Wow. What is it about Paul McCartney? That dude has a gravity and a magnitude that is hard to describe. Being born in 69 I certainly missed Beatlemania and wondered at the reaction the fans were giving during those original live performances. But shit, if there ain’t something special about that guy. Thanks for the link!
Thanks for that. I’ve thought it before, but I never said it: Paul McCartney is one of the most loveable guys in showbiz ever. He’s earned a shit ton of money, but he never stopped to be just a good bloke, and that shows in the video.
What I get, from that video and other things I’ve seen, is that McCartney loves performing; he’s fully embraced being a Beatle; he likes being a huge celebrity and handles it pretty well.
I enjoyed the video, including the home visit and pub scene, but I would have preferred it without the contrived spontaneity and staging.
Anyway, I always like seeing Paul McCartney and learning a bit more about the history of the Beatles, and I like watching James Corden perform.
Corden was a well respected Tony and BAFTA winner, who starred with Meryl Streep, Christine Baranski and Emily Blunt in Into the Woods. He wasn’t a connectionless nobody when he took the gig, but a well respected actor, singer, comedian and writer.
(Plus he was in Doctor Who as one of the best Doctor Who reoccurring characters ever - the Doctor’s flatmate).
Corden is well-known in Britain so it’s strange how people react to him at the beginning of the pub scene in the video.
First, Corden asks to go behind the bar and the bartender casually agrees. The customers in the pub can see him but nobody reacts to seeing someone famous. Nobody takes a photo and nobody asks for a selfie. In fact, nobody has a smartphone. All the customers are sitting around having a beer or a glass of wine. Nobody is looking at a smartphone or has one on the table. There are several close-up shots but nobody reacts to the professional cameras that are recording those shots.
Then, when Paul starts playing A Hard Day’s Night, nobody uses a smartphone to take photos or record any video. Everyone is clapping and dancing and singing along. And there are some eye-level shots of people reacting.
Hmmm …
Dude, whole thing was staged. I believe they may not have told them who was coming, but it was kind of obvious something was up and I don’t think the show was hiding it.
The curtain blocking off part of the pub was probably a clue.
yeah, it seemed a little too perfect to me too.The narrator just happens to say" go ahead and pick a song", and the girl just happens to pick a Beatles song. And it just happens to be a song that starts with a powerful, exciting opening chord. (what would have happened if she had picked “Blackbird” or “Norwegian Wood” or Fool on the Hill or “Within you and without you?”)
And now a question for you Brits:
What’s up with the juke box thing?
Do pubs routinely have a juke box on the wall, or it just this specific pub in Liverpool that keeps one for nostalgia?
I haven’t seen a juke box in America for 25 years…and even then, there wasn’t just one machine on the wall…there were lots of them.(Well,there may have only been one master machine, but it was operated by lots of remote-control stations, at each tabletop.)
A completely unremarkable detail, though I don’t know whether its usual for The Philharmonic. There is a pub about half a mile away where a bunch of us once drove the landlord up the wall by playing “Kung Fu Fighting” repeatedly on its jukebox. Good times.
By “narrator” do you mean James Corden, who invited the woman to pick a song? And no, it was not a coincidence that all of the songs on the jukebox were Beatles songs. It was also not a coincidence that James Corden just happened to come across Paul McCartney while driving around Liverpool.
They aren’t as common as they were, of course, but the ones that do tend to be internet connected with really deep catalogues on them.
Sidenote to Macca fans and semi-fans – if you haven’t seen the concert film Rockshow in awhile (or at all), do yourself a favor and check out the restored version released in 2013. It’s arguably Paul at his peak as a stage performer; charismatic front man, fantastic bassist and killer vocalist. (And say what you will about Linda, but that band was tight and they kicked ass.)
I think you’re missing a key bit of stagecraft here. I watched the thing through, and got all weepy, and so I backed it up to the point where the car was driving around and Sir Paul talked about gigging in hood. And watched it through to the end again.
I have zero reason to believe that the song chosen by the first person is the song that played as the black curtain snapped open. Nor the second. Paul and his crackerjack band had abbreviated versions of a small handful of songs rehearsed and at the ready for the “gig”.
And nobody in that slowly growing crowd in the pub gave a damn about that.
They were watching their beloved local hero perform live 10 feet in front of them.
It’s kind of like any rock star who shouts out to an audience, " So what do you want to hear next?? " They will call out the song that’s next on the list, while waving their hand towards a part of the crowd as though they actually heard an audience member call out a song. They may well have. It doesn’t matter. Most artists do not have every song in their catalogue at their mental fingertips.
Thanks for sharing. That’s awesome.
And having a great time too.
Here’s an article about the custodian, Sylvia Hall. The writers for Variety and Vanity Fair thought that she’s the current resident/owner.
According to The Beatles’ Landmarks in Liverpool, McCartney’s father moved out in 1964 and new residents Sheila and Ashley Jones moved in. They lived in the house until 1998 and then they sold it to the National Trust.
In The Twenty-First-Century Legacy of the Beatles, we’re told that the home and Lennon’s childhood home "were restored to a circa-1955 authenticity” and historical preservationists made sure that "the homes were refitted and refurbished to reflect not just the era but the social and economic status of the Lennon and McCartney families.”
My assumption is that the person who was told to “pick a song” was in on it. I also think that people knew something was up, but not that it was going to be Paul McCartney. And I assume that crowd reaction shots would have been shot at any point, since they’re pickup shots.
It’s possible that the whole thing was not a surprise, but that would be bad directing in my opinion. You want to capture some legitimate surprise, since these are not actors who are going to be able to fake it well. And, to my eye, they looked genuinely surprised. And they did seem to start pulling out their phones and such–I was expecting people to complain about that.
That said, I’m not pro, just someone who has paid attention to some people on YouTube talking about this stuff. Maybe I’m completely off base.
I wondered if McCartney’s family had donated any items. Or perhaps advised about decor.
Johnny Cash’s family donated several items for the childhood home in Dyess AR. His sisters worked closely to get the home restored to how they remembered it.
Am I the only one having a moment of pure frisson at the idea that something was indeed donated to the National Trust?
I visited Elvis Presley’s birthplace which of course in Tupelo is simply referred to as " The Birthplace ".
It appeared apparently as it did when he was a small child living at it.
I like the idea that somebody would go through the effort to try to make it authentic and check in with family members for accuracy.
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There was a jukebox in our local (NE Ohio) neighborhood restaurant until recently, FWIW.