARLOTTE CHAMBERS
Published: 14 June 2007

The long and winding road

GIG REVIEW: PAUL McCARTNEY
Electric Ballroom

DADROCK? For every child of parents who grew up in the 60s, that’s what Sir Paul McCartney’s music is – music your Dad likes.
Now I’m not knocking the Beatles – everybody likes the Beatles – I’m just saying I was dreading what I thought would be an evening spent listening to the entire back catalogue of Paul’s post-Beatle band Wings. Their only UK number one was Mull of Kintyre so I know you’re with me on this.
How wrong can you get? When I walked into Camden Town’s Electric Ballroom I was more interested in the random celebrities dotted about than preparing to be awed by a musical icon, but by the end of the night you couldn’t shut me up: “More! More!” And yes, there was foot-stomping.
In truth it was an intoxicating night before Sir Paul even got on stage, with just 1,000 in the crowd, made up of A-lister friends and family (Stella and Kate), along with competition winners bubbling over with excitement at the rare luck of being there. Because it was a such a one-off, everyone partied together, the hoi polloi and stars rubbing shoulders on the dancefloor.
It was fitting that Paul chose the Electric Ballroom to go over a lifetime’s work: he gigged there before he was famous and used the place as a rehearsal room for Wings in the 70s. So there was a sense of full circle about his comeback gig to an adoring crowd.
While I wouldn’t go out and buy his new album Memory Almost Full (a dedication to his wife Linda in the form of an anagram: ‘for my soulmate LLM’), I’m probably not his target audience. Which is kind of the problem: there has been an air of po-faced self-righteousness about him over the years that, combined with some of the sentimental twaddle he’s written (Ebony & Ivory), that has forced him onto the Middle-of-the-Road shelf.
But here’s where I was wrong: his newer songs might not hold my attention, but the man is a genius on stage and I would suggest all would-be rock stars go check him out sharpish.
Striding on with Drive My Car, he got the biggest singalong I’ve ever heard as Hey Jude stretched out for 10 minutes. The Beatles songs came thick and fast – and only one Wings song, C Moon, thank God!
I never thought I’d be so won over, but it was truly a privilege hearing a real-life Beatle singing songs that are part of any British kid’s upbringing.

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