McCartney: Beatles Re-Union Memories

Saw Sir Paul last night here in Los Angeles at Staples Center. It was a good concert, even though I practically needed bottled oxygen from where I sat. I particularly enjoyed Paul reaching deeper into both his and the Beatles' songbook for some tunes that played as fun surprises like "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window" and "I Will."

This was the fourth time I've seen McCartney in concert.  A few years ago, also at the Staples Center, I had some phenomenal close, near floor seats. About ten years earlier, I'd seen him at the Inglewood Forum. That's a concert I'll never forget because it was the first time I ever heard him perform a Beatles' song "live." It was pretty much a blow-away to hear "Sgt. Pepper" for the first time that way.

But the one that will always stand out takes me back nearly thirty years. It was 1976 and I was working the morning shift at KZEL-FM in Eugene, Oregon as a news man. We were the counter-culture life-line to the city (and sometimes the region) back in those days so if anybody was wired into what was happening, we were.

1976 was a time of rumor concerning the Beatles. Everybody hoped and prayed for a re-union and a rock promoter named Bill Sargent had just offered $50-million dollars for a single re-union concert. Against this backdrop, Paul was on tour with his own band, Wings. My program director dropped into what we affectionately called the "News Cave" after I'd finished the morning news and laid this bombshell on me.

"If it's going to happen, it's going to happen tonight in Seattle."

He handed me a couple of tickets to McCartney's concert and told me to get on the road fast and to be ready to go "live" as soon as it was over. It's a nearly six-hour drive from Eugene to Seattle, as I recall, and I made the trip in my rumbling '65 Mustang beast in record time. All I remember is being on a natural high the entire way. I was getting paid barely minimum wage at KZEL, but this was going to more than make up for it. In the Time magazine you see here, McCartney had been quoted thusly:

"The only way the Beatles would come together is if we wanted to do something musically."

That sentiment, of course, left the matter open, despite the fact that all three of the other Beatles steadfastly refused to say anything on the matter.

The concert took place at the Seattle Kingdome which has since been destroyed (there was some phenomenal video a few years ago of them blowing up the place). I'm not sure how many people in the crowd actually knew what I knew. It felt like an incredible top secret.

McCartney came out that night and he was wonderful, of course. But as the concert continued, it became more and more obvious that there would be no full-fledged Beatles re-union. Still, I kep hoping that, maybe, John would pop out on stage like he'd done for Elton John around the same time during a New York concert. No such luck. No John, no George, no Ringo. It was an incredibly odd feeling. I was seeing a Beatle, for God's sake!, and yet I was feeling let-down and deflated. It didn't help that Paul stubbornly refused to embrace his Beatles past and played not a single tune from the Beatles; only his solo and Wings work made the cut.

It could have been the most magical of nights, but it wasn't meant to be. With John dead 25 years now and George gone nearly five, it will never happen. Maybe it was never meant to happen at all. Maybe John and Paul were wise to never give in to that temptation, knowing that the reality could never be as good as the expectation.

Still, when McCartney opened last night with "Magical Mystery Tour" I had a flashback to what might have been. Man, that would have been something...