“Where you go to die”: Paul McCartney is never heading to Las Vegas
There’s a good chance that Paul McCartney will keep on touring until he physically can’t stand up anymore.
While there have been more than a few critics who have said he doesn’t have the same voice as he did back in his prime, that doesn’t matter when you have that many people in a stadium singing ‘Hey Jude’ at the top of their lungs whenever those opening piano chords start. There’s nothing that’s going to stop him from giving his fans what they want, but there are also more than a few gigs that Macca said were always going to be off-limits for him whenever he started making his way across the world.
Then again, it’s not like the former Beatle has that much prejudice towards any place whenever he performs. He may have had a bit more of a chip on his shoulder towards the end of The Beatles’ touring days, but even then, he was the last member of the band to suggest that maybe they shouldn’t tour anymore. The live show is where he thrived, and Wings was even further proof that he belonged onstage.
Wings Over America is still one of the finest live albums of the 1970s, and even when looking at McCartney’s later years, he usually knew how to keep things fresh whenever he put on one of his shows. He has reached a point now where he’s happy to throw in much more Beatles tunes into every one of his shows, and when you hear him performing ‘Something’ and ‘Here Today’, each show feels as much of a celebration of his old bandmates as it is about his own hits like ‘Let Em In’ and ‘Silly Love Songs’.
But most importantly, McCartney always wanted to give fans the kind of show that he was used to putting on back in the day. He didn’t want to become a lounge singer by any means, and even if he tried his hand at easy listening on Kisses on the Bottom, he didn’t want to be crooning his way through every one of his shows. It was better for him to do both ‘Helter Skelter’ and ‘Yesterday’ in the same evening, but things were bound to be a bit more complicated if he moved his act to Vegas.
There’s nothing necessarily wrong with playing shows in Vegas, but when you look at what every single residency has to offer, it’s not exactly the most exciting show in the world. That’s not to say that everyone from Celine Dion to Katy Perry to Def Leppard doesn’t put on amazing shows there, but McCartney felt that it was going to be a cold day in hell before he even entertained the idea of playing a residency.
The money would certainly be good, but McCartney felt that it would have been the kiss of death for him to spend the rest of his career playing Vegas, saying, “I do a solo segment in the middle of my shows at the moment and to do a whole show like that, I’m not sure I fancy it. It might be a little bit like too much hard work. As for playing Vegas, that’s something I’ve been trying to avoid my whole life. Definitely nothing attracts me about the idea. Vegas is where you go to die, isn’t it? It’s the elephant’s graveyard.”
That might be a little harsh, but it’s not like Macca has seen a lot of that graveyard firsthand. Everyone knows what Elvis Presley turned into when he became a strictly Vegas act, and while there is some legitimately terrific footage of him performing around that time, there’s no sense in McCartney being confined to one spot for the rest of his days as he plods away on tunes like ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’.
He was made to travel the world and share his music wherever he could, and there was no reason for him to entertain the idea of slowing down for a residency. Vegas would be glad to have him at whatever price he wanted, but McCartney’s music deserves to be heard around the world rather than stuck in a casino for the rest of his days.
