It's true then. Macca has switched the credits around so that 'his' Beatles songs now read McCartney/Lennon instead of the famous reverse. Fair enough you might think, but the Fab Four's most dedicated and hard working curator is old and rich enough to know better and, frankly, care less. It stinks, but the music is still as sweet as yesterday's lillies.
Thirty six songs, two hours of Macca's 2002 US show - shortly to be reprised in the UK - shows the man's love of the live stage, his boundless enthusiasm and marketing expertise. Playing even one previously unperformed live Beatles track - 'Getting Better' - is a banker that Paul's accountant brain would have planned carefully. Hell, he even signposts the fact in the sleeve notes, just in case we hadn't noticed its inclusion.
And yet despite the cynicism - dotmusic can't recall Thin Lizzy, Peter Frampton, or even Wings for that matter, including their best gig reviews as a major part of the packaging of their live albums - despite all that, the band is amazing, Macca sings brilliantly and the songs... well, they're THE songs. Imagine being gun-slinger guitarists Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray and being handed this set list: 'Eleanor Rigby', 'Back In The USSR', 'The Long And Winding Road', 'Yesterday', 'Band On The Run', 'The Fool On the Hill' etc etc.
Even the inclusion of a trio of lesser known, later songs, while not in the same class and betraying as they do the inevitable meat and potatoes stadium rock arrangements, are quickly followed by the crowd-pleasing acoustic section that is 'Blackbird', 'Every Night', 'We can Work It Out', 'Mother Nature's Son' and on to the wacky, ukulele backing of 'Something', that perhaps made more sense at the George Harrison tribute show in December. All that on CD one.
CD two rocks like John and Yoko on Viagra once 'Michelle' has elicited a mass singalong and Paul dips into the Wings back catalogue. You can judge a good band by the way they cover 'Live And Let Die' (are you listening Axl?) and if this line-up doesn't quite manage to pull off the best bits of funky chicken guitar work on 'Band On The Run', here we have every cymbal crash, cannon blast and rumbling orchestral stab lovingly in place. We even get a spirited 'Can't Buy Me Love', 'I Saw Her Standing There' and a classy, bar room piano canter through 'Lady Madonna'.
And so, hours later, exhausted and hoarse, we have been won over by that thumbs-up charm, those familiar tunes and even McCartney's meticulously planned tugs at our heart-strings. "Only a fool on a very far off hill wouldn't love it!" Put that on the reissue sleeve Sir Paul.
