" August 14, 2013 -- Edmonton Journal
St. Albert musician graduated from Liverpool Performing Arts school
St. Albert musician Robert Mulder, fourth from left, with Sir Paul McCartney
after a songwriting session at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts
The first time you meet Paul McCartney, there are a few things St. Albert musician Robert Mulder wants you to know.
1) You'll be nervous, but it's only natural. McCartney, after all, is revered by tens of millions of adoring Beatles fans.
2) Sir Paul appears different in person than he does onstage. He's more soft-spoken - kind of like a friendly uncle.
3) The experience will seem surreal.
Three months later, Mulder is still awed by the rare opportunity he was granted: a half-hour, one-on-one mentoring session with the rock 'n' roll legend himself. It's one of the major perks of studying at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, the university co-founded by McCartney in 1996.
"To be honest, it was kind of hard to look at him while I was playing these songs that I had spent so long trying to practise," Mulder says on the phone from Liverpool. "To hear him singing along and tapping his foot was amazing and something I'm never going to forget."
The session was "short, but very intense," says the 22-year-old. Besides getting feedback on his songs and the music video for his single, Mulder was able to chat with McCartney for about 15 minutes. And what exactly does one talk about with Sir Paul?
"I spent some time discussing with him just how to deal with fans, how to deal with paparazzi, how to deal with having a family and when you're on the road and just trying to balance everything out," Mulder says. "I think I was certainly nervous, but I think I was just more preoccupied with my song choice and what I was going to play for him."
And there's more. Mulder encountered McCartney a second time at his graduation ceremony in July. The two shook hands and quickly chatted onstage before McCartney decorated him with a commemorative pin.
But his two run-ins with McCartney aren't the only things Mulder is pinching himself about. His acceptance into the Liverpool Institute was a feat of its own - and highlights the singer-songwriter's potential.
Only four per cent of those who apply are accepted at the institute, once the site of McCartney's high school. But Mulder hedged his bets, wanting to focus on songwriting rather than the traditional musical education offered in Canadian universities (including Grant MacEwan University, which the Liverpool Institute representatives tour each year). Mulder was one of two students not enrolled at Grant MacEwan to gain admission to the institute.
It turns out that flying overseas and living in a foreign setting was the kick-start Mulder needed to pen his songs.
"I think it's hard to write stuff of substance without having really lived. And when I say lived, without having really made a lot of blunders and tried different things out.
"From my personal experience, it's very hard to write when things are going well and when you've got a bit of a plateau. I think my ideas are more visceral when it comes from a really strong emotion, and usually those emotions come from some sort of distress."
He is expanding those songwriting skills through his band, HighFields, which blends folk, rock and indie alternative music. He draws on the diversity of its members, who hail from South Africa, Singapore and Norway. They've recently released a single called The Chase (Oh Lord!), which has received airplay on BBC Radio 1 and was nominated for a Liverpool Music Award.
Although he's heading back to Edmonton this month, Mulder certainly won't be abandoning his English connection. He plans to apply for a visa to revisit the country that has birthed his career, and his idol's.
"England is a very small country and it's a small music scene and things get around fast. I'm just trying to bridge the two cultures and spread who I am and what I'm doing with as many people as possible."
And through it all, Mulder hopes to get by with a little help from his friend.
"When I meet Paul again, I'm not sure. It's a small enough industry that I'm sure we'll cross paths again. And hopefully, the next time, I'll have something more to show."
CONCERT SETLIST (Winnipeg) August 12, 2013
1. Eight Days A Week
2. Junior's Farm
3. All My Loving
4. Listen To What The Man Said
5. Let Me Roll It/Foxy Lady coda
6. Paperback Writer
7. My Valentine
8. Nineteen Hundred And Eighty-Five
9. The Long And Winding Road
10. Maybe I'm Amazed
11. I've Just Seen A Face
12. We Can Work It Out
13. Another Day
14. And I Love Her
15. Blackbird
16. Here Today
17. Your Mother Should Know
18. Lady Madonna
19. All Together Now
20. Lovely Rita
21. Mrs. Vandebilt
22. Eleanor Rigby
23. Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!
