Take a Sad Song, and Make it Better: My First Live Concert

Your first live music concert is a memory that lasts forever. Some of us see acts that perhaps aren't relevant anymore. Some of us are dragged to shows by our parents. But some of the lucky few get to experience seeing an absolute icon perform and are forever changed for that experience. I am one of those lucky few.

In 1992 I was ending my seventh grade year at the middle school in the small mountain town I was living in. My best friend at the time was Nathan and I'll never forget the day he told me that he and his dad had tickets to see Paul McCartney live in Las Vegas and they wanted me to go along with them. You see, Nathan and I were even back then two disciples of the Gospels of John, Paul, George and Ringo. I think it was actually my seventh grade year in which I learned the Beatles' music actually got better after 1963. It was that year that Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band first penetrated my young ears.

Now Nathan was telling me I was going to get to go see Paul live in concert. This was pretty momentous for me for a few reasons. First, and most obvious, this was getting to see a hero play live. Secondly, I would have to spend the night away from my parents to do so. Third, it was the first of many concert-driven road trips I'd take in my life. The building blocks were being laid down for the foundation of what would become my own musicianship and love affair with live rock music.

I don't remember a ton about the trip out to Las Vegas. I do remember going to a burger joint when we got into town. I remember going to the UNLV football stadium and standing in line with Nathan and his dad. The anticipation was overwhelming. There we were, two adolescent males almost squirming in our skin to get inside. I remember buying our programs and finding our seats way up in the last ring of seats at the stadium. In no way were any of us let down in our seat position. We were seeing Paul McCartney live; we'd have all sat in a church parking lot two hundred yards away, just to get to hear Paul and his band play live.

Time has faded from memory the actual set list order, but I seem to recall him opening up with "Drive My Car" just after dark, and immediately the thousands of people in the stadium erupted with enthusiasm. It was loud, the bass reverberating off the cements seats. The giant video screens to either side of the stage helped us make out what was going on; from our viewpoint Paul and the band were small outlines of light and movement.

About twenty minutes into the show MAGIC HAPPENED. Nathan and I were laughing and singing along to the music, taking in as much as we could when we were approached by a large security guard. He didn't yell, but he spoke loud enough and with enough force to rise up over the music.

"Do you want to sit closer?" I misunderstood this request and smooshed in closer to Nathan, thinking the man meant we needed to squeeze more people into the seats next to us. I couldn't have been more wrong about what he meant. Thankfully Nathan's dad didn't misunderstand at all.

"How much closer?"

"Third or fourth row I think." Oh my God! Yes, this man was offering us, for free, to move from our seats in Nosebleed Heaven down to the fourth row. We got up and he handed us three hand-written passes. He walked us quickly by flashlight to our seats, and I mean seats. Folding chairs. No one was sitting there either. As I looked from our seats upward I suddenly saw Paul closer than I had ever and have ever seen him to this date.

Had I been inclined and he wasn't playing with a billion watts behind him, I could have said something to him without screaming; and he'd have heard. Nathan and I looked at each other and if we didn't scream like Justin Bieber fans, we should have. We were now just feet away from a true legend, and it was the part of his set where played hit after hit, and every song seemed to get better than the last.

Then came "Hey Jude" and from then on nothing was the same for me. Paul sat down at the piano, sang the first "Hey" in the traditional a Capella form and then came down hard on the F major of "Jude" and my spine began tingling. I felt the roar of tens of thousands behind us as everyone at once expressed that same tingle in their own spines. He sang the song as he's done probably a million times, the words blaring out of his mouth to fill the stadium.

Then out came the theatrics. He'd gotten to the "Nah-NahNah" part (any Beatles fan or anyone who's even heard the song knows which part this is) and the band played the accompaniment for a few bars as Paul and Linda got into a smaller little segment of the stage that had bars enclosing them. Then they began to rise out over the crowd and the music stopped.

If you've never been in a stadium with tens of thousands of people singing a wordless melody you haven't seen the true beauty of the American spirit. I gazed backward as Paul and Linda McCartney floated over my head, and I was stunned, at twelve years old I was stunned! This was before cell phones so all I could see in the darkness behind me was what looked like a million little flicks of orange light waving in time to the chant of the song. Then around me every smoker (no matter what they were smoking) brought their lighter out.

It was then, in that exact moment that I can pinpoint the birth of not just my love affair of music, but of my desire to play it. I wanted so badly to have the feeling that Paul must've been having at that moment. I wanted to be the one spurring the people on to sing in one voice. No, I've not gotten to have that feeling as of yet; but there's no doubt in my mind looking back, that those of us in the sea of people were the truly powerful ones in the stadium. We created a tidal wave of good feeling that kept me buzzing not just back to our hotel room; but through time to this point, 18 years later.