Paul McCartney in Concert

After spending an hour or two at the Asian Festival we drove to the other side of the DC Metro Area to Landover, MD where the Redskins play for our free Paul McCartney concert courtesy of the USO. The parking took way too long and finally Albert disobeyed the flagger and almost immediately we found a section of the lot with multiple empty spots relatively close to the stadium.

We met Laura&Blake at the concert and had a good time chatting before the concert started. There wasn't a warm-up band or anything, I guess Paul McCartney is way too big for a warm-up band, but it was nice weather and we had good company so the time went fast.

The concert was really good. While I'm not really up on Paul's more recent music, I love the Beatles and it was really cool to hear songs like Michelle and Back in the U.S.S.R. by the man who wrote them.

{Paul in his black jacket before his big "wardrobe change" -- taking off the jacket}

What was even cooler was hearing the back stories. He talked about DC being the first stop on the Beatles first American tour, Blackbird being written about a girl during the Civil Rights Movement, and how he knew Jimmy Hendrix. That man has lived an awesome life. How cool would it be to sit down after dinner and hear all of his amazing stories?

{The rest of the band -- how cool to say you were in a band with Paul McCartney!}

We were at the top of the stadium so we couldn't really see anything on the stage except the stuff shown on the screen. We did bring binoculars, but even then we couldn't see any details. Albert brought his point-&-shoot, which is a great little camera and was able to take some close-ups on the screen.

{the bottom right was for Blackbird}

{Paul's many guitars -- he got the ukulele from George}


He played a couple songs on the piano:

At about 11 PM I started to get really tired and we were worried that we would get stuck in traffic for a long time if we waited for the concert to end so we headed out. Laura&Blake said that when they left around midnight they were still going strong in the encore. That man is definitely in good shape for his age. We count ourselves lucky to have seen the great Paul McCartney in concert.

Click here to read a great review of the night and the full set list.

These are the songs we stayed to listen to:

1. Drive My Car
2. Jet
3. Only Mama Knows
4. Flaming Pie
5. Got to Get You Into My Life
6. Let Me Roll It
7. Foxy Lady (instrumental jam)
8. Highway
9. The Long and Winding Road
10. My Love
11. Blackbird
12. Here Today
13. Dance Tonight
14. Calico Skies
15. Michelle
16. Mrs. Vandebilt
17. Eleanor Rigby
18. Sing the Changes
19. Band On the Run
20. Back in the U.S.S.R.
21. I'm Down