Steeped in Memories

By opening his first concert tour in nine years Monday with “Hello, Goodbye,” Paul McCartney touched on a key question: Is the former Beatle just saying hello again in these shows, or is he saying goodbye?

McCartney wrote the lighthearted number about the uncertainty of relationships in 1967, and he apparently views it as such a minor part of his repertoire that he didn’t include it in “Blackbird Singing,” his recent book of lyrics and poetry.

But the upbeat song was the ideal opener for the concert at the Arena in Oakland. After the deaths of prominent members of the Beatles family raised questions about whether we are coming to the end of this long and winding road in rock history, it offered reassurance.

I say high, you say low ... .

You say stop, I say go, go, go ...

I don’t know why you say goodbye

I say hello.

There’s no word in pop culture more transcendent than “Beatles,” a point that has been underscored each time the classic ‘60s rock band’s music is embraced by a new generation of fans.

From the exhilaration of “I Saw Her Standing There” to the comforting strains of “Let It Be” and “Hey Jude,” the Beatles’ music has been remarkably immune for four decades to the shifts in style and taste that render most pop acts quickly disposable.

The possibility that this could be the last time around for McCartney, who turns 60 on June 18, no doubt contributed to the box office heat of the seven-week tour, which includes stops May 4 at Staples Center in Los Angeles and May 5 at the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim. During that time, he’ll be seen by more than 400,000 people, generating an estimated $50 million.

In a pre-tour interview, McCartney downplayed the notion that this is a farewell tour.

“I’m a little cynical about ever saying something is a farewell tour because so many people have said they were [bowing out] and they came back,” he said during a break from rehearsal last week on a movie sound stage in Culver City. “Besides, I always thought I would live until about 90 and the estimate is going up. I will probably be wheeled up on stage, and sing [in a shaky voice] ‘Yes-ter-daaaaay.’”

Yet it’s also clear that McCartney isn’t one of those musicians who live for the road. He’s only done four tours in the 32 years since the breakup of the Beatles.

Even more to the point, McCartney and his fans have seen enough of life’s unexpected twists and turns to know that nothing is certain. The tour comes in the still tender aftermath of the cancer-related deaths of his wife, Linda, in 1998 and Beatles guitarist George Harrison last year.

In putting together this tour, McCartney understands that the shows are about more than music. They’re also about community and a shared history. The emphasis was on intimacy and warmth Monday, including a lengthy acoustic session in which he saluted the late John Lennon and Harrison, dedicating a song to each.

Waiting for the arena doors to open Monday, numerous fans expressed the belief that this could be their last chance to celebrate the legacy of the Beatles. Drummer Ringo Starr is the other surviving member, but McCartney, along with Lennon, wrote most of the material, and is viewed as the more essential connection.

“We drove 11 hours to see this,” said Matt Jarvis, 47, who owns a radio station in Waldpoint, Ore. He was standing with his girlfriend and her 12-year-old daughter. “I’ve been a fan 40 years and never seen the Beatles, and I figure this might be our last chance.”

Steve Coggin, 43, a roofer in the Bay Area, stood nearby with his two sons, 12 and 11. “I’ve seen every one of Paul’s tours, but this one is special because [the boys] can see him too. It’s a memory we’ll always share.”

It’s been almost 40 years since the English quartet captured the hearts of America in a single TV appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” and the sense of connection remains strong.

In the early minutes of Monday’s concert, McCartney reached back to some of the Beatles’ first hits, including “All My Lovin’,” one of the songs performed on the group’s historic 1964 Sullivan show appearance. Of some three dozen songs on the set list, about half were from his Beatles period. But he also found room to showcase his later songs, including “Jet,” “Live and Let Die” and “Let Me Roll It.”

McCartney’s post-Beatles work has been strikingly uneven, but he chose the best of that material for the show. After a high-energy first half-hour that included three of the most engaging songs from his recent album, “Driving Rain,” the bassist undertook the evening’s most dramatic move when he excused his band (Paul “Wix” Wickens on keyboards, Abe Laboriel Jr. on drums, and Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray on guitars) and performed 11 of his most endearing tunes in solo format, playing mainly acoustic guitar.

Rather than just the hits, he sprinkled in some less obvious Beatles numbers, including “Blackbird,” his civil rights anthem from 1968 that features one of McCartney’s loveliest melodies, and “Mother Nature’s Son,” an expression of environmental awareness from the same period.

The most tender moment, however, came when he saluted his deceased bandmates. He toasted Lennon, who was murdered in 1980, with “Here Today,” a 1982 song about their relationship.

“When people are around, it’s not always easy to tell them what you feel,” McCartney told the 14,000 fans. “After my dear friend John passed on, I wrote this song.”

The tune acknowledges the much-publicized tensions between the pair over the Beatles’ breakup in 1970, but concludes by saying, “But as for me/I still remember how it was before/And I’m holding back the tears no more/I love you.”

Then, accompanying himself on ukulele, McCartney sang Harrison’s most tender ballad, “Something.”

The audience applauded the “I love you” line in “Here Today” and sang along on the more familiar “Something.” (McCartney saved his salute to Linda for later in the concert with “My Love,” one of several songs inspired by their relationship.)

At the rehearsal in Los Angeles last week, McCartney said that he put the show together by trying to look at it from the audience’s perspective.

“If I were going to see Bob Dylan, for instance, I’d want to hear ‘Mr. Tambourine Man.’ So I just thought, ‘What would someone want to hear if they were coming to see me?’

“Then I added a few of my own ideas, like the George thing with the ukulele. I used to play ‘Something’ at home with the ukulele long before [Harrison’s illness]. George was a big ukulele fan. At the end of George’s evening, the ukulele always came out. It was like the port.”

McCartney got the idea for the long acoustic segment while doing poetry readings last year to promote his book.

“I enjoyed just being alone in front of an audience and thought it would be a good idea to go one on one in the concert in some way,” he said.

It was a daring move because it’s hard to hold an audience’s attention for a long time without a band in an arena setting.

But in that remarkable segment, McCartney and his audience didn’t need any other musicians--they had 40 years of memories to accompany them. It was a memorable moment that stepped beyond pop-rock conventions to create an intimacy and warmth that lived up to the most endearing and inspiring moments of the Beatles’ legacy.