Paul McCartney Live in Vienna - Concert Report

Vienna, 27 June 2013. A historic day - for us, at least, without question.

We travelled to Vienna a day early, full of excitement, anticipation and, of course, countless questions. That same day we went out to see the venue, Ernst Happel Stadium.

Stone footballs - for giants

Our tickets, which we had bought months earlier, were for the "Golden Circle": the fenced-off standing area closest to the stage. So we could not know in advance exactly where we would end up watching and listening to the Vienna show of the Out There tour. What we did know was that we wanted to get as close to Paul McCartney as possible - to see every movement and feel every moment of his music. The latter would not have been a problem even from a distance because the sound system was excellent. But as it happened, we spent the concert waving and cheering from the second row, and that gave us an experience we will remember for the rest of our lives. At times Paul was standing only a few metres away.

On the 26th - the day before the concert - we did not merely look at the stadium from the outside; we also tried to carry out a more thorough reconnaissance. It was not difficult because several entrances were open and we could simply walk in as far as the stands:

In the end we ran in through the entrance beneath the red section barely visible at the far right of the picture

Very encouraging! We worked out exactly where we would need to get in on the day of the concert.

Then the great day dawned. Around noon on the 27th we took the metro over and saw that the barriers for admission had already been set up and perhaps ten or twenty fans were gathering. Since we could see - and had known in advance - that getting in would not be straightforward, we allowed ourselves another two hours of rest and returned to the stadium at around 2:00 pm. According to the official schedule, the gates were supposed to open at 5:00 pm and the concert at 7:30. We did the arithmetic: five and a half hours to survive without food or drink, mostly standing and perhaps occasionally sitting. There were portable toilets, of course, and looking around us, other people were eating and drinking... and, fortunately only from later Facebook comments, I learned that an empty beer cup can be a multifunctional object. We were not prepared to take any risks. From 2:00 pm onward we concentrated every nerve and every ounce of strength on holding our position until the gates opened. During that time we shuffled forward a few metres, sat down for perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes in total, but mostly stood packed together like sardines. Around us were Austrians, Italians, Russians and - it was good to hear - plenty of Hungarians as well.

We could hear the soundcheck from outside, which delighted the crowd that had already been squeezed into place for hours. McCartney's voice carried clearly beyond the stadium, and people began to believe that they were REALLY going to see and hear HIM.

As opening time approached, people pressed more and more tightly against the barriers. Eventually, at around 6:00 pm, they began letting us in. Ticket checking was not especially rigorous. We showed our tickets to staff who were busy searching other people's backpacks and barely paid attention to us, so we sailed past the ticket inspectors and, naturally, broke into a run. If we had Golden Circle tickets, we were going to get close to the stage! Ruuuun... Every ten or fifteen metres a steward stood telling the rushing crowd not to run and assuring everyone they would get there. Of course it was worth running, because we reached the SECOND ROW!!! Unbelievable! The stage was almost within arm's reach!

The stage is still empty; an occasional sound engineer wanders across it

By about 6:15 we were in our places. A huge weight lifted from our minds, although our legs felt as if lead rather than blood were flowing through them and as if our feet had been replaced by concrete blocks. Still, we were happy, because our position was now secure. Inside the stadium we were again surrounded by people from all sorts of countries.

Immediately after the rush: the "there are already people behind us" feeling

Two older women were standing directly in front of us. We discovered that they were American, and that for one of them this was already the 42nd concert at which she had seen and heard McCartney. The first time she saw the Hollywood BowlBeatles show back in 1965. Quite something!

Hollywood Bowl - we would gladly travel back in time to be there for any Beatles concert...

Appropriately enough, this lady had had her nails decorated specially:

It may be hard to make out in this small picture, but every nail carries a Beatles image

Before long a DJ arrived and played a couple of Beatles tracks that had originally been recorded in German, now in somewhat botched remixes, along with a few tunes I did not recognize. Meanwhile, on the two enormous screens positioned to the left and right of the stage, a montage of hundreds of images slowly scrolled from top to bottom. We watched the instruments prepared behind the stage being checked one more time while security staff walked back and forth in front of the first-row barrier.

The instruments are peeking out from behind the blue tent on the left. The ukulele is barely visible, but it is there!

And the sun slowly set behind the stadium...

...and by then there were quite a lot of us!

We were already waiting for the recorded music to end so that HE and his band would finally appear. The music stopped, and the crew performed one last final-after-the-final check of the instruments and equipment. While we had still been queueing, someone handed out a newspaper that even contained the list of songs to be played at the concert - the so-called "setlist". Of course, we already had a good idea what we would hear, since the same show was being performed throughout the world tour. We waited impatiently for the star of the evening to appear, hit the strings and launch into Eight Days a Week!

