The Keeper of the Flame

The answer became clear during the encores.

I hung out last night with my wife and son and Paul McCartney, along with 60,000 or so of our closest friends at a sold-out Comerica Park in Detroit. Sir Paul shredded my eardrums as he took us on a tour of Beatlemania (All My Loving) to Wings (Band on the Run) to all-time sing alongs (Hey Jude) to emotional ballads (Eleanor Rigby) to stirring tributes to fallen bandmates (Something, begun on a ukulele that once belonged to George; A Day in the Life which morphed into Give Peace a Chance in honor of John) to awesome pyrotechnical displays (you can check out my son’s video of Live and Let Die on You Tube and hear me say, “It’s a little smoky here) to a Detroit concert-only Motown tribute (a cover of Marvin Gaye’s 1962 song Hitchhike). After two and a quarter hours (during which he never left the stage), 69-year-old Paul McCartney did two encore sets.

The first featured Lady Madonna, Day Tripper and Get Back. The second was Yesterday, Helter Skelter and Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End. By the end of The End he’d been on stage for almost three hours.

Are you kidding me? 69 years old and he’s doing that? And he still has those songs in his hip pocket to pull out for encores?

Somewhere along the line the answer became clear.

The question, of course, is why. Why does a 69-year-old do this? Why isn’t he at his Scottish estate, sitting in a rocking chair by the fire, counting his billions?

Because he is doing what he alone in the world can do. And he’s perhaps the best ever in the history of the world at doing it. There is something timeless, life-giving and transcendent about Sir Paul keeping alive the legacy of The Beatles, along with the rest of his music. He is obviously filled with joy on stage as he moves around like a kid and is able to still perform his songs in the keys they were originally written in. He has found the Holy Grail, the fountain of youth, the magic elixir. It is doing what you were made to do.

I saw him the last time he played in Detroit – at Olympia Stadium in May of 1976. I am telling you he was better last night than he was 35 years ago, and he was pretty darn good 35 years ago. And never, ever, could I have imagined then that I would be taking my son with me to see him blow our minds decades in the future. It was fitting to be in a baseball stadium, because it’s baseball that is supposed to sentimentally fuse generations together in our culture. That job was done by good old fashioned rock and roll last night – and not only did I see plenty of parents and kids together but grandparents and grandkids together as well. Amazing. (Also fitting to be in a baseball stadium because in my memory when rock and roll was starting, we all thought rock musicians would have careers that lasted even shorter than those of baseball players – we figured by 30 it was over. How wrong was that?)

Paul’s last words (after singing “And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make”) were “See you next time” and I believe him. Maybe next time I’ll be with my grandkids. And hopefully, by then, the ringing in my ears will have cleared up.