You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s Crazy™
Paul McCartney.
Rumors of his death are premature to be sure.
The 72-year-old was supposed to play Nashville in June.
But then there’s news that he is sick and the concert is quickly postponed.
Sick? Sick with what?
The flu? Heart trouble?
Nobody is saying. It’s a secret, more protected than the 7 herbs and spices at KFC.
Rumors are rampant.
A date will be announced in the future, we are told. Hold on to your tickets. They will be honored at the door.
It’s all so cryptic.
I am the Walrus. Ku Ku Cachoo.
This is not the 1st time Paul McCartney is rumored to be dead.
Months go by and the concert date is announced: October 16th at the Bridgestone Arena.
I joke that the show will only go on if he doesn’t die.
It’s morbid, but based on potential possible life outcomes.
The cute beatle is 72 years old. He is a grandfather and he is eligible for AARP discounts.
Sir Paul McCartney, he is the Walrus, and now eligible for Denny’s discount Grand Slam breakfast.
Will McCartney make it is one question. Who is opening for McCartney another?
Such a simple question. Opening band? Again it’s a mystery.
See how they smile like pigs in a sty? I’m crying.
I look on-line. Nobody knows. I call people who should know. Nobody can say.
I click on Google, the all-knowing Google. Typically the internet God knows your answer by the 2nd word you type.
“When was…?” It knows.
“How did…?” Google knows.
But type in: Who is opening for Paul McCartney and Google is stumped like Congress trying to balance the budget.
The WHO coming to the Bridgestone arena, May 11, 2015, Google reports.
No. No. No.
See how they kicked Edgar allen Poe.
I call the box office.
“Hello. Is Paul McCartney still alive?” I ask.
“What? comes the startled operator reply.
“Just kidding. Hey do you know who is opening for Paul McCartney tonight?”
She pauses and I hear the sound of papers shuffling. I hear the wind rushing over the prairie. I hear the vacuous emptiness of Jessica Simpson’s thoughts.
“I don’t know,” she says with a positive tone. “But he always surprises us.”
He always surprises us? I think. This is only the 2nd time he’s ever been here. The surprise will be if he shows at all.
“He is playing tonight, right?” I say trying to pin this minimum wage telephone operator down.
“Yes, of course she says.
I chuckle. Like a woman with 2 jobs and a drinking problem knows what a 72-year-old iconic billionaire knighted by the Queen of England is planning to do today.
“OK thanks, mam.”
We’re so sorry Uncle Albert.
By 5:30 pm we are downtown, acting like the cutest Beatle will actually play.
Broadway, normally a mix of honky-tonk twang and country music hill-billy is different tonight. The sweet sounds of history and the Fab Four can be heard everywhere.
Love is blind – but I don’t know – love is kind.
I look around and lower Broad is electric. People are hanging off balconies, drinking and dancing. I see smiles and feel a special Paul McCartney energy on the sidewalks.
The visage is cowboy chic combined with hippie conservative.
I see white white hair, thinning hair lines and sagging boobs.
Leather and rhinestones are beattle bopping down the boulevard.
I will meet a nice man who is with his teenage son.
The father looks like an insurance salesman. His son looks like an A student who struggles with chemistry 2.
The father will later tell us that he is bringing his son to the McCartney show to pass the torch of a musical generation.
The father is a beaming smile. The boy is enthusiasm unbridled.
The hostess tell me it’s an hour or more to get a table at the Merchants restaurant.
“Screw that,” I say.
We sit at the bar and order a couple of Coronas.
“What song do you think he’ll open with?” my friend asks.
“You mean if he doesn’t die,” I quip.
It’s been an ongoing joke now since June 25th.
The air is filled with excitement, but there is still so much mystery, much like the Beatles themselves.
Is there an opening act? I will hear this question muttered several times, on the street and in the restaurant.
It is Music City, I think to myself. It is Paul McCartney. This is rock royalty. This man is the sound of a generation. This man has created so much music it would take 10 concerts to play every song he has ever written.
The 72-year-old Walrus, the cute Beatle is on a world tour that is getting rave reviews.
3 Hours is the norm.
His voice sounds great, the reviews say.
I’m skeptical. “I Just hope wherever he is right now, there’s a defibrillator by his side.”
“That’s awful,” my friend says with a smile.
“He’s 72,” I laugh. “If they can keep him upright for just 90 more minutes, We are going to see a rock icon,” I say half kidding.
The reviews on the internet are positive. McCartney sounds as good as he ever has, the sycophants exclaim.
I read the reviews with a curious eye, wondering if old women who fell in love with the cute Beatle are inundating the internet.
Are they really going to rip the man whose baby they once dreamed of having?
After 50 years, that golden throat is in autumn of its life. There’s got to be a crack, a crinkle, a warble when he goes for that high note.
“The Long and Winding Road that Leads to your door….”
We all travel this path. It’s inevitable that time marches on.
Sir Paul, as great as he once was, is now in the final phase of life.
I must see this performer, but I am prepared to be underwhelmed.
“Ah look at all the lonely people.”
As I walk up the sidewalk to the Bridgestone, I wonder if he is hooked up to a ventilator. Is Sir Paul on dialysis?Could he be in a wheelchair taking an IV of Asian shark medicine?
Will you listen to what the man says?
The show is scheduled to start at 7pm.
When you find yourself in Times of Trouble, Mother Mary Comes to me speaking words of wisdom let it be.
I get to 5th and Broadway, the site of the Bridgestone Arena and I am shocked to see a throng of people over flowing into the street.
This is very very unusual.
Not since Garth Brooks was doing double concerts nightly and the late crowd had to wait for the early crowd to leave have I seen this.
