Paul McCartney’s magical mystery tour

A low ceiling of clouds threatened to add a storm to the city’s sticky heat, but no rain fell on those gathered to attend the kickoff of Paul McCartney’s 2005 U.S. tour. Instead, they got a full moon and a 2 1/2 -hour trip down memory lane, complete with film clips, pyrotechnics, four encores and perhaps the longest group sing of “Hey Jude.”

At times, it seemed less of a concert than a pilgrimage.

Five hours before showtime Friday, the devoted stood along barricades outside the American Airlines Arena, hoping for a glimpse of McCartney while an endless loop of Beatles and Wings hits played courtesy of Big 105.9, a Miami classic rock station, which had set up a booth.

People in all manner of Beatles- and McCartney-emblazoned fashion wandered around, taking pictures of the enormous poster hung along the front of the arena or of the custom-made Lexus hybrid bearing McCartney’s signature that spun on a giant turntable.

In matching Beatles T-shirts, Elizabeth Hermann of Rio Rancho, N.M., and Rita Laboffe of Hamilton, Ohio, stood patiently for hours, having scored last-minute -- albeit lousy -- seats to the concert. Friends since first grade, they have seen McCartney live between 10 and 15 times, including a Beatles concert in 1964: “We were newborns,” Hermann said with a laugh.

As children, they had all the obligatory Beatles paraphernalia -- the lunchboxes, the posters -- and now they get together every time McCartney tours.

For Larry Berg, who stood nearby with his 14-year-old son, Brandon, it was as much about the man as the music.

Once you’ve seen a McCartney concert, the Tampa resident said, you never forget it. “I’ve seen Clapton and Springsteen and Jackson Browne, but when McCartney comes onstage, you feel like you’re in the presence of royalty,” he says. “Forty years he’s been doing this. And he’s had his trials and tribulations -- his friends have died, his wife. You feel like he’s a real person.”

As showtime approached, the arena filled with couples and groups of friends who looked more like they were heading to a back-to-school night at the local high school than to a concert.

Watching people thread politely through the crowd with their Grey Goose and Bacardi cocktails, or hunched over burgers and Nathan’s hot dogs (much, no doubt, to the dismay of the vegan-PETA presence, whose fliers admonished “Go Vegan with PETA and Paul”), it was difficult to imagine that these were the folks who were part of the rock ‘n’ roll revolution. Or what the collective baby-sitting bill must have been.

Not all the attendees left the kids at home, however. Parents -- and grandparents -- proudly steered preteens to concession counters or bought them their very first McCartney tour T-shirts. Two branches of the Budowsky family of Miami had four children, ages 4 through 9, in tow -- two of whom had already been to see Tom Petty perform. “Some kids are raised on Raffi,” said Joyce Budowsky. “My kids are being raised on the Beatles.”

When asked what their favorite songs were, 6-year-old Helen chose “Back in the U.S.S.R.”; 9-year-old Max, “Let It Be”; and 4-year-old Ethan, from atop his father’s shoulders, piped up: “Live and Let Die.”

None of the children was disappointed; in the course of the concert, McCartney hit all their picks. After a video montage of his career -- there is still something so strangely poignant about that image of the Fab Four in their spindly black suits on “The Ed Sullivan Show” -- McCartney opened with “Magical Mystery Tour,” bringing the crowd instantly to roaring attention, and he was off.

Slim and boyish still, with those mournful, mischievous eyes and perpetually raised eyebrows, McCartney seems as ageless as his music. Hitting lots of big numbers (“Drive My Car,” “Got to Get You Into My Life,” “Band on the Run”), he kept the thousands on their feet for most of the concert. (Only when he played a few selections from his new album did people make beverage and popcorn runs.)

With their cellphones held aloft and flickering like a thousand fireflies, people waved their arms, shook their hips, screamed and tried to sneak past the aisle cops to get a little closer to the stage. Through it all, their eyes never strayed from the face they have been seeing, the voice they have been listening to, so much of their lives.

And he never stopped. McCartney is 63, yet he barely paused long enough between songs to switch bass guitars; when the piano rose from the floor on several occasions, he didn’t even wait for it to finish its ascent -- he hopped on as it came up.

There was little chatter, although when he spoke he was genial enough. Explaining, for example, that he sang “I Will” because a man had approached him in a Pasadena restaurant to tell McCartney that his daughter had just sung that song in front of her school. “I will love that song forever,” the man said, and so McCartney added it to his show.

The most endearing moments, though, were when he muffed a line in a song. The second time it happened, in “Blackbird,” he stopped playing, looked at the audience and said in mock disgust: “How long have I been singing this? Is this a first night or what? And,” he added with a laugh, “I don’t care.”

Members of the audience whooped agreement, seeing a chance to show him exactly how they felt -- he could mess up every song as far as they were concerned.

Because it wasn’t just him they loved, it was everything he stood for. The Beatles, John and George and Linda gone too soon, a time when rock ‘n’ roll meant a bunch of cute guys with guitars singing about girls they loved and things they thought and what they hoped the world might become.

“I remember the day I wrote this song in our front parlor,” he said as a preface to “I’ll Follow the Sun.” “I remember looking out through the lace curtains into the street.”

The tour, which will reach Southern California on Nov. 11 at the Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim, is a reminder that time is indefatigable but not necessarily our enemy. So many of the songs have become so ubiquitous that they have almost lost their meaning. But to hear “Eleanor Rigby” or “Let It Be” sung by McCartney, sweating and lively, brought back a time when the music wasn’t piped in or used in TV and films as a touchstone for nostalgia.

Watching the crowd lose itself in a long rendition of “Hey Jude” may be as close to a collective spiritual experience as Miami has seen in a long time. Flames shot up for “Live and Let Die”; for the third encore, McCartney changed into a “No More Landmines” T-shirt and, after singing “Let It Be,” he told a still not-satiated audience that it was indeed time to go home because he at least had to get some sleep. He sent the crowd into a still-sultry night with “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and the promise that “we’ll see you again next time.”

Ears ringing, hands numb from clapping, voices hoarse from singing, the audience members filed out as politely and orderly as they had filed in. “I can’t believe he’s 63,” said one woman. “He never even stopped to take a drink of water.”

Catching sight of a reporter’s notebook, another woman, assuming that this meant backstage privileges, caught her arm and said, “If you see Paul, tell him we really love him.”

Actually, he probably already knows.

*

Paul McCartney

Where: Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim, 2695 E. Katella Ave., Anaheim

When: 8 p.m. Nov. 11 and 12

Price: Sold out

Contact: (714) 704-2500

Also

Where: Staples Center, 1111 S. Figueroa St., L.A.

When: 8 p.m. Nov. 29 and 30

Price: $51.50 to $259.25

Contact: (213) 742-7340