Friday, August 8, 2014

Sir Paul McCartney.


Last night,
I went to a Paul McCartney concert.

The Paul McCartney.
Sir Paul McCartney.

He played at least 5 different guitars
and two different pianos
and the ukulele.

He's 72 years old
and he played for nearly 3 hours straight
and never missed a beat.

Several times
when we were clapping for him,
he'd hold up his guitar in the air,
like he was giving it half the credit,
and we'd clap for it, too.

He had us clap for John
and he had us clap for George
and I shed a tear.
.
.
.
The minute he came on
and started singing Eight Days a Week,
I died and went to heaven.

I'm at a Beatles concert.
This is 1964--
the year The Beatles came to America.
My dream of living in the 60s
finally came true.


The crowd screamed
just like you see
on that old black and white footage,
and I imagined myself in a mod dress
with cat-eye glasses
and a beehive.

My heart was singing
and crying
with excitement.
.
.
.
But the longer the concert went on,
the more I realized
I was glad it was 50 years later.

That wasn't some 22-year-old Paul on stage,
freshly famous,
with a prolific songbook
still up in his head
waiting to be composed.

It was Paul
after 50 years of fame.


That wasn't The Beatles
of the Vietnam Era
and the Civil Rights movement
that I love so much.

It was music
that had been born then,
but lived on and on
through all the ages of men since
to stand timeless
at the top of the mountain
forever.

I felt like I was experiencing
an iconic human moment,
singing endless choruses of
"Na, na, na,
na-na-na-na,
na-na-na-na,
hey Jude"
with Paul
and with a stadium full of people.

How many hundred thousands of people
have heard Paul McCartney?

And now I'm one of them.

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