Three generations of music fans — from a baby with protective headphones to grandparents with their adult children — got to see a living legend, Paul McCartney, Friday night at Hamilton’s TD Coliseum, for the official grand opening of the $300million reconstructed 40-year-old arena where the former Beatle played in 2016 when it was FirstOntario Centre.
The 83-year-old played an impressive 36 songs over a nearly three-hour show for the final Canadian stop on his Got Back Tour, which began in 2022 and ends Nov. 25 in Chicago.
The career-spanning set dated as far back as his pre-Beatles band Quarrymen’s 1958 “In Spite of All the Danger,” and included such Beatles hits as “Love Me Do,” “Blackbird,” “Get Back” and “Hey Jude;” songs from his next band Wings, like “Jet,” “Live and Let Die” and “Band On The Run,” and solo songs “Maybe I’m Amazed” and “My Valentine.”
A large poster on the exterior of TD Coliseum read “Welcome To TD Coliseum, Paul,” and when the sold-out crowd of 13,000 left the building at 11 p.m., they were handed a souvenir “grand opening” McCartney poster.
Courtesy: Karen Bliss
While McCartney didn’t mention anything about the newly transformed arena — including the new modern backstage artist digs — or that he was the first artist to play a ticketed event there since the interior was gutted and rebuilt (Earth Wind & Fire played a private free show Tuesday), he did address the crowd after opening the show with Beatles classic “Help” and solo “Coming Up.”
“Well, hello Hamilton. It’s great to be back. I have a feeling we’re gonna have some fun in here tonight. We got some old songs, we got some new songs and we’ve got some in between songs for you — and this next one is definitely not a new one,” he said, launching into 1966’s “Got To Get You Into My Life.”
Courtesy: Mike Highfield
The lifelong vegan was dressed in a double-breasted blazer and slacks, with a crisp white shirt underneath. He soon removed the jacket with its colourful lining to reveal a waste coat. Looking incredibly trim and not showing any glimpse of being tired as the show progressed hour by hour, he put us younger folks to shame who had to take breaks to sit down.
McCartney has also long adhered to a personal rule of not drinking even one sip of water onstage for his marathon shows, which are longer than most A-list artists on the planet, except, perhaps, Bruce Springsteen. Another super human feat for an octogenarian, no less.
He was joined onstage by longtime musicians Rusty Anderson (guitar), Brian Ray (bass/guitar), Paul “Wix” Wickens (keyboards) and Abe Laboriel Jr (drums), all of whom he’s been playing with since 2002, in addition to the three-piece Hot City Horns (Mike Davis, trumpet; Kenji Fenton, sax; and Paul Burton, trombone) who joined the band in 2018.
McCartney himself played bass, of course, guitar, upright piano, grand piano, mandolin and ukulele, the latter a gift from George Harrison which he brought out for the beginning of “Something.”
He also surprised the crowd by having two dozen members of the local Paris Port Dover Pipe Band for one of the encore songs, “Mull of Kintyre.”
Courtesy: Mike Highfield
McCartney engaged the audience on a few numbers, getting them to sing “most gloriously” to “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” as well as the na na nas on “Hey Jude” (some people brought signs) and frightened the hell out of us with the enormous fiery pyro explosions for the standout rocker “Live and Let Die,” mock holding his ears as if it was way too loud.
He dedicated “My Valentine” to his wife Nancy who was in the audience, reminisced about what a privilege it was to have met producer George Martin, before playing the first song the Beatles cut at Abbey Road, “Love Me Do,” sang the final Beatles’ song 2023’s “Now and Then” (“thank you John for writing that beautiful song”) and “I’ve Got a Feeling,” which had Lennon’s voice on video. “I love doing that song because it lets me sing with John one more time,” he said.
The stories he told onstage are worth tracking down on Instagram or YouTube. They include song preambles such as seeing Jimi Hendrix in London in a small club called Bag O’Nails. He then played a bit of “Foxy Lady” at the end of Wings’ “Let Me Roll It.” He also talked about writing “Blackbird,” after being told their Beatles show in Jacksonville, Florida, was segregated. “What’s that?” he asked the promoter, who explained that Black and white people sat on different sides of the room. “Well, that’s stupid,” McCartney replied, adding that the band refused and they never played a segregated show.
Primarily, the night was a walk down memory lane and a loving nostalgic tribute to the Beatles, especially Lennon and Harrison. There was tons of old footage playing on the backdrop, and he said more than once how much he loved and missed his late bandmates.
Near the start of the seven-song encore, he said, “We’ve had a great time tonight but there comes a time when we have to go home. It’s round about the same time you’re gonna go home.” He then thanked the numerous people in his “best crew on the planet” and added, “Most of all we want to thank you. Give yourselves a round of applause. You were great.”
We hope the band was given grand opening posters too.