The shows Paul McCartney said were his “best playing”
It was a sad day for everyone when The Beatles decided that it was time for them to leave the road for good.
While this would lead to them making the best records that anyone ever spat out in the 1960s, the rush of adrenaline that came with seeing the Fab Four playing together was about to become a thing of the past, and even if the Rooftop Concert put a bow of their career, it’s not like they were itching to play massive shows again. But if you were to ask Paul McCartney, most of their best shows were already behind them.
Then again, playing in the studio and playing on stage are always going to be two vastly different art forms. As much as people have those nerves whenever they have the spotlight on them, the biggest hurdle to get over in rock and roll is being able to translate all the overdubs into one four or five-piece band, and there’s bound to be some compromise along the way if people don’t have the right amount of personnel onstage.
But even by the standards of most rock and roll acts, The Beatles were no slouches whenever they performed live. You have to give kudos to them for even attempting to play anything when they couldn’t hear themselves half the time, but when listening back to their performances at Shea Stadium, they still sound impressively tight for a group that’s musically flying blind for over half of their set.
And while their final official performance should be considered one of their finest hours, it’s not like they were going to play the most complicated stuff in the world. The whole record was about them getting back to their roots, and even if they had some help from Billy Preston, it was about them trying to get back to music that was more simple than trying to compete with what the other art rockers were doing at the time.
If anything, that period was a glimpse into what they sounded like back in their days as a garage band. They never played out of a garage in their lives, but when looking at their gigs in Hamburg and their time sweating it out in the Cavern Club, they got to be the kind of rough and tumble rock and roll band that seemed to be scrubbed out of them when Brian Epstein came on board and cleaned them up.
It wasn’t the most professional thing in the world, but even when working with Wings, Macca had to admit that there was nothing that compared to those shows at the Cavern, saying, “My best playing days were at the Cavern lunchtime sessions. We’d go onstage with a cheese roll and a cigarette and we felt we had really something going on. The amps used to fuse and we’d stop and sing a Sunblest Bread commercial while they were repaired.”
That kind of spontaneity might make any other artist break out in a cold sweat, but the fact that the Fabs could roll with it only proved why they were natural entertainers. They knew that there was a chance that anything could go wrong with one of their instruments, and instead of sitting around and looking at their shoes the rest of time, it was better for them to go off on a tangent and get everyone hyped up without any kind chords being played.
And when listening to how McCartney continues to get crowds singing along to the chorus of ‘Hey Jude’ without anyone playing instruments, it’s clear that those musical chops have never gone away. From day one, the band was looking to give their audiences a good time, and even if all they had was a novelty guitar and a couple of cheap microphones,they were going to give you a show to remember in their early days.
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