Paul McCartney – Maybe I’m Amazed

Stockholm, Tele 2 Arena 9 July 2015

This bloke Paul McCartney has got talent! An understatement of course, but such is Macca’s familiarity that it is perhaps easy to forget just how good he is. And the penultimate show of his latest two-year long tour showed off everything in his arsenal over a mostly brilliant two and half hour set.

I was actually a little hesitant about whether to go see Paul McCartney. In recent TV appearances his voice seemed too weak for his material. And I was concerned about the show being too much of an oldies goldies trip down memory lane. And at times it was.

But when debating whether to go see Macca, there was also the feeling that this man is the Mozart of the popular song era. Even if past his prime, he is one of the greats – I mean really up there with Elvis, Dylan and that other guy, what’s his name – Lennon. And as a friend pointed out to me – “He is a Beatle for fucks sake!” And any music fan really needs to see a Beatle live – at least once!

This was also a show of epic proportions worthy of the magnitude of the man. The vast airport hangar like Tele 2 Arena meant that even those seated near the front required binoculars to see much. But McCartney has clearly honed his arena performances since the days when the Beatles  could not be seen nor heard during their concerts.

Although at times, the light show and video screen content was pointless and a distraction from the music, at times it was innovative and exciting, particularly when lasers danced round the roof on Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite. And surprisingly, the sound was excellent, with the harmony vocals and piano flourishes so often lost to the gaping spaces of stadiums clearly audible.

McCartney can play too, darting around the stage from the front microphone stand to a grand piano mounted at the back and then back to the front with acoustic, bass or electric guitar. And then he played once or twice a psychedelic painted upright piano that appeared out of nowhere at the front of stage.

McCartney’s voice was also very much on song. Sounding tired just occasionally (he is 73), he sounded at times as good as ever, with his mighty rock voice screaming the “yeahs” very well, supported competently by the superb backing singing from his tight four piece band.

And what a band – supreme musicianship that mimicked to a T the famous guitar solos and string or brass arrangements (through synths) from all those classic songs, yet somehow never sounding like a copy or pastiche. Of course many of the great songs of yesteryear have had their first live performances by this band, which has been with McCartney in the same format since 2002 – a period longer in duration than the lifespan of the Beatles or Wings.

And then there are the songs. And while clearly comfortable in front of tens of thousands of people, speaking Swedish from notes plastered around the stage quite amusingly and proficiently and telling the odd interesting and funny anecdote, McCartney, for the most part, let the songs do the talking.

If anything, the 40 song set list was a little Beatle heavy – with 27 Beatles tracks performed from the very beginning of the Fab Four’s career through to the closing glory of the Abbey Road album – literally. This left little room for Wings material (just four songs) or some of Macca’s fine solo songs (just nine played – half of which were weaker new songs).

The opening Eight days a Week, incredibly like many of the songs in the set played live for the first time on this tour, was the first of many earlier Beatles songs whose classic rock n roll bare bones structure sounded a little weak in the enormous stadium.

Coming after the bizarre pre show entertainment of awful records of Beatles’ covers being broadcast, followed by half an hour of decent McCartney records being aired (but who airs their own songs before their own gig?) while the video walls presented a montage of McCartney photos – for almost an hour – the fears of a journey through sentimental nostalgia began to grow.

The second song, Save Me, from latest album, 2013’s New, was bang up to date but left me very underwhelmed.

Things now however started to pick up with the gigantic Got to Get You Into My Life from arguably the best Beatles album, Revolver. This motown-like song’s brass section was also incredibly recreated en large and high up in the mix by the versatile keyboard player.

The next song, One After 909, was worthy of note only in that Paul introduced it as one of the first songs he and John wrote together. More interestingly sounding was the crazy synthesizer fuelled Temporary Secretary from 1980s McCartney II album, which was only performed live for the first time two months ago. McCartney’s hard rock brilliance was up next, with the crunchy duel guitar riff of the Wings’ Let Me Roll It – brilliant stop starting pummelling guitar rock that sounded almost brand new. There was no video screen entertainment during this number either. It didn’t need it. Does rock get any better?

Paperback Writer sounded more dated, but was delivered with outstanding harmonies.

McCartney then leaped to his grand piano for a newer song, My Valentine, written for his current wife (later he played Maybe I’m Amazed, which he said was “written for Linda”). My Valentine was unfortunately a bit dull and backed up with an out-of-place music video featuring Johnny Depp and Natalie Portman.

Next came the great rock n roll piano riff of much underrated Band on the Run closer 1985 “This one is for the Wings’ fans” shouted Paul. The tenth song of the evening was the Beatles’ Long and Winding Road.

And so the evening went for the next 20 songs, with lowlights coming in the form of the awful 2014 Hope for the Future  written for video game destiny and the Beatles kids’ song All Together Now.

Highlights during this middle period came from numerous Beatles’ favourites such as We Can Work It Out, And I Love Her, Lady Madonna, Lovely Rita and Eleanor Rigby.

