We love him yeah, yeah, yeah

SYDNEY — Watching Paul McCartney perform is to go back in time when I was young and innocent, and to grow older, along with him, and the music of the Beatles.  For a while there, I was 18 years old again at a party in San Juan, thrilled to the bone at the attention of a handsome swain with All my Loving and If I Fell playing in the background. The Beatles were only a bit older than I and they had my same discoveries about the bliss and doubts of young love.

Fifty years ago, I was a new college graduate teaching in a logging camp in a barrio in Surigao where I first heard something different from the Beatles. An American teenager who lived in the logging camp with her parents had a record of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club, which blew my mind but kept me sane living in the sticks for a year. It brought back memories of trying to teach English Literature, as required by the Department of Education, to high school students who had no knowledge of the English language!

Believe it or not, Hey Jude was someone’s idea of a courtship song. And the officiating priest at our wedding thought Let it Be was as appropriate song for the Offertory. 

Suddenly, I was married with kids dealing in grown-up matters, and real life began to happen. My children grew up watching the cartoon and singing along with Yellow Submarine. The Long and Winding Road became both my prayer and my plea when faced with loneliness and pain.

There is a Beatles song for every twist and turn of my life and watching Paul McCartney in the flesh singing my life with his words reminded me not so much of the sadness and losses, grief and pain, but more of loves, joys, and triumphs in a life grown richer by the music of four lads from Liverpool.  The classic In My Life, their tribute to the memory of friends and lovers, says it all, “In my life, I’ve loved them all.”

Now in my 70s, the Beatles are some of my oldest friends who still matter.  Which is why, when I learned that Paul McCartney would be performing in Sydney two weeks before Christmas, I gave myself a Christmas gift and bought the tickets I could afford, which were way up in the bleachers of a large coliseum.  It didn’t matter that he was just bigger than my thumb on stage (the large screens projected everything up close), what mattered was it was a reunion with someone I’ve known and loved for the most part of my life, someone who has always been there with the right tune to keep me going.

In Sydney, where he performed for two nights in sold-out concerts, I got to know Paul even better.  He was warm, familiar and comfortable, and generous with his talent, like a sibling or friend I grew up with.  I like the fact that he stands for all the right things.  I didn’t realize that he wrote Blackbird in support of the Civil Rights movement in the US. Here Today, his love song mourning the loss of John Lennon and Maybe I’m Amazed, his song for his late wife Linda, hit me right in my heart.  When he segued from A Day in the Life to Give Peace a Chance, my eyes flooded with tears.

I was touched by the tribute to his peers who have passed on: George Harrison with one of my favorite songs, Something in the Way She Moves; George Martin who, if not for him, there would be no Beatles records; and his emotional conversation in Here Today with the late John Lennon, telling him sweetly but belatedly, “I love you.”

From my perch high up in the stadium, singing out loud with Paul and the thousands of fans, many of us seniors, wearing newly bought or worn-out Beatles T-shirts from generations ago, I watched my life pass before me — my teen years, boyfriends, break-ups, class parties, new loves, break-ups, career, losses, friends, marriage, babies, health issues, grandchildren, sing-a-longs, reunions, aging.  I missed my parents, siblings, cousins, friends, and lovers.  In my life, I’ve loved them all.

When Paul sang Hey Jude, the song I was courted with, my companion and I sang with gusto, bringing back the happy times that made our children and grandchildren and a complete family possible. Truly, as the song goes, we’ve taken a sad song and made it better.   

It has been a wonderful life, far from perfect, but I can’t complain. There has been love, lots of it — and music — a lot of it thanks to Paul and his pals John, George, and Ringo.

I’m glad I experienced Paul live at this time in my life when everything has begun to make sense. The memory of this concert will stay with me for a long, long time.   

Thank you, Paul McCartney.