The idea Paul McCartney almost borrowed from “bands like Phish”
When you go to see your favourite bands or artists perform live, you’ll usually want to hear their greatest hits alongside a smattering of deep cuts and perhaps a few new numbers.
Ultimately, this level of variety is what makes a live show special, and being reminded of all of the reasons why you fell in love with a particular artist’s work in the first place is a source of happiness you can’t put a price on. Well, the promoter can, but that’s not the point; the sense of satisfaction that you receive in return is something that will live with you forever.
That is, unless the band chooses to do things their own way. When a band ventures into self-indulgent territory, it can end up being more a test of endurance rather than something you can derive any pleasure from, and if they’re filling the entire set with untested tracks that the audience aren’t quite in the mood for, or simply going through the motions performing songs that they don’t have the heart to retire, then the mood sours significantly.
You’ve made all of the effort to see them perform, so why would they be doing it all for themselves rather than serving you, the fan, with everything that they demand of you from a showstopping performance? As LCD Soundsystem once cheekily named their live DVD, the general rule is that a band should “shut up and play the hits”.
However, the one exception to this is when an artist chooses to play a classic album in its entirety. In this instance, you at least know what’s coming next, and if it’s an album you’ve got a particular connection to or that is regarded as a stone-cold classic, then it’s remarkable to witness them doing it in a live context from front to back, potentially with embellishments that were never there on the original record.
Paul McCartney, whether with The Beatles, Wings or as a solo artist, has contributed to plenty of classic albums that it would be incredible to hear in full, but he’s never quite been sure of whether this would be an approach he’d be comfortable committing to in a live context.
When asked in 2009 during an interview for fansite, The Paul McCartney Project, whether he’d ever pay consideration to the idea of performing an album like Wings’ Band on the Run or one of his newer solo releases, Memory Almost Full, in their entirety, he revealed that hearing about one particular example almost tempted him into doing it, but that he ultimately decided against it.
“I have thought about doing that after reading about other bands like Phish doing the whole of The White Album, which I think they once did,” he revealed. “I just wonder if it might be a tad boring, but you never know, it’s certainly a nice idea, and the fun would be choosing which album to do. I think the less obvious albums would be more fun.”
Of course, there are simply too many hits that he’d have to cut out if he did this, but then again, nobody is going to turn their nose up at the prospect of hearing a Band on the Run full album performance. If it was a lesser-known one, on the other hand, maybe that would be a different story.
