Freshen Up

If you know anything about me, my favorite group is the Beatles. My dream of seeing them in concert died in 1980 when John Lennon was murdered. I held out hope of a reunion with John’s son Julian in his place. That dream ended when George Harrison died of cancer in 2001. Since Paul McCartney was my favorite Beatle, I put seeing him on my “bucket list”. I finally got to see him in Louisville in 2014. I never thought he’d tour again given his age, but he did his Out There tour in 2016. He played at Busch Stadium and Jonathan and I went to see him there. I never thought I’d see him in concert again. He was seventy four at the time. I couldn’t imagine he’d tour again. Then, I got an email saying he would be touring again in 2019 with his “Freshen Up” tour. I looked at the dates and very happily noticed he’d be playing in Madison Wisconsin. Since my son Josh lives there, I could get tickets and we could see him there. I got on the Ticketmaster web site the moment tickets went on sale. However, all the good tickets sold out immediately. I was totally dejected and set myself to buying tickets on the secondary market later (this was in September of 2018 and the concert wasn’t til June of 2019).

Over the next few months, I continued to get emails about tour dates being added. I finally got one saying a date had been added at Lambeau Field in Green Bay Wisconsin. With that venue being much larger, I hoped to be able to get tickets this time. Green Bay is about a two hour drive from where Josh is so we could easily go. The day came for the tickets to go on sale. I again got in as fast as I could. This time I managed to get Silver VIP tickets which put us on the field itself!

The date finally rolled around for the concert. We left for the concert. We grabbed dinner on the way. I had gotten parking via ParkWhiz about half a mile away. My hope is with that we could dodge most of the traffic afterwards. We found our way with no problem and got in with no issues. We got our wristbands for the field seats and headed down. The seats were great! Since I’d made us leave early (as I always do) we had time to kill so we walked around. I was a bit surprised as to how new things looked there. I later found out the stadium had been recently renovated.

The concert was supposed to start at eight. It ended up not starting til about 8:20. The concert started with “A Hard Day’s Night”. Paul McCartney played a lot of the Beatles songs that he primarily wrote (Can’t Buy Me Love, Got To Get You Into My Life, I’ve Seen A Face plus a lot of others). He also played a lot of songs from his Wings days (Let ‘Em In, Band On The Run, Live and Let Die and a lot of others). He also played some of his more recent solo songs as well. He even laughingly said that he could tell when he played his newer songs because he wouldn’t see the lights of people filming them (he said it was like seeing a “black hole”).

Josh genuinely seemed to enjoy himself. He said this was as close as he’d ever sat for a concert and he’d known more of these songs than he had at any other concert. Turned out he knew a lot of the songs because the head of his company plays them at meetings where he works. I even found out his favorite Beatle song is “Eleanor Rigby” (which Paul played at the concert). The concert went for almost three hours. It’s still hard for me to see how an almost seventy seven year old man can play and sing for that long. Just like like the previous two times, the concert was fabulous. I knew that for his encore he’d play the closing song medley at the end of the Abbey Road album. We worked our towards the stairs as he ended the concert. We then literally ran back to where the car was parked and beat the crowd (and traffic) out. I slept most of the way back and we got back to his apartment about 1:45am.

Finally as part of the VIP package, we got special souvenir gifts. They were shipped to my address and I didn’t get the package til I got back to our home the following week. We both got a really nice “Freshen Up” duffel bag and beach towel.

Paul McCartney always ends his concerts with “We’ll see you next time!”. Based on his intervals of touring, he’ll be almost eighty. I’ll be SIXTY. Will I go see him again? Absolutely!

Paul McCartney

I’ve liked the Beatles for about 35 years now, but the path to how I got there was strange. When I was a senior in high school, I started hearing some songs on the radio like Got to Get You into My Life and Come Together. They were from a movie called “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”. The movie starred a diverse cast of the Bee-Gees, Peter Frampton, George Burns and Alice Cooper. I was talking about the music in Calculus class and my friend David Darnell scoffed. He said “those songs don’t compare to the original releases by the Beatles”. I was skeptical and just filed that away in my brain. The movie by the way was absolutely terrible. I thought about the Beatles again when I was watching Monday Night Football on Dec 8, 1980. Howard Cosell broke in to say John Lennon had been murdered. I knew who he was and remember being really saddened by the tragedy of it. He had this song he’d just released called “Starting Over” which I really liked. How do I remember that date you might ask? Turns out the most wonderful woman in the world celebrated her 16th birthday that day.

A couple of years later, my friend Keith “Corky” Johnson re-introduced me to the Beatles. He had most of their albums which he loaned to me. When I listened to them, I was blown away. Where had this music been all my life? I became totally obsessed with the Beatles to the point where I was obnoxious about it. It was all I talked about. I spent every spare cent I had on Beatles albums and read everything I could find about them. I got a Beatlemania trivia game (that I still have) for Christmas that my friend Rick Alvey and I used to play a lot.

I’ve calmed down about the Beatles since then. But, I still would count them as my favorite. I still scoff when somebody claims to have been as popular or talented (Garth Brooks comes to mind). I’d always hoped they would get back together just once even after John died. I thought Julian Lennon could fill in for his dad. But once George Harrison died in 2001, that dream pretty much ended. My next idea was I really wanted to see Paul McCartney in concert. The right opportunity never came along til recently. His “Out There” tour started last year and I noticed happily he would come to Nashville and Louisville. I chose Louisville because the concert was going to be on June 25th (a Thursday) which worked out better for me. Lo and behold I get an email that Paul had been ill and that concert wouldn't be held. Fortunately, the concert was rescheduled for Tuesday October 28th.

The date finally came and I took off for Louisville. I had to stay across the river in New Albany because an FFA convention pretty much taken every room in the city. I grabbed some Five Guys and headed for downtown Louisville. I got to the Yum center at 6:45 (the concert started at 8). For some reason, they didn’t open the doors til 7. Even when we got in, they didn’t let anybody take their seats til about 7:30. I guess they were trying to convince you to buy stuff. It worked on me – I bought a pretzel and an outrageously priced tour shirt. Finally, I got in to my seat. I had purchased a floor seat and the view looked like it was going to be great.

They were still seating people at 8. The concert finally started at about 8:40. Paul took to the stage and started with “Eight Days a Week”. He played a lot of Beatles songs including my favorite “The Long and Winding Road”. He sang “Something” in a tribute to his old bandmate George Harrison (another favorite of mine). He alternated between bass guitar, guitar and piano. I had to stand most of the time but I didn’t mind at all. He put on a great show. He even got in a reference to Louisville and Kentucky by talking about the time the Beatles met Muhammad Ali in Miami right before he fought Sonny Liston. He played for over two and a half hours. He came out to his first encore with his band and him carrying British, US and Kentucky flags. I could tell his voice was straining a bit when he sang Helter Skelter in his first encore but he still did well. He finished a three hour concert with a second encore singing “Yesterday” and ending with the Abbey Road “Golden Slumbers” finish. I’ll just simply say what I said on Facebook that night “The Paul McCartney concert was AWESOME!!”.

He actually said “We’ll see you next time”. I cannot imagine he’ll tour again. He did great this time – a three hour concert for a 72 year man is amazing to me. I’ve knocked this item off my bucket list. But if he tours again, I’ll be there.