Billy Shears In Concert: I saw Paul McCartney in concert May 5th 2002 in Anaheim California at the Arrowhead Pond Theatre. The story is quite a sweet one, and it brings a smile on my face to think about it.
One day my grandpa called and said bluntly "How would ya like to see Paul in concert?" Yeah...I thought he was joking. I went to ticketmaster.com months before and saw the ticket prices and wanted to weep. I'm in the "Come Together: San Diego Beatles Fan Club", so I get a lot of deals and notices ahead of time. He asked for the number for tickets and I crossed my fingers. He called back not even 15 minutes later and said "Your going to see Paul. I got the last two tickets." Boy, needless to say I FLIPPED. I wanted to see Paul so bad I almost cried because I didn't think I would ever see him. My little sister Mandy is in love with Paul. She has Paul posters all over her wall. We ran in circles around the house and screamed like the girls did during Beatle Mania....we were going to see Paul....THEE PAUL. My grandma was great and took us to go "concert shopping" and we got matching British flag pens. I was especially excited because this gave me the oppurtunity to wear mt Sgt. Pepper jacket!
My grandma made it for my as a Christmas present, but I didn't get it until 3 days before the concert. I think it looks great. The tickets costed about $260.00. But that was including the bus fair, the buffet and the ticket itself...which was only $85.00. I went around telling everybody "I'm going to see Billy Shears in concert!" At this time my sister Mandy and I were closer than ever. The day before I couldn't sleep, I was too excited I didn't sleep a wink. We got to the Park N' Ride early. And I wore my Sgt. Pepper shirt underneith my Sgt. Pepper jacket.
The people were pretty nice too. The bus was late and the parking was cramped, no big deal ehough. Than the bus arrived (It wasn't the "Official Driving Rain Bus" like they said but hey. On the way there we played Beatles trvia and I won a "Biker Like An Icon" Shirt (Paul's Last New World Tour shirt). Than we got to the House Of Blues.
Carmen, the "leader" of "Come Together: The San Diego Beatles Fan Club" told us that Paul's film crew was there filming fans for the Driving Rain DVD. They saw me and before I was there for 10 minutes they approached me. I had just picked up a plate and dug in to the buffet. (Don't bother me...I'm eating...) And they asked me and my sister a bunch of questions. Mostly why people as young as us like The Beatles. I was kind of nervous because they had an enormous camera in my face and his huge light blocking my already bad vision. I was cheesy, but hey. Every time I walked past this one guy he freaked out. He wanted to know where I bought my jacket. And he kinda creeped me out after a while. Things were so expensive! A drink was $4.50! A guy liked my jacket so much he bought me and my little sister Mandy sodas. Heh. It was very exciting. We had a very hard time finding seats, but we did eventually. The place was packed... because there was other groups of Paul fans there. And the DJ, Chris Carter of "Beatles for Breakfast" was there. And I got to meet him, he complimented me on my jacket. He was a nice guy and he gave me and my sister a lot of "Driving Rain" singles. And we both got to snag free tour posters.
He was handing out free stuff-we did a raffle-but I didn't win anthing. The buffet wasn't all that good. It was like "Healthy" food (just vegetables, pastas and healthy things). They played Beatles music that was cool. The House of Blues is SOOOO cool. The atmosphere is great there. Than we left and went to the theatre.
I bought Mandy a Paul tour shirt (he's holding his guitar) and the poster. I bought that same shirt for me too. A long sleeved tour shirt was $85.00, that was outrageous. We made our way to the entrance and hid our camera wrapped in our t-shirts. The Than we went inside...
We waited around for an hour untill the show started...our seats were section 411, row K, seats 4 and 5...
I had heard Paul had an opending act, but he didn't. It was this freaky play. It was like a bad dream, lol. They had this freaky "heart beat" music. And about 9:00 the madness started. There varied from George Washington, to bird costumes to marcial arts people. It has about 20 mins long, and the audience was dead silent. It was the weirdst show I have ever seen. My sister even got freaked out. Than at the end Paul comes through the screen as if he were saving the day or something. Than all those weird people went away. Sorry, thats pretty watered over-but I don't know how to describe that to you without motions and my actual voice. He came out and did "Hello, goodbye" Surprisingly he did a lot of Beatles songs! My mouth dropped when I saw Paul and I yelled "Oh God!" when I saw him standing there! He did 3 Wings songs "Live and let die", "C Moon", and "Band on the Run" and he did about 3 from the new album (Freedom, From a lover to a friend, & Driving Rain).
All the rest were Beatles songs!!!! He did a tribute to John and George. He told a lot of jokes and a lot of stories on how he got his inspiration for songs like "C Moon" and "Blackbird". He dedicated from a lover to a friend to his finace Heather. He did "Something" on the yucalali for George. Oh yeah and our seats, well thats kind of a long story. But I'll explain it. Our seats were good, it's just we were off to the right of the stage. Not in the right zone to meet Paul... = (
But thats ok. The audience was very loud and they gave him 4 encores! I thought the show would never end. But it was great. I looked through the binoculars just to get a really good view. They were
practically glued to my eyes. He played an extra 35 minutes. I snuck 20 pictures. They were frisking us outside the place before the show, but we put the camera inside the t-shirts we bought. So HINT HINT, if you want to sneak pictures put them in the bag of stuff you just bought! They don't check it! The only bummer was, I'm guessing the batteries died in the middle of the concert so basically none of the pictures came out. It really sucked too. When Paul did "Freedom" this large banner of a drawing of the statue
of liberty fell from the ceiling. Paul did "I saw her standing there" for the encore. For "Live and let die" there was a lot of pyrotecnics and weird screen tricks. There was one fire work that went off too. He said that he loved California, and thats where he got a lot of inspiration to write the songs for Driving Rain. He also dedicated a song to Linda. His last song was "Hey Jude." And at the end of the play, those creepy people came out for a bow...
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