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It's actually cloudy today - yesterday was the first sunny day in a while.
Today would be Mom's 93rd birthday. It's Sir Paul McCartney's 80th.
There was a review in the Star Ledger. It summed up the concert. Here it is. It didn't seem as long in the paper.
Paul McCartney MetLife Stadium review: A marathon jam fit for his 80th birthday
Paul McCartney performs onstage at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford on his Got Back Tour Thursday night.
Paul McCartney did not intend for his sold-out performance at MetLife Stadium to morph into a milestone birthday bash. But when 60,000 fans, most of whom have employed McCartney’s unparalleled songbook as the soundtrack to their lives, desired to wish Sir Paul a very happy birthday — he turns 80 on Saturday — they would not be silenced. Just after “Maybe I’m Amazed ” Thursday night, an echo of “Happy Birthday” sing-song rose up from the back of the stadium and swept to the front, where McCartney’s most devout supporters held up homemade birthday signs and cheered as the icon drank in the fanfare — a welcome return for his first Jersey show in five years. “Thank you, yeah, you’re right, I’ve got a birthday comin’ up,” McCartney said with feigned disgust, a don’t-remind-me sort of gag. “And I’m not trying to ignore it. But …” If that wasn’t enough, a pair of very New Jersey unexpected guests made certain the final performance of McCartney’s septuagenarian years — as well as the last night of his 25-date “Got Back” U.S. tour — would be one to remember. Near the end of McCartney’s marathon three-hour set, he said to the crowd: “We have a surprise for you. He’s a friend of mine, he’s a local boy.” The “BRUUUCE” chants began even before Bruce Springsteen emerged from the wings, guitar in hand.
“Happy Birthday, Paul!” Springsteen shouted. “Here’s to 80 more years of ‘Glory Days.’”
You can perhaps guess what came next: A rousing, duet rendition of Springsteen’s 1984 hit “Glory Days,” with Bruce and Paul trading vocals as McCartney’s tight seven-piece band played the E Street role. To see the two rock luminaries on stage at once, and consider their dazzling collective resume was overwhelming, surely a once-in-a-lifetime moment for many in attendance (though the pair have shared the stage before, most recently at Madison Square Garden in 2017). Springsteen, 72, remained on stage for another song, jamming a propulsive version of the Beatles tune “I Wanna Be Your Man” before strolling off. About 20 minutes later, during McCartney’s encore and just as he was introducing the apt Beatles cut “Birthday,” a mop of silver, feathered hair appeared on the side stage, unbeknownst to Paul. “I know it’s somebody’s birthday,” Jon Bon Jovi interrupted, a bundle of balloons in one hand, a microphone in the other, his million-dollar grin plastered on the 50-foot-tall video screens. “Who’s that?” McCartney wondered, before turning around to see the Jersey rock star approaching. And so the sold-out crowd sang “Happy Birthday” again, this time with Bon Jovi on lead. After the song was over, Bon Jovi attempted to release the balloons to the sky. They got caught in the rafters and he walked off stage. Beyond the surprises, McCartney’s show surged as an emphatic cross-section of the most significant pop songwriting career in music history — that’s no small claim, but who would argue? While MetLife Stadium looms as New Jersey’s largest venue by far, McCartney managed to shrink the cavernous space with stories from the past, many of which he’s told on past tours. After the Wings cut “Let Me Roll It” was punctuated with what’s now a requisite outro of Jimi Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady,” McCartney retold the tale of seeing Hendrix in London, watching him cover “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band ” and send his guitar wildly out of tune with his whammy bar. Hendrix asked Eric Clapton from the crowd if he’d come on stage to retune the guitar. Clapton said no. And before McCartney’s oldest tune of the night, “In Spite of All the Danger,” recorded with his proto-Beatles outfit The Quarrymen in 1958, he recounted how the song’s recording cost him and his bandmates five pounds total — one pound each. Since they shared in the cost, each member was allowed to keep the recording’s single copy for a couple weeks, but John “Duff” Lowe kept it for 20 years. “Then he sold it back to us, at a considerable profit,” McCartney quipped. Even as much of the monstrous set comprised songs McCartney has performed for nearly 60 years, there remained a great deal of wonder and joy in his playing — it truly never seems to get old, even as he strums through “Can’t Buy Me Love ” or “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da ” for what may legitimately be the thousandth time. Then again, as he stood centerstage, beaming as the encompassing crowd belted the “na-na-na’s” of “Hey Jude,” how could he grow tired of such human electricity? What feeling could possibly be greater? "Hey Jude " was preceded, as it usually is, by an incendiary version of “Live and Let Die,” complete with blazing pyrotechnics and fireworks as it began to rain; classic rock meets heavy-metal circus. But then there were the more modest moments, like McCartney seated at his baby grand piano, dedicating “My Valentine ” to his wife Nancy — an alumna of John P. Stevens High School in Edison — who was in the audience Thursday. And for “Blackbird,” McCartney performed solo on acoustic guitar, as a raised platform lifted him three stories high. “How many of you tried to learn ‘Blackbird,’?” McCartney joked, as it’s a popular tune for beginner musicians. “And you all got it wrong!” Still on the high riser, McCartney followed with 1982′s “Here Today,” noting how he wrote it as a letter after John Lennon’s murder in 1980, adding it contains “some sentiments I never got to express.” McCartney’s lasting tether to Lennon reprised during the encore, when a video of Lennon, with his vocals isolated from a portion of Peter Jackson’s “Get Back” docu-series released last year, was used as a virtual All in all, it was an authoritative, engrossing and playful night of hits and occasional deeper cuts from an artist who at 79 shows no signs of slowing. Normally, with acts of this age, I speculate on when a farewell tour might come, but for McCartney and the love he clearly still shares for the stage, I cannot fathom a long goodbye. Though his vocal performance tends to now waver in moments, his spirit remains too strong.
“Will you still need me … when I’m sixty-four” he first sang in 1967.
We’ll need him as long as he’s able.
He is right - I will remember this concert for a long time. Happy Birthday, Paul.
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