Charlotte • Wednesday, July 28, 2010

About

From musoscribe.com, July 28, 2010:

Though I did my best not to, as the July 2010 Paul McCartney concert in Charlotte kicked off, I already had in my head a couple of ideas I thought I’d use in my post-show summary. But besides putting on a great show, McCartney managed to be something I hadn’t expected: just slightly unpredictable.

Sure, I had a pretty good idea of what songs to expect, and in what order. And I knew that we’d be treated to an evening’s full of by-the-book McCartneyisms: the well-rehearsed off-the-cuff anecdotes, the homespun snippet of some ditty of supposed relevance to the town he’s playing in, the everybody-say-woo bit, the connecting with a specific audience member (in this case a guy woman waving a “MCCARTNY” [sic] auto license tag), and repeated observations of what a great time we’re all having.

Buying a ticket to a Paul McCartney concert is not about witnessing spontaneity. But it is about a bunch of other things, all good. The man is in his late sixties now, and remains one of the planet’s richest performers. In 2010 Paul McCartney hasn’t got anything to prove to the audience. He could get up there and phone it in, and plenty of people would be satisfied, and would likely queue up for tickets to the next tour.

More than most performers, McCartney has always been one who truly wants to make his fans happy. You hear plenty of songwriters say things like “I write songs to please myself” and such, and thank goodness they do, because that’s what makes it real. And there’s ample evidence to suggest that the same is true of Macca. But onstage it’s a different matter altogether. He’s there to put on a show. He knows it, we know it. […]

One surprise was how much Paul relinquished bass playing duties to Brian Ray. When McCartney did play bass, he used his trademark Hofner, but for a good half of the show, Ray played a Gibson SG bass while McCartney displayed (with some subtlety) what an accomplished musician he actually is. And that’s not an insignificant point: while his skills as a composer, singer and performer in general are well established, all-around-crack-musician isn’t always the first phrase that comes to mind when thinking of McCartney. Of course that’s wrong: this is a man who played all of the instruments on his first solo album, and did so before it was practical or relatively common. But on this tour Paul plays lead guitar, acoustic guitar, mandolin, ukulele and piano. […]

One of my original premises, one of the things I was expecting to comment on at some length, was the critical role that keyboardist Paul “Wix” Wickens occupies in the band. Wix has been part of McCartney’s touring lineup for twenty years: it’s perhaps worth pointing out that his time with McCartney has vastly outlasted such musical collaborations as those with John Lennon (spanning 1957-1969) or Denny Laine (1971-1980). Only Paul’s wife Linda, who succumbed to cancer, could claim a longer musical association with Paul.

And beginning with McCartney’s 1989-90 world tour (the first time I saw him onstage, as it happens), Wickens was indeed a central component of the sound that came from the stage. By the late-late 1980s, keyboard technology had finally advanced to the point where it was possible to recreate the complex and distinctive sounds of the Beatles’ Baroque and Mannerist period works (Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour, Abbey Road) in an authentic fashion. So it was left — in those days — to Wix to play the horn charts from “Magical Mystery Tour,” the orchestra in “A Day in the Life,” and so on. Fans delighted to these carefully faithful live renditions of Beatles and Wings hits of yore.

Wickens — the band’s onstage musical director — remains in that role. But in 2010 his delivery is much more subtle. The current band (him and McCartney plus guitarists Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray, and drummer Abe Laboriel Jr. — a stable lineup going on nine years now) is focused less on providing audio carbon copies of classic songs. They’re careful not to mess with the arrangements too much —  don’t nobody better mess with our Beatles — but on the 2010 tour, the audience is as likely as not to hear what used to be a horn chart part played instead by Rusty Anderson on slide guitar. Not only does this work, but this approach gives the band a more rock-oriented edge. It also provides a less “plastic” feeling, and I say this as a keyboard player myself. […]

Last updated on November 24, 2020

Time Warner Cable Arena

This was the 1st and only concert played at Time Warner Cable Arena.

Setlist for the soundcheck

The setlist for this soundcheck is incomplete, or we have not be able to confirm in an accurate way that this was the setlist. If you have any clue, pls let us know and leave a comment.

Setlist for the concert

1.

Venus and Mars

Written by Paul McCartney, Linda McCartney

10.

Let'Em In

Written by Paul McCartney, Linda McCartney

15.

Here Today

Written by Paul McCartney

19.

Ram On

Written by Paul McCartney

29.

Live And Let Die

Written by Paul McCartney, Linda McCartney