Maybe I'm Amazed

On July 16, I got to see Paul McCartney at Yankee Stadium! You may have heard the story about the last time I saw Paul - I checked myself out of the hospital against doctor's orders to go to the concert. And I don't think it was just because of my health, but this show, almost 10 years later, was so much better!

The fun started the Subway. (We took the subway after hearing my friend Krista got stuck in traffic for hours at the show the previous night. After wedging ourselves onto the train, past some very rude people, Randi and I found ourselves near a woman wearing a big "I love Paul" button. She told us she was the president of his fan club in 1964! The train was packed with Beatles fans trying to hold on - including a very tall redhead from Capetown who bumped into us a few times. Not that we minded. The fan club president kept asking him to marry her. She was a hoot.

We spent some time checking out the new Yankee Stadium. We're not exactly baseball fans, but the stadium was pretty cool. All kinds of food and bars - my kind of place. Our seats were waaaaaaaaaaay up in the rafters, so we took our time getting up there.


Then the show finally got started. Paul played lots of Beatles songs and his solo work. He was silly and goofy as usual. He made some funny cracks about the closed captioning and about Derek Jeter having more hits than him, and his drummer did a funny dancing bit.
I got a little teary during a string of songs – Maybe I’m Amazed, I Will, Blackbird and Here Today. which he dedicated to John.


Paul's playing was pretty amazing. He played several different guitars, bass, piano, mandolin and ukulele. For a guy who's almost 70, he sounded great, especially considering the range of his songs - from the softer songs like Yesterday to Helter Skelter.


Fireworks and explosions went off during Live and Let Die, and then the show got even more awesome when Billy Joel showed up and sang I Saw Her Standing There with Paul. Randi and I screamed like Muppets!


Paul played two encores and it didn't seem like he was exhausted a bit. We started our way down from the rafters during Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End and watched from the lower levels so we could beat the crowd to the subway. The ride home wasn't as crowded, but still felt like it took ages - but at least I had lots of good songs in my head.

Credits: Baers Garten's Little Christmas Alpha, Shawna Clingerman's Intensit-he, Amanda Rockwell's Fresh label, Blythe Evans's Funky Mama notebook paper, Gina Miller's I Wanna Rock Guitar