24. Something
25. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
26. Band On The Run
27. Back In The USSR
28. Let It Be
29. Live And Let Die
30. Hey Jude
Encore One
31. Day Tripper
32. Hi Hi Hi
33. Get Back
Encore Two
34. Yesterday
35. Mull Of Kintrye (with Winnipeg Police Pipe Band)
36. Helter Skelter
37. Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End
VIDEO - Paul leaves hotel in Winnipeg
VIDEO - CBC News clip "Eight Days A Week"
VIDEO - WFPtv - News clip "All My Loving"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
August 14, 2013 -- Brandon Sun (Canada)
McCartney's stage simple, songs sensational (Winnipeg)
'BLACKBIRD singing in the dead of night," Paul McCartney croons, and his voice wavers high and thin as darkness falls on Investors Group Field.
The man is rising skyward now, about 90 minutes into this stop on the Out There tour that stretches to almost three hours, he knows these tickets didn't come cheap. He is standing on a platform that rises slowly away from the front of the stage, coming to rest about 20 feet above the fans on the floor. The star is alone, for this one, just a legend and his guitar. Its strings quiver and glint as they catch just enough of the light.
From the concourse, if you squint a little, you can still see the outline of a young man with a mop-top boppin' on a Rickenbacker, but only faintly. Sir Paul has survived to grow past that, the shadow of his legend chased longer by the light of these golden years. He is timeless, which does not mean ageless. He is 71 years old.
"You were only waiting for this moment to be free..."
Oh, you know, Winnipeg has been waiting, we haven't seen him for 20 years. The promoter of that last show is now the mayor of Winnipeg, but the gig "seems like yesterday," McCartney will say. And doesn't everyone here believe in that?
Pause the record, spin it backward, start it again at 6:38 p.m. Sound check at Investors Group Field ran late, the opening of the gates was delayed, and so great masses of people shuffle in streams that snake down Chancellor Matheson Drive, that radiate over plots of grass that dot the university site, that rest against the hoods of cars in the parking lots beyond.
Merchandise tents have sprung up even outside the stadium, and they are thronged with lines. In these lines, fans clutch cash, point furiously at any of two dozen T-shirt designs. They are young men with beards and Lennon glasses and gnarled guitarist fingers. They are silver-haired women in denim jackets and heavy gold necklaces. They are men in McCartney shirts from the 1990s, 1980s, before, maybe they pulled it out of a keepsake drawer where it was once carefully folded and stored.
Most of all, they are here huddled in groups that span generations, Baby Boom grown-ups laughing giddy with their twentysomething sons and daughters. They have lived in McCartney's music together, passed it down like the family cabin, so warm when you breathe it in and sweet with last decade's smoke, and so familiar. And the sunrise still floods its windows, though they are old.
"Bon soir, monsieurs et madames," McCartney says, just over seven minutes in, the show began precisely at 8:30 p.m. On the dot as they say, on the nose. "Oh, hi guys. I think we're going to have a little bit of fun here this evening."
So that's it then, just a gathering of a man and his 31,200 closest friends. There was no opening act. When it was time for the show to start, McCartney just walked onstage, his band following behind. He was draped in a long navy jacket and black trousers, with the heels of his boots peeking beneath the hem.
He held up his hand, issued a wave typically seen on kings, and then he stepped to the microphone and he started to sing. We all started to sing. "Hold me, love me," he went, we went, all the people in this brushed silver shell went. "...Eight days a week."
The experience is styled in bright simplicity. There is little onstage that isn't necessary for McCartney and his band to perform, just video screens looming behind and beside them. When McCartney tosses off his navy jacket about 15 minutes in, he quips that it's the only costume change in the show, somewhere in the floor seats a man applauds. "Yes, yes, let the music speak for itself," the fan calls.
Even if McCartney had thought to dress flashy -- well, there is no time for that. The music flows over Investors Group Field so quickly, it streams up over the canopy and scampers off into the sunset, out to where people without tickets are hanging on the hoods of their cars.
"This song is for the Wings fans," or "I wrote this for my wife, Nancy." Or, at one point, "I wrote this song for Linda."
We are at the latter now, the 10th song in this marathon show, and McCartney's fingers are dancing over grand piano keys. Maybe I'm Amazed is a love song, but in the climax his forever boyish voice howls, hoarse with memory of the love who died in 1998.
