It’s generally metal bands that use fire on stage: James Hatfield from Metallica burned his face with it once. The heat is always a surprise: from Row U on the floor of London’s O2 Arena, the skin turns crisp at the multiple jets of flame which shoot rhythmically in time to the high, stabby riff of “Live and Let Die”. There are fireworks, too – crack crack crack! – as the musical chaos builds and McCartney cranks the piano like the Wizard of Oz. There is little you can say, watching someone like this on stage these days, apart from “they’ve still got it” – but there is something particularly mystifying in seeing an 82 year-old doing a three hour set. McCartney carries the air of immortality: in his body – in the flat stomach, the perfectly tailored clothes (he’s an expert in layers) and the six colourful bracelets on his wrist – and in the powerful insouciance with which he surveys his grand past. Statements range from the banal (“I used to see Jimi in the sixties in London… great guitar player”) to the vivid: “Can you do a Beatles scream? That’s it. Imagine trying to play through that.”
Everything he does and says is related to the great life but with a shrug. He picks lightly and humorously across the stage, like he’s trying not to burst bubbles with his toes; he makes that little “wooo” with his o-like mouth, if he doesn’t have anything more specific to say. The same apparent effortlessness powers his set, where 33 songs come short and fast as bullets; yet we get the luxury treatment, too: “Wonderful Christmas Time” features a real “choir of children” and fake snow falling from the ceiling. There is only one misfire, as I recall: the plodding “My Valentine”, written for his “missus” Nancy, and accompanied by a video of Johnny Depp doing sign language. Johnny, whom no rocker has yet realised doesn’t make them look good! Many take the opportunity to rest in their seats at this point, including the woman in front of me who has a small personal plackard explaining she has travelled 5000 miles from South Africa for the gig.
There was a moment, about ten years ago, where you often heard that McCartney’s voice was shot. These days, as with Bob Dylan, the shotness just adds to the atmospherics. There is wondrous energy in being in the same room as him, to hear songs that will exist, in new forms, in the future, still being played by the person who wrote them. And the McCartney insouciance is the cherry on the Christmas cake: even his 1982 love letter to Lennon, “Here Today”, sounds dashed off.
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