sábado, 13 de octubre de 2018

ACL (Second Week) Live Review: Paul McCartney

















www.austinchronicle.com
ACL Live Review: Paul McCartney
Listen to what the man said
BY ALEJANDRA RAMIREZ
OCT. 13, 2018

 The Beatles made pop music that normally shouldn’t work, and Paul McCartney knows it. After performing the billet-doux jangle of “From Me to You,” he recalled, “Someone asked me once, ‘What was the turning point for you and the band?’” As he cradled a Martin guitar and hummed the melody to the tune in its major key, the answer seemed to be the actual song.
Photo by Gary Miller

 Yet in an unexpected clunk, he resolved to a tense G minor. Surprised, he stared at his guitar and joked, “G minor?! That’s a turning point, right?”

 In conventional pop modus operandi, these songs with dissonant resolve are dangerous territory, but in modern pop vernacular, they’re timeless and brilliant, and changed the trajectory of rock & roll and pop. You can hear it on the jarring onset of “A Hard Day’s Night.” As the first song of the night, six strings rang with an unorthodoxy that clanged like a rattling iron church bell, bringing a large congregation to McCartney’s nearly three-hour Magical Mystery Tour at ACL Fest for a second consecutive Friday.

 Next came the one-two punch of a spry “All My Loving” and Wings’ slinky panache on “Letting Go.” Both struck with an equal aplomb that was met by either a kick of his Chelsea boot or goofy gyrations. Even at 76, he’s still the cutest and most beloved Beatle.

 Quick to take off his denim jacket and roll up his sleeves, McCartney swapped out his iconic violin Hofner bass for a multicolored Les Paul on Band on the Run’s “Let Me Roll It.” The hard-edged, swift lick sparked like tripwire to the explosive Jimi Hendrix tribute “Foxy Lady.” Dialing in torrential Sixties fuzz and coaxing feedback, the knighted Liverpudlian might have bested his trusted axemen, Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray.

 In a 31-song set, the bandleader sucked the audience into a vertiginous time warp, traversing through a multitude of eras. The Seventies, “Maybe I’m Amazed” and “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five,” kept him perched alongside a grand piano, while Beatlemania from the previous decade metered out the early-show triumvirate of “We Can Work It Out,” “From Me To You,” and “Love Me Do.” The side-winked and cheeky “Fuh You” and “Come On to Me,” off his latest Egyptian Station, sneaked their way in for a leap of centuries.

 While hi-hats muffled like carnival monkey cymbals on Sgt. Peppers’ “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!,” George Harrison tribute “Something” dialed back with a ukulele arrangement in simplistic reverie. Karaoke and jukebox hour then commenced with calypso-tinged fluff “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” and piano ballad epic “Let It Be,” while “Back in the U.S.S.R” coalesced Beach Boys harmonies and Chuck Berry skewer-cooked riffage.

 In the pyrotechnic-assisted “Live and Let Die,” brass crescendos and sweeping strings launched into the transcendental ether of closer “Hey Jude.” Beyond the crowd-pleasing and 60 years worth of celebrity, there’s some sage wisdom lined in Paul McCartney’s songwriting. In his own words, listen to what the man said.



www.kvue.com
'I've got a feeling in Texas' | Paul McCartney gives a history lesson in The Beatles at ACL Fest
It was Beatlemania all over again as Sir Paul McCartney closed out the show Friday night during Weekend 2 of the ACL Music Festival.
Author: Drew Knight
Published: October 12, 2018


AUSTIN — "I've got a feeling in Texas," was one of the first lines Sir Paul McCartney spoke to the thousands of fans who packed Zilker Park Friday night for the 2018 Austin City Limits Festival.

 To just about any music fan, the sheer bragging rights of being able to say you've seen a founding member of The Beatles perform live was enough to dole out the big bucks for an ACL wristband. Which is why it came as no surprise that McCartney attracted a massive crowd to his performance during Weekend 2 -- despite having played the same stage only a week prior.

 As they say, the Brit hopped the pond yet again for another historical moment on the ACL stage, performing songs of his own and those that brought The Beatles to international fame and hysteria.


As he sang what he called "old songs, new songs and some in-between songs," he gave the ACL crowd a little history lesson along the way.

 The first came after he gave tribute to American guitar legend Jimi Hendrix with a riff from the Hendrix song "Foxy Lady." McCartney said he was very lucky to meet Hendrix in London in the 60s -- this was during the "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" era. He said when Hendrix began wailing on his guitar, it fell out of tune. He knew fellow legend Eric Clapton was hiding in the crowd, so McCartney said Hendrix proceeded to ask him to tune it. He also mentioned Clapton was hiding because of that fact.

 Speaking of instruments, McCartney also paid tribute to fellow Beatle George Harrison -- a star ukulele player. Before opening into a ukulele version of "Something," he took a moment to explain how the late Harrison was a uke expert. In fact, he said the very ukulele he was playing was a gift from Harrison himself.


Later on in the show, he recalled one of The Beatles' earliest moments in recording at Abbey Road. That song was "Love Me Do." He explained that when asked to sing the words "Love Me Do" along with the harmonica, he got nervous.

 "I can still hear the tremor in my voice," McCartney said before jumping into the song. "But not tonight."

 Soon after, he gave an important lesson on one of the biggest Beatles hits, "Blackbird." McCartney remembered writing it during the Civil Rights era with the hopes of giving people in southern cities like Little Rock, Arkansas -- home of the historical "Little Rock Crisis'' -- hope to keep pressing forward.



Another history lesson came after the performance of "Back in the U.S.S.R." He recalled performing in the actual U.S.S.R, now Russia. Top leaders with the Kremlin were backstage hoping to speak with the band. One of those officials told him he learned English listening to The Beatles.

 "He looked me right in the eye and said, 'Hello, Gooodbye,'" McCartney laughed.

 Another important history lesson seemed to be learned by McCartney himself.

 After a photo of McCartney waving around a Chilean flag during his performance at Weekend 1 of the festival, it seems the rock legend, or a member of his crew, corrected the mistake. When the crowd gave him an encore, Sir McCartney came running out with the remarkably similar -- and correct -- Texas flag.



We'll forgive you, Paul.
Image result for paul mccartney acl

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