I get to the sidewalk and notice the immediate geriatric vibe.
Old is the common denominator. The crowd reeks of Earl Gray Tea.
I see pony tails on old men. I see women in too tight leather pants.
There is an uneasy feeling in the crowd as it pushes forward, trying to enter glass doors that are sealed tight.
Is he dead grandfather?
“Why won’t they open the doors?” I hear someone ask.
“There’s no opening band,” I hear someone reply.
“He was late for sound check, they didn’t want anyone inside,” the outdoor beer vendor says.
I look at the 20 something vendor with the big button that says Beer $9.50
How do you know, I want to ask the young salesman. You working for Rolling Stone Magazine?
The clock continues to tick.
It is now 7pm. The crowd is antsy.
At nearby Rippy’s, a 3 story country music haunt, Beatles songs spill off the patio.
She loves you yeah yeah yeah, floats through the air and blankets a growing concern building below.
The newsman in me begins to think.
What if Paul is dead? What if he cancels? Will there be a riot? There are 10,000 people packed onto the sidewalk in front of the arena. Will these former hippies have the strength, the will, to riot? Will they burn their depends and hair pieces in protest.
I hold up my iPhone and take a picture of the throng of people growing uneasy, swelling like a rising tide against a glass and concrete building that is holding us out.
Why won’t they open the doors? someone asks.
Paul really is sick, I think. I wonder if he is in the arena?
I imagine he is in a hotel suite, surrounded by doctors trying to revive him and accountants trying to figure out how to give 15,000 people back their money.
Here come old flat top, he come grooving up slowly….
Just when the excitement is about to yield to dismay, the doors open.
There is a slight roar as the crowd pushes forward.
Hold you in his arms you can feel his disease. Come together right now over me….
We push slowly into the arena.
The enthusiasm is palpable.
We walk in with some people who just bought tickets from street vendors. They are enthusiastic but nervous.
“Do you think they will accept these?” an old woman says showing me her two tickets.
“Yes, they will honor them as if it was the original date of the concert,” A man in a leather jacket, pony tail and thinning hair-line interjects.
“But I bought them on the street from a guy,” she says. “I got his license number,” she adds.
I silently laugh as I shuffle forward.
We finally make it through the glass portal and enter the arena.
The lobby is packed with a generation that is experiencing hot flashes and due for a prostate exam.
From the top of the escalator I can see the mass of humanity coming into the building. They are here to see a man who can pack an arena, whose music is so pervasive in our lives, it is hard to remember a time when Paul McCartney was not relevant.
He came to musical life in the 60’s. The world was a stew pot of transformation and revolution; sexual and racial.
Vietnam and civil rights.
The Beatles arrived, 4 well dressed young men getting off a Pan Am flight in February of 1964 amidst the shrill of adoration.
10 years later, with long hair and shaggy beards, they were changing the conversation.
They created indelible songs that would fuel a generation. They made news with their haircuts, beards and proclamations they were bigger than Jesus.
We walk into section 328. It is at the top of the arena. It is a Sherpa outcropping. It is a bat cave of trepidation without the stalactites.
As I move through the rarefied air I think about $300 for 2 seats to see a rock legend without a telescope.
Should have purchased the telescope option, I muse.
And I’m even at my seat yet. Section N is all the way up the stairs. Up and Up and Up. It’s so steep I feel my nose literally begin to run.
We are so high, I expect a flight attendant to remind me to wear my seat belt.
I get to the top of the arena and stop. The thick concrete wall alerts me this is the end of the line.
I look down. Row N.
Oh my God. You must be kidding.
We shuffle down the row, past some senior citizens.
“Excuse us,” we say.
“Welcome to the top of the line,” one of the old timers says.
We take our seats. Our backs are literally against the wall of the arena. The roof is so close I can see the cob webs above me.
I look below me. There are people who have brought binoculars and quilts.
I look down at the stage. It is a 1000 miles away. It’s like looking at a farm from the window of a passenger jet.
I feel a twinge of anger. I don’t remember the seats being this bad on-line?
OK. Whatever, I think. Look forward. Enjoy what’s to come.
The show is scheduled to start at 8pm. I listen to Beatles songs piped into the arena. The video board shows art that I will later learn is Paul McCartney’s.
8 pm comes and the crowd swells with excitement.
I hear a thunderous cheer.
“Is it starting?” my friend asks.
I check the stage. I see ants scurrying around. It’s pretty far away. It looks like worker ants but no iconic superstar ant.
I feel the thunderous applause and wonder if it’s just anticipatory.
The swell builds then fades.
Nothing.
Tick Tock.
8pm becomes 8:15. 8:15 becomes 8:30. 8:30 becomes 8:45.
The crowd is growing concerned.
Is Paul Dead?
It wouldn’t be the 1st time.
Back in 1967, a rumour that Paul McCartney had been killed in a car crash circulated in London. Rumors again surfaced in 1969 when he wasn’t seen in public often.
I sense the consternation. I again wonder if Sir Paul is sick, perhaps hooked up to a ventilator.
“We love you Paul someone screams from a seat somewhere in the distance.
“We have been seated watching old people age for 45 minutes.
“Should I go to the bathroom real quick,” my friend asks.
Maybe I think. If Paul is dead, it’s going to take time to explain this whole thing to the world.
Suddenly the lights dim and the crowd erupts.
The lights on the stage illuminate and a solitary figure walks out.
The stage is barren, stripped down. There are no frills, nothing special.
The video screens flash the image of Paul McCartney. Rumors of his death are greatly exaggerated.
to be continued.
Life’s Crazy.