The tour, it layers songs on songs and sing-alongs on even more familiar ones. When the darkness fully descends, lights are dancing over McCartney's head, and he's rocking now, shoulders shaking with each strum and riff and melody. He picks up a ukulele. "George Harrison was a really good ukulele player," McCartney says, and the crowd issues up a memorial cheer. "Actually, he gave me this ukulele."
The song was Something, and McCartney played it then, and the crowd shimmied and swayed and a moment later things really got going, as one of the most famous of old Beatles bops started up and the party began in earnest. Everyone sang, again, and the place came alive.
"Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on..."
And the show goes on. The main set closed on Hey Jude, the anthem of every generation since it was written, and then there was one encore, and then a second: he opened that one with Yesterday, just McCartney and his guitar and his voice a jewel here, and the crowd is still singing.
Then he pauses to bring a little something special: he likes playing in Canada, he says, because of all the Scottish people here. And as his band launches into the boozy Celtic rhythms of Mull of Kintyre, the entire Winnipeg Police Service pipe band marches out onstage, drums booming and pipes piercing the air, this seems a treat for the Winnipeg show.
When they finish, they bow, and tens of thousands of people can't stop cheering. "We're getting the feeling you want to keep rocking," McCartney says with a wink, and slams into the chords of Helter Skelter, riding its rawness to take the show home.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
August 14, 2013 -- Winnipeg Free Press (Canada)
Winnipeg pipe band surprises by taking stage with McCartney
Paul McCartney dazzled a sold-out crowd of 31,200 fans at Investors Group Field with a touch of Winnipeg flavor on Monday night. The Winnipeg Police Pipe Band joined McCartney for a song late into his set.
During McCartney's second encore, the Winnipeg Police Pipe Band joined the 71-year-old Beatle on stage to perform Wings' song Mull of Kintyre. The members stood around Sir Paul and his band as they performed the song during the surprise appearance.
Promoters of the show hinted there would be some kind of local connection during McCartney's nearly three-hour set which included over 30 songs.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
August 14, 2013 -- Winnipeg Free Press (Canada)
Sir Paul given Key to City
Sir Paul McCartney is the latest recipient of the Key to the City. The 71-year-old Beatle received the key from Mayor Sam Katz before taking the stage at sold-out Investors Group Field on Monday night.
"We are thrilled to present Sir Paul with the Key to the City," said Mayor Katz. "Not only have his songs touched generations of music fans, his many years of working with charitable organizations has set a tremendous example of caring and humanity for us all."
McCartney is considered one of the world's most successful musicians of all time. On top of his success as an artist, McCartney is also known for his philanthropy and activism working with organizations to bring awareness to animal rights, vegetarianism, musical therapy and education, and participating in benefit concerts.
In 1997, McCartney received his knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II for his service to the music industry.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
August 14, 2013 -- News Talk 980 CJME (Canada)
McCartney crew can't eat meat while preparing for show
Rocker requests only vegetarian meals during set-up
A whole lot of burly stage workers at Mosaic Stadium (Regina, Canada) are on a strict diet this week, thanks to Paul McCartney.
The former Beatle and rock legend is playing an outdoor show at the stadium Wednesday night. McCartney has long been known as a staunch vegan and a vehement supporter of animal rights, even travelling with his wife to northern Canada to protest seal hunting practices in 2006.
As part of the deal to bring McCartney here everyone who is working on the staging for the show is getting a taste of how he lives -- literally. Evraz Place Vice-President Neil Donnelly says the workers are being served vegetarian meals at Sir Paul's order.
"I think the bigger you get the more you want things done your way," he concedes. "So if it means traveling with your own folks to take care of that they can do that."
Donnelly says so far the workers have enjoyed the meals.
"Obviously there's a few jokes flying around about people ordering pizza," he laughs.
