A legend on the run

On 19^th December, Manchester’s M.E.N. Arena had the incredible honour to welcome Sir Paul McCartney and his extraordinary band, who performed in front of a sold-out crowd as part of his On The Run tour. It was a top-quality, emotional gig and a huge success (of course, it is Paul McCartney!), with an extensive setlist that included 39 performances, most of them being The Beatles and Wings songs, as well as a few others. But I am not here to talk about the concert itself – City Life, Chester Chronicle, LSMedia and many others have already done so.

I am here to express my point of view as a young fan of Macca. And here I speak on behalf of all us who never knew The Beatles when they still were a band. How unbelievable is it that I and many others are so in love with the members of a band that does not exist any more, a band that split up many years before I was born! It is incredible that many of us did not even get to see John Lennon alive, yet we can really feel his influence and will admire his music eternally. I guess it is things like these that show what words can never say – The Beatles brought timeless magic to the world.

And here we have one of the band’s most creative minds, kindly sharing with us his amazing talent after so many years. We should all be grateful to him for giving us the pleasure to listen live to those unique tunes again. We should all be happy to be able to see one of the greatest music geniuses alive, a legend at hand, a music relic. We should all thank him and his three friends for changing music forever.

In the past there has been some negative criticism about McCartney's mostly singing Beatles songs in his gigs, as if any other compositions created by him after the band's break-up were not as good or well-known as the former, and suggesting that he was suffering from a lack of inspiration that stopped him from releasing more albums. Sorry Paul, that is what you get for being the best – people never have enough, even if you have already penned hundreds of songs along your career. Be it for one reason or another, what cannot be denied is that all of Paul McCartney's public appearances do remind us of an incomparable musical past that, unluckily, many of us will never live.