CLUB SANDWICH 58

SSHHHH!

IT'S SECRET GIG TIME

Turn up any sheaf of Macca interviews from the past 20 years and you'll read of his desire to perform secret, surprise live shows. In early May, with the band, he went and did it, playing Barcelona and London. And - who knows? - maybe there's more to come...

            There they were, tucked away from blustery May winds in the barn that viewers of the Put It There home-video would instantly recognise, Paul and the band in rehearsal, checking out material and loosening limbs for a return to the road, of sorts, last left in Soldier Field, Chicago more than nine months before.
            You might think that after 102 gigs, rehearsals would not be necessary, that chords and notes would be so deeply embedded that they would drop neatly into place at the twitch of a plectrum or stroke of a keyboard. Not so.
            Number by number, though, in the barn, the sound of an exciting, tight 24-song set came together, with the odd jam thrown in for good measure just to underline that spirits were high and wavelengths tuned together. Thirteen acoustics and eleven electrics suggested themselves, a varied blend of styles and tempos. Then discussion about riffs and roles, song balance and sound balance.
            Taking time out after rehearsals, Paul told CS why the secret gig plan was finally being brought to fruition. "It's really to keep the band active," he explained.
            "Blair played with us when we did Wogan [to plug 'All My Trials'] and in the dressing-room after the show I thought we'd better invite him to join us, make it official. And Wix was funny, he said, 'Yeah, welcome to the group, Blair, and a year off, because they knew I was going to do the Oratorio. And Blair was saying, 'I love playing, I love playing' so I thought, 'I can't get him in the group and then have nothing for him until October...'"
            Paul reveals that Blair Cunningham's joining was another good reason for playing on the MTV Unplugged show. "It kept the band's hand in, gave us a little bit of a challenge and, yes, it introduced Blair. And now it's an album, so suddenly he's on an album, which settles him further, and now we must play. I can't just be rehearsing the Oratorio all the time."
            And why Barcelona? "Because the vinyl record is in Spanish, with a Spanish sleevenote, and because I've got an affection for Spain - I learnt Spanish at school, it's the land of the guitar and it has a great history. So it became a good idea to go there to play, to tie it all up."

ML

BARCELONA

            It rained, of course. But then it would. All that guff about raining only on the plain was invented because "the rain in Spain falls mainly in Barcelona" doesn't scan. Anyway, it often rains at times of triumph for Mac. It bucketed down in Florida on the World Tour - and that was one helluva gig. And in Rio, the 184,000 fans at the Maracana Stadium (biggest crowd world record holder: P. McCartney) were drenched by the worst storms in living memory.
            But the rain didn't dampen the Spanish any. Crowds had been gathering outside the Zeleste Club since daybreak and the desperate were paying $540 to scalpers for $15 tickets.
            "It's going to be Barceloony," said Richard, Paul's manager, as a roar of awe from the sodden queue by the stage door told the inattentive that Paul and Linda had arrived.
            Inside, the Zeleste club didn't look like it could hold 1800 fans. Compact, in a Kaiserkeller sort of way, it seemed smaller than some of the dressing rooms on the World Tour.
            As Keith Smith's skeleton staff of roadies scampered to cope with horrendous feedback that neither Paul nor Robbie could work out if they were responsible for, Macca led the band through snatches of the 24-song, half-acoustic, half-electric (Unplugged and Plugged) list that would form the set.
            At 8 pm, the doors opened and the fans didn't rush in, as much as rocket in. This being Paul's first show in the city since July 1965, when the Fabs flew in on their last Euro-tour, the excitement was rabid.
            Paul had said he'd go on stage at 9.30 and at ten seconds to, the crowd started a chanted count-down. When they got to whatever "one" is in Spanish, a thunderclap shout went up which drowned out much of the first verse of 'Be-Bop-A-Lula'. There then followed a word-perfect crowd yellalong (singalong being too slight a term for the noise) to 'We Can Work It Out' as Paul zapped through a 13-song selection from the MTV Unplugged show.
            Characteristically milking the fun - he intro'd Robbie as "Roberto McIntoshio" and added the novel "She's not a man, she's not a car, she's not a washing machine, she's not a toaster...She's A Woman" to that song - he left them with 'Good Rockin' Tonight'. And gasping.
            If the now heavily-excited crowd hoped for an encore, they got better as Macca returned - plugged -to do 'Band On The Run', 'My Brave Face', 'Ebony And Ivory', 'I Saw Her Standing There', 'Get Back', 'Coming Up', 'The Long And Winding Road', 'Ain't That A Shame' and 'Let It Be'.
            Off he went again. And back he came...for what must surely rank as one of the best imaginable encores in rock and roll - 'Can't Buy Me Love' followed hard by 'Sgt Pepper'. And they all took the final bow - and the final shrieks that resulted - wearing Barcelona football club shirts.

Pretty bloody ole, really.

GEOFF BAKER

LONDON

            There's something about a club date to set the pulses quickening, more even than for an arena or stadium show. Perhaps this explained the buzz of expectancy inside the packed Mean Fiddler the evening of Friday May 10 1991. The little north London venue has seen some big names tread the tiny stage but none bigger than this night.
            Perhaps, too, there was the realisation that - as proudly as a loyal fan could bandy the Maracana statistic - this was going to be Paul's smallest gig in a long, long time. The smallest venue he had played since taking a final bow at the Cavern in August 1963. That long.
            So six hundred fans thronged (and I mean thronged) the Mean Fiddler this night, people packed so tight that you could stand ten metres from the stage and still have to strain your neck and stand on tiptoe to see anything. But the atmosphere was accordingly electric - even for the acoustic set.
            The other thing about club dates is that they seem to engender an extra degree of promptness about the musicians. Though Macca's record for starting shows near enough to the stated time is streets ahead of most others, at the Mean Fiddler - as at Barcelona - he and the band strode onstage bang on the appointed dot, and when he said they'd take an ten-minute interval halfway through, ten minutes it was.
            As in Spain, the first half celebrated Unplugged, with a baker's dozen (not Geoff this time) of tracks from the then forthcoming LP. At times, Paul's vocal was difficult to isolate above the massed terrace-style accompaniment of the 600. And when he took to the drums for Hamish's wonderful 'Ain't No Sunshine', it was another instant throwback to those Cavern nights of yore, for the young McCartney was something of a secret skin-brusher even then.
            If the acoustic set went down a storm, the electric set was a hurricane. More vociferous audience accompaniment, a yet further arrangement of 'Coming Up', the Hofiier Violin bass, a wheeled-on piano for 'The Long And Winding Road', 'Let It Be' and a sensational 'Ain't That A Shame', more neck-craning and then those classic encores, the ultimate rock concert payoff, 'Can't Buy Me Love' and the 'Sgt Pepper' jam that wowed audiences in 13 countries on that tour.
            Their delight at having so easily adapted to the intimacy of the Mean Fiddler was clear to see on the faces of the band as, like actors in a play, they stepped forward to take a final, joyous arm-linked bow. "See you next time...we play this place," announced Macca in a suitable variation of a World Tour au revoir. Ticketless fans locked outside the club, and a few score more thousand disappointed Londoners, are now praying for that next time.

ML