Live Review: Paul McCartney

Three hours of Paul McCartney. Sounds like a long time? Sounds like enough time. Tonight's performance barely scratched the surface of this extraordinary man's extraordinary career.

With a well-oiled machine of a band behind him, McCartney came out swinging and didn't let up for the rest of the show. Small children were glassy-eyed with fatigue after song ten. His contemporaries, some who had seen him perform in Sydney on his first tour here with The Beatles in 1964, had to have a little sit down six songs in. And still Macca played and crooned, wailed and regaled with stories of Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, Georges Formby, Martin and Harrison and did not flag once.

In amongst the 40 songs spanning 60 years, he dusted off the first song The Quarrymen recorded, In Spite of All the Danger. He began Maybe I'm Amazed, fumbled the words and the chords, stopped it, joked about it and started it again with as much passion as the original recording from 1970.

John Lennon and George Harrison were both lauded with a sparsely beautiful Here Today and a quirky, ukulele intro for Something.

Can't Buy Me Love, Love Me Do and Eleanor Rigby were trotted out and sat alongside newer members of the canon FourFiveSeconds, My Valentine and Queenie Eye seamlessly, with Live And Let Die, Junior's Farm and Band On The Run nestled alongside for good measure.

The encore alone was eight songs long and included an unexpectedly moving Mull Of Kintyre featuring Sydney's own Governor Macquarie Memorial Marching Band on bagpipes and drums, ten-year-old drummer Jackson being a particular highlight. Helter Skelter brought the roof down with its ferocity and with Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight and The End to close the night it didn't matter what hadn't been played.

Because it is true:

In the end
The love you take
Is equal to
The love you make.