McCartney sang Blackbird solo on a stage riser, along with Here Today, his song about John. George Harrison’s Something was brilliantly done with a ukulele opening “George was a great ukulele player” exploding into the full golden hued guitar licks.

This began a tremendous run down to the end of the main set with a fun Ob La Di, Band on the Run (with great guitar work), Back in the USSR, Let It Be and then a thunderous Live and Let Die  with tremendously timed blasts of fire and a histrionic fire works display that looked dangerous for the musicians and was a mix of sublime and ridiculous. Things calmed down only mildly for the pitch perfect, crowd sing along na, na, na …. of Hey Jude.

The first encore consisted of an anti climatic trio of Beatles’ standards (ha – is there such a thing as a Beatle standard), Another Girl, Birthday and Can’t Buy Me Love.

But still no Yesterday. Well it came of course at the opening of the final encore. And what I expected to be the end.

But no, the best was incredibly still to come. And did so at first with one of the greatest rock songs of all time – Helter Skelter, with its wild punk like guitar that sounded as exciting as anything ever! YEAH YEAH YEAH.

And then came the ten-minute closing medley from the Abbey Road album, Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight and the End. Wow!

Yes, at times this was a nostalgic oldies goldies show, with a constant barrage of photos of Paul and the Beatles on the video walls adding to this sentimentality. But at other times the songs sounded as fresh as the day they were recorded. And for the most part this was rock n roll at its best by one its greatest practitioners – with many of his skills still intact. So, if you have never seen a Beatle go, and see this one. Even if you have, go again, I think I will!

Neil Young and Crazy Horse – Rockin’ in the Free World

At the Stockholm Music and Arts Festival, 3 August 2014

Neil Young is a man on a mission. His compulsion to confound and even alienate audiences is a longstanding calling that was certainly on display last night. It was almost a full hour of fairly obscure songs driven by wrenching epic guitar work-outs before the festival crowd got their first familiar song. And even that wasn’t one of Neil’s.

But his main mission of the day seems to be to address humanity’s ongoing plundering of the earth through wars and environmental destruction. Almost 90% of last night’s set list contained songs of anger at the current state of the world, and a plea for love to endure and to stand up and help him save the world.

This was a preachy set no doubt. And in terms of message it was reminiscent of some of the more didactic days of his Crosby, Stills and Nash and chums late 1960’s peace and love will conquer all philosophising.

Unfortunately Young’s more modern protest style songs, and two-thirds of the songs last night were from the 1980s onwards, don’t match the brilliance of his counter-culture era state of the nation addresses such as Ohio or Southern Man.

Even a less good Neil Young song though is still a pretty formidable thing and while they may lack musical and lyrical subtlety, last night’s Living with War for example, the title track of Young’s 2006 album attacking the War on Terror, and brand new song Who’s Gonna Stand Up and Save the Earth with its plea for climate change to be addressed, “for our children,” are still good melodic rock songs.

Their musical lack of sophistication is also offset somewhat by their simple catchiness and surely this is the point. At 68 year’s old Young’s commitment and passion to his message is simply inspiring. He appears to be a man obsessed, perhaps driven by notions that time for him is running out. This idea comes across strongly in fact from his latest album, A letter Home.

An extremely low fi covers album, A Letter Home was released just over three months ago and not a single song from it was performed last night. But the album starts with a spoken message to his Mum in heaven about the state of the weather on Earth. He goes on to tell her that he misses her and will be up there with her soon “but not for a while as I still got a lot of work to do here.”

That work is clearly to make his audience wake up and help him with his environmental activism, in particular, to bring about the changes for a better world that the 1960s generation and he and his superstar pals seemed to give up on long ago.

And so dressed in black jeans, black boots, a black hat and black t’shirt with “Earth” printed across it, Young brought his work to Stockholm last night.

Opening with an epic guitar fuelled Love and Only Love from the 1990 garage band grunge era Ragged Glory album Neil howled the chorus “Hate is everything you think it is, love and only love with break it down.” The song set the standard for the night. Both lyrically, with its mix of anger and hope, and musically, roaring on for some 15 minutes in a thunderstorm of guitar solos with the three guitarists grouped tightly together in front of the drum kit in true Crazy Horse style.

Although this wasn’t quite a true Crazy Horse line up with bass player Billy Talbot having had a mild stroke and so replaced for this tour by long-term Young collaborator Rick Rosas. This left only drummer Ralph Molina from the original line up. And the presence, almost hidden behind the huge wall of closely packed together amplifiers, of two female backing singers seemed most un Crazy Horse like. However as the night progressed these singers proved a very worthwhile addition to the band, helping to simply emphasis the choruses.

The second track, the wonderful Powderfinger, a long time Crazy Horse concert favourite, though probably not a familiar song for a casual fan, suggested it was business as usual.

But then came the oddly resurrected and not particularly memorable Standing in the Light of Love, an unreleased song played live during a 2001 tour.

