Paul McCartney
Tuesday 24 October 2023
McDonald Jones Stadium, Newcastle
Photographer and Reviewer: Kevin Bull
If you had said to me a year ago that Paul McCartney would play in Newcastle, I would have laughed. Maybe up in the Hunter at Hope? We’ve seen The Rolling Stones, Elton and The Who play there, but in town, they’re not playing the Entertainment Centre. But then we had the roaring success of Elton at the football stadium, and the Pink announcement at the same venue… and now anything is possible apparently, even a Beatle.
To people of a certain age, the significance of this cannot be underestimated. By this time in our life we have listened to a lot of music, and The Beatles have always been there. Paul McCartney’s influence on popular music and the paths it has taken is not questioned, and now he’s in town with a paintbrush putting his mark on the brickwork. This is kind of big for Newcastle.
The streets around McDonald Jones Stadium were full of buses, cars and people on the run, all heading to one place. I arrived out the front of the venue a half hour before the advertised showtime, and you could feel the urgency at the gates. They needn’t have worried as the longest queue was for the merch tent, and there was plenty of time for the 30,000 people to fit snuggly within, prior to the 39 song, 3 hour set.
With a song catalog as large as McCartney’s, the selection of 39 songs to play live must be a difficult task, though I’m sure many here tonight appreciated so many Beatles tracks. They did feature heavily, from the earliest ‘Love Me Do’ and ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ (which opened of the night), all the way through to the title track of their final studio release, ‘Let It Be’. One of the highlights of the night was ‘I Got A Feeling’, also from this album, and a song that was performed at their final live performance onto of the Apple Corp rooftop. Tonight, the band performed it in front of the video footage from that rooftop show, with McCartney singing virtually alongside John Lennon. It was a touching tribute to his former bandmate, as was the nod to fellow Beatle, the late George Harrison with the ukulele tinged ‘Something’.
Possibly the biggest highlight and surprise of the night was to see pyro. ‘Live and Let Die’ exploded with flames and fireworks lighting up the stadium, and was something I was not expecting to see at a Paul McCartney show. Late in the night, ‘Helter Skelter’ had the same effect, bringing the whole venue to its feet. ‘Blackbird’ and ‘Hey Jude’ did the reverse, it hushed us to a quiet sing along. Both are beautiful ballads.
With an encore of seven Beatles classics which included ‘Happy Birthday’ and ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, this was not a night to head for the doors early. The night closed with the final three songs off Abbey Road, ‘Golden Slumbers,’ ‘Carry That Weight’ and ‘The End’, a fitting end to the night considering that these were from the final studio sessions the band undertook.
The production for the night can’t be faulted. It was a big stadium show with the expected light show and staging, and the beautifully nostalgic imagery washed across the video screens giving as all a touchstone into his life and the music. Musically, again, I have no complaints. Everything was well mixed and could be heard. McCartney’s voice has aged gracefully, and though it may not process the strength and youthfulness of years gone by, the voice of Paul McCartney and his music is still very much needed in our lives. All of us here tonight are a witness to this fact.
