Beatle Photo Blog

Ringo is usually aways the most stylish Fab, but alas these sunnies really let him down, they just look wrong on him.

It’s kind of funny that Paul plays a historic concert in Eastern Europe and the biggest news amongst fans is the fact that he played a new solo song in concert, Paul pulled ‘Mrs Vandebilt’ out of his hat and slayed the fans with it, the reaction in concert was fantastic and the excitment amongst fans around the world was universal joy that Paul had dipped into his under explored fantastic solo back catalog, this absolutely tears me in two, one part of me feels absolute joy at the unearthing of this brillent song, in fact i had tears in my eyes when i first saw and heard the clip, the other half of me is sad that the vast magority of concertattendee’s are mistaken that they are at a Beatle revival concert and not at at ‘Paul McCartney’ concert, you see i’m first and foremost a solo Paul fan, i was a child of the 70′s when Wings were the cat’s pjyama’s, so it’s been tough for me and most of my fellow solo Paul fan’s to see his most recent tours become laden down with Beatles songs, in my eyes the Fab’s were only eight years of his nearly fifty year career, and call me old fashioned but i think a huge amount of his solo work is equal to or better than his work with the Beatles, songs like ‘Calico skies’ and ‘This One’ for instance are as good as anything he had on the White album, but in concert solo fans have had to beg for the scraps and the exceptions are the moments that stand out instead of the rule, if you ask fans what the biggest surprise of the 2005 tour was it wasnt that he pulled out ‘Please please me’ .. we’re used to Paul dragging out Beatle songs, but the the jaw dropping moment came when Paul played ‘Too many people’ from Ram, even Paul had a nod and a wink to the solo fans by introducing it as ‘This is for all the Wings fans’ .. it wasnt a Wings song but i know what Paul meant, he had to specify this was a treat for everyone there not soley just to try and relive (pathetically i think) a ‘Beatles’ concert, Paul was *A* Beatle, not *THE* Beatles so i really do feel for the guy, if anyone is trapped by a musical legacy it’s Paul, and the ‘general’ concert goer wont allow him to move beyond the hits in concert, which is great for the people who want to relive their youth, but artistically restricting and not to say also insulting to Paul .. i saw this with my own eyes in 2005 in California, as soon as Paul started playing an unfamiliar song, in fact it was ‘Fine line’ the mass exodus of people bolting for the bathroom, the food stalls and the bar was so alarming that the person i was with thought there was a fire or a bomb threat, so altho i’m torn and sad that we dont get many solo and unfamiliar songs in Paul’s set, i guess we just have to be grateful for the few times he’s able to stretch out from his rigid set list of ‘hits’ to throw us the real treats like ‘Too many people’ and ‘Mrs Vandebilt’, because as long as the masses want and demand their ‘Fast food Beatles’ poor old Paul is gonna have to grind out the umteenth version of ‘The loooooooooong and winding road’

Hi,for a long time i’ve written reviews for various Beatle fanzines and even co edited one (one of the best ones) so i’ve decided that i’m going to start posting a few editorial pieces on here as well as reviews of some of the latest and greatest (and not so great) releases in the Beatle world. I wont be posting less photo’s, just more words .. stay tuned.