In a knock one off my bucket list moment, there I was, almost a year ago, being summoned by Paul to sing “Hey Jude” with him as one of the “ladies”.
Paul was the bassist in The Beatles, who performed on The Ed Sullivan show in New York on my 2nd birthday on Feb 9, 1964.
The band gobsmacked North America with their music, songs, and being themselves, and became one of the best rock groups of all time.
The first time Paul performed in Vancouver, was with The Beatles at the former Empire Stadium in August 1964.
And 48 years later, in 2012, he finally returned to Vancouver to sing Hey Jude with me.
I Want to Hold Your Hand was the first Beatles’ song I heard. My mom and I would sing it while holding hands on our way to the grocery store. I was 4.
The first dance I learned was the twist, inspired by their song Twist and Shout. I remember twisting my hips from side to side when the song played on the radio. I was 5.
My husband is a huge Beatle fan, so in 1984, we visited Liverpool, birthplace of The Beatles. Our tour stopped at the childhood homes of George, Ringo, John and Paul, and the barber shop in the song Penny Lane and went to Strawberry Fields.
We crossed the famous crosswalk in Abbey Road in London, went to EMI House where the Beatles recorded, and sat on the steps of Paul’s MPL Studios like a couple of apple scruffs waiting to see Paul, to no avail.
In 1987, Paul announced a concert at The Kingdome in Seattle, and my husband and me, and another couple drove to Seattle to see him. Paul’s charisma shrinks the crowd, and draws you closer to him, turning a football field into an intimate club. The place radiated with love for the man. It was the best concert I had seen… up to that point.
When Paul announced his Vancouver concert in 2012, I was fortunate to get 4 floor seats for my husband, myself, and two of our sons; our other son was away playing hockey.
As we drove into downtown Vancouver on the night of the concert, the outside of the beautiful BC Place Stadium was wrapped in a Union Jack of moving colored lights, with tens of thousands of fans inside, who had waited patiently for years for Paul’s return.
The 71 year-old rocker dazzled us with a non-stop, 3 hour parade of timeless classics. He poured out his musical love to the crowd, filling the air with the soundtrack of our lives.
From the first song, Paul made a personal connection with us. Then, after he sang a beautiful acoustic version of Blackbird, he said “put up your hand if you’ve tried to play Blackbird with it’s difficult chord changes”, and 20,000 people put up their hand. I felt like he was talking to me, having spent hours trying to make the difficult chord changes for that song on my guitar.
Then the highlight of the night was when he asked me to sing “Hey Jude”, as one of the ladies. He said I sounded “so sweet”, and gave me a hug from the stage (see attached you tube video). My youngest son filmed the video, and he pans the camera to his Dad on the left, who is in a trance like state as Paul has asked him to sing “Hey Jude” with the “fellas”, as Paul calls them.
At the end of the second encore to wrap up the show, Paul sings “The End”:
AND IN THE END
THE LOVE YOU TAKE
IS EQUAL TO
THE LOVE YOU MAKE.
A fan posted about “The End” “To make a 2 minute song with 4 lines in it and having the most powerful message in those four lines you have to be the best band in the world!”
That four line song became an anthem to a generation, and that 3 hour concert, which left the audience in awe, had to be the best concert in the world.
photo credit – Union Jack News