An Evraz executive later clarified that the Mosaic concessions will still be selling their standard fare, including meat products, though that hasn't been the case in the past at some venues.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
August 14, 2013 -- Macca Report News
Outside Lands Music Festival - August 9, 2013 - Golden Gate Park - San Francisco
CONCERT SETLIST - Outside Lands Music Festival - August 9, 2013 - Golden Gate Park - San Francisco
1. Eight Days A Week
2. Junior's Farm
3. Magical Mystery Tour
4. Listen To What The Man Said
5. Let Me Roll It/Foxy Lady coda
6. Paperback Writer
7. My Valentine
8. Nineteen Hundred And Eighty-Five
9. The Long And Winding Road
10. Maybe I'm Amazed
11. I've Just Seen A Face
12. San Francisco Bay Blues (dedicates it to Shelley Lazar)
13. We Can Work It Out
14. Another Day
15. And I Love Her
16. Blackbird
17. Here Today
18. Your Mother Should Know
19. Lady Madonna
20. All Together Now
21. Lovely Rita
22. Mrs. Vandebilt
23. Eleanor Rigby
24. Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!
25. Something
26. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
27. Band On The Run
28. Back In The USSR
29. Let It Be
30. Live And Let Die
31. Hey Jude
Encore One
32. Day Tripper
33. Hi Hi Hi
34. Get Back
Encore Two
35. Yesterday (with Kronos Quartet)
36. Helter Skelter
37. Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End
OUTSIDE LANDS CONCERT REVIEW by Chani, Macca Reporter
Seeing Paul at a music festival was worth spending money for the ticket and facing public transportation challenges. One might worry that Paul's performance wouldn't be the same as one of his own personal concerts, which I have been lucky to attend in the past. It wasn't. This performance showcased an incredible energy from Paul that I have not experienced before.
When he entered the stage singing "Eight Days a Week", the crowd just gasped in awe and yelled in a deafening roar. There were so many people seeing him for the first time. The night was overcast and there was a forest of trees surrounding the crowd. Lights and lazers from the stage lit the sky and the trees with shades of pinks, purples and turquoise blues. It was definitely a Magical Mystery Tour!
Paul asked during the concert how many lived in San Francisco, how many lived in America, but not in San Francisco, and how many didn't live in America. He welcomed the many international people in the crowd.
Three songs were added that he hadn't sang at concerts in San Francisco before and a few tunes that drew the crowd in to sing along with him and his band. People were singing at the top of their lungs.
Macca looked young and had endless energy. He played for almost three hours and the crowd was transfixed listening to The Beatles, Wings, and songs from his solo catalog of music. It was definitely the best I have seen him perform and no doubt a new experience for him as well. For the crowd it was "Festival Paul". We were all together having a great party at a once in a lifetime concert with Paul.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
August 13, 2013 -- San Francisco Weekly
Paul McCartney Shines at Outside Lands, 8/9/13
Outside Lands Festival
Better than: Breakfast with the Beatles
At Golden Gate Park, tens of thousands of people sang along to songs that are, in pop terms, ancient. The words, the melodies, and the voice carrying them arrived like a burst of long-captive air -- familiar, yet revelatory. Soul-stirring, even. These were Beatles songs, sung by Paul McCartney, who for the first night of Outside Lands 2013 took a sold-out San Francisco audience back to one of pop music's original supernovas, and let us bask in its incredible warmth for the best part of three hours.
At 71, Sir Paul can still sing, still play, and still charm (as two lucky, sign-waving ladies found out -- more on that later); just imagine impeccable, straightforward versions of "Hey Jude," "Back in the U.S.S.R.," "Daytripper," "Let It Be," "Get Back," "Eleanor Rigby," "Yesterday," "Something," "Blackbird," "Lady Madonna," "Helter Skelter," a bunch more Beatles and solo favorites, and "Live and Let Die" punctuated by gratuitous fireworks. Imagine that, and you've got a decent approximation of how it went.
So the question of whether or not it was a "good" show almost doesn't apply -- Paul McCartney playing Beatles songs was good in a way that no other show could be. (Inevitable nitpicking aside, of course.)
It is both tragic and convenient that the Beatles singer we're left with is the puppy dog-eyed, flirtatious, entertainer side of the leading duo. McCartney excels at the festival kind of spectacle, chatting up a polo field of probably more than thirty thousand people as if it were a half dozen friends in his living room. ("This is so cool, I've gotta just take a minute to drink it all in for myself, okay?," he asked early in the set, as if we might say no.) He is such a good showman that you forget he's being a showman.
