“How many people here are actually from Hamilton?” Paul McCartney asked about 90 minutes into last night’s performance. Naturally, he received enthusiastic cheers in the affirmative. But then came the followup: “How many people are not from Hamilton?” — which elicited a roaring response five times louder.
“Well,” McCartney responded, slightly taken aback. “Welcome!”
That overwhelming chorus of out-of-towners shouldn’t have come as a surprise: McCartney’s Got Back tour skipped over Toronto for a date in the Hammer, spurring massive spillover demand that drove single-ticket resale prices into the realm of annual mortgage payments.
But McCartney’s welcome message applied equally to the locals, because this show marked the long-awaited grand opening of Hamilton’s TD Coliseum, the revamped venue formerly known as FirstOntario Centre. The aged downtown arena has been given a $300-million makeover complete with Matty Matheson restaurants, self-serve beer markets and a sleek all-black esthetic that’s dramatically shifted the vibe inside from concrete-donut minor-league hockey rink to state-of-the-art concert hall.
Technically, this was the second event to be held at the refurbished venue. Last Tuesday, TD Coliseum hosted a private test-run preview featuring funk legends Earth, Wind & Fire. (They can claim bragging rights for being the first act to perform “Got to Get You Into My Life” in the new space.) But last night’s show was the Coliseum’s proper initiation, with McCartney delivering an astonishing 36-song, career-spanning set.
Over nearly three hours, he pulled out every trick in the arena-rock arsenal, including pyro, lasers, levitating stages, confetti cannons and video duets with the dead.
While McCartney’s ceaseless stamina at age 83 constitutes an eighth wonder of the world, his efforts are greatly abetted by his other Fab Four — guitarists Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray, keyboardist Paul “Wix” Wickens and ever-animated drummer Abe Laboriel Jr. — who’ve been supporting McCartney for nearly a quarter century. Striking just the right balance of raw and refined, with a three-piece horn section in tow, they’re effectively the world’s tightest garage band.
As anyone who’s seen him live at any point over the past two decades can attest, a Paul McCartney show is a sum of familiar rituals. There’ll be an ear-blasting eruption of fireworks to trigger each chorus of “Live and Let Die.” There’ll be an “all the guys” vs. “all the girls” crowd-participation competition during the “na na na” climax of “Hey Jude.” And in the end, he’ll play “The End.” But in between these tentpoles, we get revealing glimpses into how McCartney’s canon continues to be reshaped and reappraised to meet the current moment.
Last night, that meant passing over some of his definitive ’60s works (like “Yesterday” and “Penny Lane”) to air out Wings nuggets like “Let ’Em In,” whose accompanying video backdrop of multicultural color-guard troupes and Pride parades highlighted the song’s enduring utility as a human-rights anthem. Likewise, the early appearance of his Talking Heads–inspired 1980 single “Coming Up” acknowledged the resurgent appeal of “McCartney II” in hipster circles. And at this point in his career, “Band on the Run” album cuts like “Let Me Roll It” and “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five” are received as enthusiastically as any Beatles hit.
But compared to previous outings, the Got Back tour show felt less like an endless parade of familiar favourites and more like a jukebox-musical staging of McCartney’s life, framed by his extended “VH1 Storytellers”-style narration. A midshow mini set at the front of the stage transported us back to his pre-Beatles days with the Quarrymen, via a rendition of the first-ever Lennon-McCartney composition, “In Spite of All the Danger,” followed by the first song the Beatles ever recorded, “Love Me Do.”
For McCartney, revisiting the past also means grieving the people he’s lost along the way. The back-to-back performances of his aching acoustic Lennon tribute “Here Today” and last year’s ghostly Beatles reanimation “Now and Then” provided a melancholy counterweight to all the feel-good nostalgia. So, when Lennon appeared onscreen in Apple Records rooftop-concert mode to “sing” his parts on “I’ve Got a Feeling,” the moment felt less like a gimmick than a well-earned moment of levity and closure.
Beyond his ability to perform marathon sets with no breaks or visible signs of fatigue, McCartney’s true superpower lies in the fact that, despite being one of the greatest and wealthiest songwriters of all time, he can still pass for a humble chap. This is a guy who takes a moment to introduce not only his band toward the end of the show, but also his sound man, lighting guy and tech crew.
As he did at his previous Hamilton appearance in 2016, McCartney invited a local Scottish-music troupe — in this case, the Paris Port Dover Pipe Band — to accompany him on the highlands hymn “Mull of Kintyre,” momentarily transforming a big-ticket rock concert into a community-centre gathering.
Certainly, at this stage in his life, McCartney doesn’t need to tour. But he seems keenly aware that his ability to spread joy to so many people practically qualifies as an essential service. So even if he didn’t treat us to a seasonally appropriate “Wonderful Christmastime,” he still played rock ’n’ roll Santa Claus to a tee — a jolly old man brimming with forever-young spirit, generously sharing the gifts from his bottomless sack of classics.