This was followed by the much better and rarely played Days That Used to Be, also from Ragged Glory. The song’s lyrics are particularly apt for Young’s seeming return to the ideas that once pervaded the music of his generation; “Ideas that once seem so right, now have gotten hard to say,” he sings. Yet last night, Young’s repetition of the line “Don’t rock the boat” over and over with a sardonic snarl between ironic musings such as “Change is good, but not right now!” felt like a big fuck you to anyone stood in the audience who has opted for “possessions and concessions.” I.e. pretty much all of us there.

After Living With War, and Young speaking directly to the audience for the first time to say “that’s a song we shouldn’t have to play anymore,” came another Ragged Glory number, Love to Burn. The messages of taking a chance on love and “you gotta take the first step” felt more about making a difference than romantic love, while the “spirit” of the song that speaks to Neil was surely last night the Sioux chief Crazy Horse   riding across the stage on a huge backdrop.

The very obscure and fairly weak Name of Love from the pretty woeful Crosby Stills Nash and Young 1988 album American Dream continued the anti war and rise up “in the name of love” theme.

It was then, with the other musicians departing the stage, after well over an hour that the very patient but somewhat muted Swedish audience got their first hit: Bob Dylan’s seminal protest song Blowin’ in the Wind continuing Young’s how many more times message wonderfully.

Young’s solo acoustic guitar and harmonica backed rendition of Blowin’ in the Wind is actually much closer to the original and delivered far more sincerely than any recent Dylan version of the song. In fact a Neil Young concert today is totally unlike a contemporary Dylan show. Young’s voice, guitar playing and energy are almost unchanged from his much younger self and are wonderful to behold. And he seems to care about what he is doing, even if that is frustrating the audience.

The Stockholmer’s were over the moon at the playful conversation between some hecklers and Neil as a guitar tech dealt with an issue. “I love you Neil” yelled a fan. “Well I don’t know you that well,” retorted Neil, bringing to mind his disdain for empty plaudits. But the love was returned with a fine rendition of his biggest hit Heart of Gold, which while performed well, with Neil nodding appreciatingly at the backing singers afterwards, the song’s inclusion felt like a token crowd pleasing gesture.

Much more fun and one of the highlights of the evening was Barstool Blues, a fairly anonymous but raw and brilliant Crazy Horse song from the 1975 Zuma album. With this and the next track, Psychedelic Pill, a newer Crazy Horse song from the 2012 album of the same name, Young and guitar player Frank Poncho Sampedro seemed to start to really enjoy themselves.

Barstool Blues had Young singing the lines “once there was a friend of mine who died a thousand deaths, his life was filled with parasites,” with his arm around Sampedro whose fractured hand caused many European concerts to be cancelled last year. “He trusted in a woman and on her he made his bets,” Young continued, pointing at Sampedro who nodded before kicking Young’s arse as he walked away.

Psychedelic Pill was introduced by Young as for being for “all the beautiful women out there” while carving female curves with his hand. Unsurprisingly in gender progressive Sweden this was met by, apart from a few groans, a very hushed response. A pretty uninspiring rocker about a party girl looking for a good time, had Young and Sampedro laughing away but otherwise was a rather pointless inclusion. Another fuck you perhaps?

Not so for Cortez the Killer though, one of Young’s greatest songs, and performed last night with all the lyrical clarity and hushed delivery building to intense guitar solos that it deserves. The song, about the Spanish conquistadores’ destruction of the paradise of Mexico was, as well as being brilliant, apt to the message of the night too.

The main set concluded with Young offering the audience the choice of Down by the River or Rockin’ in the Free World. To help decide after both got an equally enthusiastic response, Young wandered over to the life-size wooden sculpture of a native American chief to the side of the stage, called Woody, and who he had often walked over to solo with during the evening. Young informed us that Woody wasn’t very interested in either song. “Woody says they are both old songs and have the same chords anyway…” I think we can safely read Young’s own views in Woody’s here.

By now the crowd were getting excited and calling out for their favourite Young tracks. On hearing a request for Comes a Time, the late 70s mellow acoustic bucolic celebration of settling down, Young seemed incredulous. A seriously rocking Rockin’ in the Free World immediately broke loose. The only appropriate choice for tonight’s thinking, with the chorus repeated endlessly and the audience all fully joining in. Brilliant.

The single song encore was the aforementioned brand new Who’s Gonna Stand Up and Save the Earth. Young starts the song with a blistering single note spikey guitar riff and despite its simple catchy melody and obvious call for environmental action lyrics, the song sounds like a good un. And even on a first hearing the audience were singing along the infectious chorus, while Sampedro interjected the titular refrain with “You!”

This was not the greatest ever Neil Young concert by any means, and for casual festival going fans hoping for Old Man it must have been rather bewildering. But it was a concert with an important message and the passionate delivery of that message, along with a few fuck yous by a man whose musical prowess is completely undiminished made this Neil Young concert a completely thrilling event. Long may you run.