I'll try to tell you as much as I can about last night's Paul McCartney concert at Dodger Stadium. I'm super-duper mega tired, running on four hours sleep, and I've already been talking about it all day, people calling me wanting to know "so.......how was it"?
It was Freakin' Unbelievable is how was it, tied - with Pink Floyd at The Rose Bowl in 1994 and California Jam in 1974 - for the best concert I've ever seen.
I guess I'll start at the beginning and see how far I can get before I pass out. I left my apartment at about 4:15 and drove to the North Hollywood Metro Station. By 5pm, I was on the Red Line subway en route to Union Station, where we arrived at apprx 5:30. Grim had given me a tip about the Dodger Stadium shuttle bus, which departs from Union Station. The shuttle enabled me to take the subway downtown instead of trying to drive to the stadium, which would have been a fiasco and would also have broken the bank because they wanted 35 dollars for parking!
Screw that!
So thanks to Grim, all that was avoided. Instead, I spent a measly $1.75 on my subway ticket and the shuttle bus to Dodger Stadium was free. We arrived in the parking lot at about ten minutes to 6:00 - led along by a police escort motorcycle! - and after we got off the bus I walked a short distance to where the line for the loge entrance was located. This was my first trip to Dodger Stadium since 2009, but in my life I've been there perhaps 25-30 times and you kind of know the layout, even if you haven't been to the joint in a decade.
They started letting people in at 6pm, and I was inside by about 6:25, the wait being due to long lines and security checks. I now had 95 minutes to kill before showtime, a factor I don't usually enjoy but in this case it was merely a "chill out" experience simply because I was so happy to be inside the stadium before 90% of the crowd and to have arrived there relatively unscathed, on freeways, subway and shuttle.
I had time to kill, so I walked the loge level concourse, just to get a feel for being inside the stadium but also to check out the crowd and the merch prices. As I remarked to my sister Vickie, the crowd demographic was mostly people between the ages of 60 and 70 (leaning toward the latter), but a lot of Thirtysomethings too. Not too many people my own age, and very few ten year old kids like you might see at other concerts where their parents bring 'em, but lots of very small children and even an infant or two, brought along by the Thirtysomething couples. There was a smattering of Millennials also, perhaps 5 to 7 % of the crowd, most of them in the company of the older folks. Really it was like a cross section of society rather than a "genre" crowd like long haired heshers at a metal concert or Hollywood hipsters at a Radiohead show. This crowd just looked like everyone and anyone you might see walking down the sidewalk, and that figured to be the case because everyone loves The Beatles and everyone loves Paul McCartney.
I was still walking the concourse as the crowd began to trickle in. Many of the tricklers headed straight for the merch lines, which grew long very quickly. I checked the prices - 50 bucks for the shirts - and passed, but a lot of folks must have money to burn or just plain wanted a souveneir of the show. I can't blame 'em. I used to always by a shirt at every concert when they were six bucks back in 1975, and I would've bought a Paul shirt if they were maybe......hmmm......30 dollars? But fifty I just wasn't gonna do, in contrast to the hundreds of guys in the merch lines, who had no problem with such an expenditure.
The food and drink prices were similarly prohibitive : 17 bucks for a beer! 8 dollars for a Dodger Dog.
Now, I am not a cheapskate (and I had expected 9 bucks per beer or thereabouts), but now we were talkin, if you add it up, about a six pack that would run you into the 100 dollar range.
I was obviously not gonna pay 17 bucks for a beer, but I was just having fun scoping the place out and killing some time to boot.
By 7:30 I headed back to my seat, which was located directly behind Home Plate, about halfway up the loge. The pre-concert music was beginning to play: it was all Beatles and Paul oriented. At 8pm, a video scroll started to run on the screens on either side of the stage. Pictures of the young John, Paul George and Ringo were shown. This reminds me to tell you of a headline I once saw in the National Lampoon : "John Paul named Pope, George Ringo Miffed"!
I am now so exhausted, at the hour is so late, that I will have to attempt to continue this concert review tomorrow. I do feel a bit like George Ringo at the moment, miffed that I haven't finished, and in the meantime I encourage you Paul fans to Google the Los Angeles Dodger Stadium show for professionally written reviews, possibly from Variety or the Los Angeles Times.
I will still try to continue tomorrow, however.
Paul played 38 songs. That's something to consider right there, in the meantime.
Once he played "Let It Be" and "Hey Jude", my concertgoing life was complete. Even if I never saw another live show again, I would still die happy.
But don't jinx me please! (c'mon, self.....don't make such fatalistic proclamations).
You know what I mean, though.
I will try to write more tomorrow. Hopefully I won't be complete toast.
See you in the morning. Peace and Love as per Ringo. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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