His musical feel-good moments were absurdly effective. "Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da" felt like a zillion adults shouting along to the soundtrack of their very first memory formation. (I think it's a stupid song, and yet even I couldn't help but sing along and shimmy to it.) His "Helter Skelter" was a slow-mo strafe of heavy-blues gunfire, loose and shambolic and yet perfectly targeted -- one of the very best of the night. "Band on the Run" fought against Wings skeptics with crisp, proggy turns, before settling into that golden lope we all know too well. Sir Paul began unfolding George Harrison's No. 1 hit "Something" with a ukulele, then let his band fall into place one instrument at a time, building up to a bittersweet guitar solo that Rusty Anderson ladled out faithfully. A thundering version of Wings' "Let Me Roll It" melted into a loose jam on the "Foxy Lady" riff, and ended with a story about Jimi Hendrix.
Much has been made about the songs Paul is playing on this Out There tour that he hasn't played before. But while "Lovely Rita" and "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" and a couple others were curiosities, they weren't among the better tunes of the show. Other decisions were odd, too: Paul brought out Kronos Quartet for the encore's "Yesterday," but not for "Eleanor Rigby," where the live strings really would've helped. ("Rigby" was pretty great anyway, but it could've been so much better.) The inevitable padding of later Paul solo tunes was expected, and mostly fine. But, sorry Paul, "We're Going to Get High High High" does not belong in an all-Beatles encore between "Day Tripper" and "Get Back." It just doesn't. (WTF????!!!!)
And yet who are we to whine about lesser crumbs from this magnificent table? As if we hadn't heard enough greatness before, the night closed with a big chunk of the Abbey Road medley: "Golden Slumbers" into "Carry That Weight" into "The End" -- a trio of songs that's nearly 44 years old. Though released before Let It Be, Abbey Road was the last album the Beatles recorded, and thus its end is their end, the final burst of creative energy from the most important rock band of all time. It came out of Paul and Co. last night like a big, bright, bittersweet flash, an explosion of long ago just now arriving in San Francisco via the still-young voice of one of its architects. That light in the sky will always be out there, but last night Paul McCartney shined on it on Golden Gate Park. It's hard to imagine Outside Lands 2013 getting much brighter.
Paul giving teary fan a potential tattoo with a Sharpie
Paul the charmer: After noting that two young ladies in the crowd held signs asking Paul to give them their first tattoo, the Beatle brought them onstage, and signed their wrists -- while hugging them from the back, of course. His proximity drew a few "ooohs" from the crowd, but Macca feigned innocence: "It was the only way to get the angle!" he chirped.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
August 13, 2013 -- Rolling Stone
Outside Lands Kicks Off With Fireworks From Paul McCartney
But the biggest fireworks at Outside Lands' opening ceremony literally and figuratively came with the day's anchor act, The Beatles' Paul McCartney. Some fans found the performance cathartic. Some cried. Others had wide smiles from start to finish. Nearly everyone understood the weight of Sir Paul tearing soulfully through Beatles and Wings numbers with the conviction of the person who wrote those songs "Blackbird," "Paperback Writer," "Hey Jude," "Eleanor Rigby," "Let It Be," and so on and so forth which, individually and collectively, helped shape our very idea of rock & roll.
"This is so cool," McCartney told the audience. "I just have to take a minute to take it all in myself, okay?" He was talking about the act of performing music in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, but the Beatles have their own history with San Francisco, having performed their last full concert ever at the city's Candlestick Park back in 1966.
McCartney has lost none of the charm that he had back then, entertaining the crowd with stories about Jimi Hendrix, dedicating songs to the loves of his life, and even bringing on stage two fans who held signs asking him to autograph their bodies so that they could get it tattooed. He obliged.
Of course, San Francisco being what it is, McCartney paused at one point to reflect on a long-standing local tradition at rock shows, which dates back to when the Grateful Dead performed for free in the same field: "It's a strange smell I'm smelling," he said coyly. "Something wonderful."
McCartney was also the second act of the day to employ the local Kronos Quartet, using them to augment "Yesterday" in a rendition that moved virtually every single person in the field, including security guards and food vendors.
Fireworks erupted from behind the stage for "Live and Let Die" and again following McCartney's final bow. Indeed, it seemed fitting. It was a particularly good start to a particularly good festival. "
http://themaccareport.com/news/report.htm