still got it

67 years old and one of britain's richest people, he could easily just stay in one of his mansions eating tofu and counting his money. instead sir paul rocked fenway park last night for 2 1/2 hours, playing 30 songs from both the way-back machine as well as brand new stuff from his current outfit fireman.

our seats were waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay away from the stage, so i know it wasn't me he was winking at, but he was crystal clear on the digital jumbotron and you could see he was having a ball. sending out the love and getting it right back. smiling and slim in red suspenders, he owned the night.

i bought my first beatles record before i hit my teens, and then wound up collecting pretty much all of them. wings never really rocked my world, but going through
last night's set list it's truly amazing to realize how deeply he's woven into our cultural fabric. we all knew all the words, but he was absolutely not going through the motions.

he played the still-so-lovely "something" on a ukulele that george harrison had given him, while a montage of harrison played behind him under the giant moon. "blackbird", one of my favorites, was in there too and he played it solo on-stage. he talked about john and played "let it be", and "give peace a chance" brought a chanting crowd to its feet.

"eleanor rigby", "helter skelter" and "a day in the life", showed their complexity but a fun bopper like "i saw her standing here" or "back in the ussr" was great too.

no lip-syncing, no dancing girls, no midgets being shot out of cannons, no spectacles. ok, there were fireworks during "live and let die" (which he killed, btw), but they were all the more thrilling because the night was just about paul, his tight-tight band and a half-century of fantastic music. he looks great, his voice still sounds amazing, his playing was flawless.

2 long encores and he finished up with "sgt. pepper" segued into "the end". perfect.


postscript: while i was watching the legend and having him prove just that and then some, a different sort of legacy, the man and recovered trainwreck that is steven tyler, fell off the stage in south dakota, while singing "love in an elevator." he was taken to the emergency room in sturgis. how's that for night & day, my friends?