<\/p>\n
Paul McCartney sauntered onto the stage of the Fonda Theatre, took in the 1,200 faces before him \u2014 \u201cI can see the whites of your eyes,\u201d he said \u2014 then offered up a brief history lesson about where we\u2019d gathered Friday night.<\/p>\n
The Fonda, he told us, opened 100 years ago; back then, he added, it was called the Music Box.<\/p>\n
\u201cCool little place, innit?\u201d<\/p>\n
At 83, McCartney is well into his cool-little-place era.<\/p>\n
Last year the rock legend played a string of concerts at New York\u2019s tiny Bowery Ballroom while in town for \u201cSaturday Night Live\u2019s\u201d 50th anniversary; a few months after that, he hit the Santa Barbara Bowl<\/a> as a kind of warm-up for the latest leg of his Got Back world tour.<\/p>\n Friday\u2019s underplay \u2014 the first of two instant sell-outs at the Fonda \u2014 came as McCartney is drumming up interest in a new studio album he\u2019ll release in May. Outside the venue, a double-decker bus was parked with signage advertising the LP, which is called \u201cThe Boys of Dungeon Lane\u201d after a road in his Liverpool hometown.<\/p>\n But that hardly seemed like the purpose of the show itself, which lasted about an hour and 40 minutes and didn\u2019t even include a performance of the album\u2019s lead single. The truth is that Sir Paul genuinely appears to get a kick out of these intimate gigs \u2014 out of standing right in front of a crowd and doing the magic trick that is a song like \u201cGet Back\u201d or \u201cJet\u201d or \u201cGot to Get You Into My Life.\u201d<\/p>\n And why wouldn\u2019t he?<\/p>\n If a Paul McCartney concert in an arena or a stadium is a finely honed spectacle<\/a> of boomer nostalgia and industrial-strength charm, one of his shows in a club or a theater is a chance to play music<\/em>, which after six and a half decades still clearly turns his wheels.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/strong> Every Paul McCartney single, ranked<\/a><\/p>\n You wouldn\u2019t say the shows remind McCartney that he\u2019s a regular guy. (Those six and a half decades have made him anything but.) What they might do, though, is remind him why he became so widely adored \u2014 valuable self-knowledge for an artist whose great subject has always been the transformative power of love.<\/p>\n Here, as in Santa Barbara, he and his seven-piece band (which featured three horn players) did a pared-down version of the most recent Got Back set, opening with a killer one-two punch \u2014 \u201cHelp!\u201d into \u201cComing Up\u201d \u2014 that alone said plenty about McCartney\u2019s range and endurance.<\/p>\n \u201cLet Me Roll It\u201d had a funky swagger, while \u201cGetting Better\u201d chugged with cheerful insistence; \u201cI\u2019ve Just Seen a Face\u201d showed off the group\u2019s crisp harmonies and \u201cLady Madonna\u201d its tight rhythmic interplay. After \u201cLet \u2019Em In,\u201d McCartney asked his band member Brian Ray to show off the song\u2019s all-important bass line: a single note plucked over and over and over again.<\/p>\n He did a few other comic bits, including a memory of Tony Bennett<\/a> singing without a microphone as a way to demonstrate the excellent acoustics of a concert hall \u2014 the punch line was that he later saw Bennett do the same thing at the Beverly Hilton \u2014 and some gentle ribbing of the folks sitting up in the \u201cposh seats\u201d of the Fonda\u2019s balcony. Among them, McCartney pointed out, was Morgan Neville, director of the recent \u201cMan on the Run\u201d documentary about McCartney\u2019s life in the aftermath of the Beatles\u2019 breakup.<\/p>\n He also noted that his wife, Nancy Shevell, was in the house and dedicated \u201cMy Valentine\u201d to her; truth be told, that one was a bit dreary, as was \u201cNow and Then,\u201d the so-called last Beatles song<\/a> released in 2023 using machine learning to complete a scratchy demo left behind by John Lennon.<\/p>\n \u201cThank you, John, for writing that lovely song,\u201d McCartney said afterward, which made it a little harder not to like.<\/p>\n In any event, there were more classics to come, not least a buoyant \u201cOb-La-Di, Ob-La-Da\u201d and a \u201cLet It Be\u201d\/\u201cHey Jude\u201d twofer that inspired such a lusty singalong that McCartney probably could\u2019ve gotten away with lip-syncing if he\u2019d wanted to.<\/p>\n But of course he didn\u2019t want to \u2014 that was kind of the whole point.<\/p>\n