MUSIC REVIEW

McCartney's show in North Little Rock nearly 3 hours, spans decades

Sir Paul McCartney at Verizon Arena.
Sir Paul McCartney at Verizon Arena.

So it took Paul -- oops, make that Sir Paul McCartney -- a few decades to work Arkansas into his busy performance schedule. No worries. That just meant he had more material to pick from when he finally did deign to drop in.

And what a drop in it was, Saturday night, at Verizon Arena in North Little Rock, with a sold-out crowd of 15,319 treated to a show that lasted just shy of three hours and featured material from McCartney's stints in The Beatles, Wings and as, well, himself.

[GALLERY: Click here for photos from the concert]

He was backed by a fine four-man band deserving of a name check: guitarists Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray, keyboardist Paul "Wix" Wickens and drummer Abe Laboriel Jr. (who seemed to be as much of a character as McCartney's Beatles band mate, Ringo Starr). LED screens projected images, photos, designs and lasers and gave the show a high-tech sheen that never was possible in the days of The Beatles, when sound systems were so primitive that young female fans made more noise than the musicians.

The show opened with the imminently fitting "A Hard Day's Night," one of the Beatles' hits that he had never before included on his own set lists, along with "Can't Buy Me Love" and "Love Me Do," done later and dedicated to the Beatles' legendary producer, George Martin, often called the fifth Beatle, who recently passed away. McCartney took the time to occasionally pass along a bit of his old band's history, and also paid tribute to his late mates John Lennon and George Harrison.

For Lennon, he sang "Here Today," an imagined conversation, and for Harrison, he began Harrison's classic "Something" with a ukulele, after telling the audience of Harrison's skill on the instrument. And as for skill on instruments, McCartney played not just his trademark bass, but also acoustic and electric guitars, grand piano, a colorful upright piano and that ukulele.

He even found time to bring some fans on the stage and comment on their signs and supervise a marriage proposal involving two Japanese fans.

The cream of The Beatles' crop in the show included "I've Got a Feeling," "Here, There and Everywhere," "We Can Work It Out," "You Won't See Me," "And I Love Her," "Fool on the Hill," "Lady Madonna," "Eleanor Rigby," "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da," "Back in the USSR," "Let It Be" and "Hey Jude."

Before he sang "Blackbird," he revealed that the song had been inspired by the civil-rights struggles in Little Rock that the Beatles had read about in the early 1960s.

There was even an interesting song, "In Spite of All the Danger," which had been recorded by his pre-Beatles band, The Quarrymen.

His Wings choices included "Band on the Run," "Maybe I'm Amazed" (dedicated to his late wife, Linda Eastman McCartney), "Live and Let Die" (featuring loud, fiery explosions that no doubt surprised some audience members) and "Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-five." For his current wife, he performed "My Valentine," and the encores included "Yesterday," Wings' "Hi, Hi, Hi," followed by "Birthday" and the triumvirate of "Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End."

Fittingly, that was, in fact, the end. McCartney, who will be 74 on June 18, still projects an image of youthfulness that has marked his career of over a half-century. As he left, he said, "I'll be back."

Metro on 05/02/2016

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