McCartney christens Consol with high-energy show
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Paul McCartney opens the Consol Energy Center and his concert with "Jet".
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Along with being the cute Beatle and the ballad Beatle, Paul McCartney was always the jet-set Beatle. He liked to be where the action was and, all these years later, he still craves that big spotlight.
He opened the new Mets stadium last summer, he hits the big charity blowouts, and Wednesday night, he answered the call to christen the Consol Energy Center in a city he hadn't played in 20 years.
At 8:23 (fashionably late), he took the stage, answering the future trivia question of what would be the first song played at Consol to a live audience. Sticking to the script of his current tour, it was "Venus and Mars/Rock Show" right into "Jet," a fun show-setting blast from the most beloved of his Wings' albums, "Band on the Run."
Either it's the vegetarian diet or there's an aging painting of him in the attic, because, at 68, Sir Paul looks nothing like "a relic from a different age," while having a remarkably youthful voice to match. He looks the same as he ever did in a black Beatles suit and he passed the rock 'n' roll shouter test quickly.
- Venus And Mars/Rock Show
- Jet
- All My Loving
- Letting Go
- Got To Get You Into My Life
- Highway
- Let Me Roll It
- Foxy Lady
- The Long and Winding Road
- Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five
- Let 'Em In
- My Love
- I'm Looking Through You
- Two Of Us
- Blackbird
- Here Today
- Dance Tonight
- Mrs Vanderbilt
- Eleanor Rigby
- Something
- Sing the Changes
- Band on the Run
- Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
- Back in the U.S.S.R.
- I've Got a Feeling
- Paperback Writer
- A Day in the Life / Give Peace A Chance
- Let It Be
- Live and Let Die
- Hey Jude
- Day Tripper
- Lady Madonna
- Get Back
- Yesterday
- Helter Skelter
- Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)
"We are the first people to play here -- and you are the first people to watch us play here," he said. "I think we look pretty cool."
When the Beatles played one of the first big rock shows at the Civic Arena in 1964, the Fab Four did their standard 30-minute set to 12,000 screaming fans, many of whom were there last night, and then ran for a plane.
Despite his age, the modern McCartney set runs nearly three hours and is packed with a Springsteen-sized 39 songs, about 22 of them from the Beatles catalog. The climax is pure Beatlemania, starting with a rousing "Ob-La Di, Ob-La-Da."
The early part of the set jumped through his career -- "Letting Go" from Wings (with a shredding solo by Rusty Anderson), the jubilant Beatles classics "All My Loving" and "Got to Get You Into My Life," and a contemporary shot with the noisy rocker "Highway" from his Fireman project.
First Published August 19, 2010 12:09 am
