San Antonio got the rare chance Saturday night to see a living Beatle when Sir Paul McCartney graced the stage of the Alamodome, the venue he christened back in 1993.
During a three-hour set with no opener, McCartney drew from every era of his career, from pre-Beatles material through the golden age of the Fab Four to Wings and his solo work.
Crowds thronged to the downtown stadium, spilling through its doors and overtaking the seemingly understaffed venue as if Beatlemania had never ended.
McCartney, performing on his iconic Höfner 500/1 violin bass, started the set with Beatles classic “Help,” a song he hasn’t played live in 35 years.
As the night unfolded, the sea of people sang along to almost every word of McCartney’s best known hits. After all, the Beatles are practically a part of our DNA.
Popular Fab Four tracks featured in the set included “Hey Jude,” “Drive My Car,” “Got to Get You Into My Life,” “Get Back,” “Let it Be,” “Love Me Do,” “Hey Jude” and “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” among others.
The show was a masterclass in dynamics. During a high point, thundering pyrotechnics and fireworks matched the drama of the Wings epic “Live and Let Die.” Yet the crowd was equally awed by the hushed, intimate moment when McCartney played the Beatles’ “Blackbird” alone with his acoustic guitar as the platform on which he stood lifted up from the stage.
“Is this the biggest party in San Antonio tonight? I think so!” McCartney said, and he was probably right.
It was the Got Back tour, and McCartney had finally gotten back to San Antonio.
The Beatles never played the Alamo City. As a solo artist, McCartney has, but not since a 2014 benefit concert for the then-brand-new Tobin Center. Prior to that, he performed the inaugural concert at the Alamodome more than three decades ago.
Throughout the set, McCartney touched on social commentary that hinted at the current day’s political strife. During the Sgt. Pepper’s track “Getting Better,” a post-apocalyptic landscape flashed onscreen behind him, showing a toppled Statue of Liberty. While McCartney sang the reassuring refrain “it’s getting better all the time,” flowers began to bloom on the scorched wasteland behind him, sending a clear and poignant message of hope for America’s future.
During “Let ‘Em In,” a song that references Martin Luther King Jr., the screen onstage featured Black marching bands and, at one point, someone waving a Pride flag. “Lady Madonna,” a jangle-pop classic written primarily by McCartney, featured activist Greta Thunberg onscreen.
McCartney also told the story of when the Beatles played Jacksonville, Florida, in 1964 and the promoter informed them the audience would be segregated.
“Well, that’s just stupid,” McCartney recalls the band saying, adding that the group refused to play under such conditions. It became the first major integrated concert in the Southeast.
Wings songs featured in the set included “Band on the Run,” “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five,” “Let Me Roll It,” “Letting Go” and “Jet.” McCartney solo classics included “Maybe I’m Amazed,” “Come On To Me” and the romantic ballad “My Valentine,” which featured Natalie Portman and Johnny Depp doing American Sign Language on the screen behind him.
Love was in the air, and it wasn’t just the ballads. At one point, a newly wed couple held a sign near the front that said “Marry Us Paul!”
“But I’m already married,” the Beatle replied.
A few songs later, the couple exchanged rings with McCartney’s blessing on stage in front of the crowd of close to 60,000 people.
As a rare treat in the set, McCartney reached all the way back to the beginning of his 60-year career, performing the first song Lennon, McCartney and guitarist George Harrison ever recorded together — before they even called themselves The Beatles. This was “In Spite of All the Danger” by skiffle group The Quarrymen, who changed their name several times, including to Johnny and the Moondogs, Japage 3 and Long John and the Silver Beatles before finally arriving at The Beatles.
Seven other band members joined McCartney for the Alamodome show, including a full brass section. The Beatle hopped from bass to electric guitar, acoustic and piano, all while delivering the soulful high vocal notes for which he’s long been known. Hopping to yet another instrument, McCartney even reimagined the Beatles classic “Something” as a ditty on ukulele. Another brief interlude honored the late guitar god Jimi Hendrix with a rendition of “Foxy Lady.”
Slightly detracting from the evening was the onslaught of AI generative art on the screen behind him, depicting the Beatles artificially brought back to life rather than drawing from a deep well of unadulterated archival footage, which would have better suited the raw authenticity of the lyrics. AI art even included bizarre Salvador Dalí-esque camels with the faces of the Beatles, and threatened to pull us out of our journey back in time.
After a brief disappearance ahead of the encore, the band reemerged, each holding a flag — those of Great Britain, the U.S., Texas and the Progress Pride flag, a more inclusive update on the rainbow.
The encore was a rapid-fire collection of more Beatles classics — “I’ve Got a Feeling” with a reprise of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” the hard rockin’ “Helter Skelter,” “Golden Slumbers” and “Carry That Weight,” fittingly closing out with “The End.”
Photos by Jaime Monzon.