The moment he walked onto the stage

And just as we expected, Eight Days a Week hit us straight in the face at enormous volume! It is impossible to describe the feeling: you want to scream the song at the top of your lungs, but you cannot because at the same time you need to cry. There he was in front of us, one of those people who perhaps appears once in a century, playing HIS songs for US. He could choose not to do it. But he does, because he knows that he gives people - indeed, humanity - something that only he can give, and he does not deprive anyone of that experience. Throughout the show you could feel that he loves what he does, even if he has performed it five thousand times before. He enjoys the music and enjoys being able to give something to people through it. And the love he receives back from those people - well, we probably cannot even imagine what that must feel like.

He was modest throughout. Friendly and approachable. He even tried a little German. He said he had learned German as a child, and he had some German sentences written down that he read aloud, while saying a few others from memory. I should add that, in my opinion, he spoke Hungarian much more beautifully at the 2003 Budapest concert.

Lady Madonna

Fans had made lots of signs and brought flags as well. Between two songs Paul said that one half of his brain told him not to read the signs while playing because he needed to concentrate on the chords and lyrics, while the other half of his brain was extremely curious about what they said... so, "what the hell," he would read them . I was a little sorry that he did not call out the Hungarian flag. He started listing signs saying things like "We came from Siberia" and mentioned an Australian flag, but for some reason not the Hungarian one, even though a Hungarian group was standing directly opposite him waving the red, white and green.

Because we knew the setlist, we could tell exactly which songs were coming and that there would be two encores. In practice there were a couple of tiny changes: Get Back was not played, while a song that had not originally appeared on the setlist did make it into the show - Ram On. So how did it sneak in? I suspect few people know, but we know the story. During the hours of waiting, when we had a chance to sit down briefly, a guy sitting beside us - wearing a brace on his leg, presumably because of an injury - started painting "RAM ON" on a large sheet of paper and spent about three quarters of an hour colouring it in with a marker. Later we lost sight of him, but somehow, once we got into the Golden Circle, the same guy ended up next to us in the second row. At the right moment he held up his sign, his wish came true, and Ram On, the Wings song, was played. Even before the concert, once we were inside the stadium taking photographs, this guy noticed that I had managed to take a good shot and asked me to send it to him by Bluetooth. Of course I did. If I remember correctly, he writes a McCartney blog. So now I can say that I once Bluetooth-sent a photograph to someone whose personal request Paul McCartney fulfilled. Not bad, right?

Immediately to my right stood a large Austrian man whose mouth barely moved and who watched the entire show with an expression of complete indifference. Once, perhaps, he allowed himself half a smile. To be fair, he was a decent guy and helped us position ourselves so that we could see better . To my left was a Russian man who looked exactly like Lennon - even the glasses were right - and shouted every song from beginning to end. Someone else was dressed as if he had stepped straight off the Sgt. Pepper cover. There were a few unusual characters, but where else should there be if not at a McCartney concert? Wherever I looked I saw happy faces; everyone seemed to radiate affection.

I loved listening to the songs... I will not even start listing which ones, because it was almost every single one. All right, I admit it: being a man about it, I was longing most of all for the Beatles songs. The Wings numbers were useful because they meant I did not have to spend the entire concert fighting back tears .

Back in the U.S.S.R. - it sounded absolutely incredible!

The concert was unbelievably energetic. The more than two and a half hours during which Paul McCartney entertained us passed incredibly quickly. Even saying it out loud feels astonishing; for days afterwards you can hardly believe that you were there and that it really happened. Night fell relatively early. By then our legs felt like two blocks of concrete because we had been standing in one place for seven or eight hours, barely able even to bend our knees, and our mouths were dry. But none of that mattered. We simply let our emotions race along the world's most wonderful roller coaster and allowed Paul McCartney's music to fill every part of us.

AND HE PLAYED SOMETHING! THE WAY HE ALWAYS DOES! HE STARTED IT ON THE UKULELE. JUST A FEW METRES FROM ME!

The two exits from the stage and the two encores followed the setlist. Even the first call for an encore was wonderfully moving. We clapped for a while and then started singing the naa-naa-naa-na-na-na-na part from Hey Jude, and they came back very quickly!!! At the end of the concert Paul also waved a large Austrian flag, an indispensable part of the show. That one moment was certainly better at the Budapest concert, where - naturally - a beautiful large Hungarian flag appeared . Finally, an enormous shower of confetti poured down on us.

Confetti in the Austrian national colours - we brought a good handful home

For some reason I thought the show would finish with Sgt. Pepper (as the Budapest concert had), but it did not. Instead it ended with the wonderfully changing yet brilliantly cohesive sequence ofGolden Slumbers / Carry That Weight / The End, three songs whose tempo and mood change beautifully while fitting together perfectly.

We should not forget the other musicians either, who supported McCartney flawlessly. I put "supported" in quotation marks because in reality they behaved as fully equal musical partners, and Paul treated them in exactly the same way. They are top-class professional musicians with whom he has worked for a very long time. You could see the rapport between them, the perfect understanding and the impeccable musical dialogue.

With the band

We staggered back to the hotel, repeating all the way that standing for almost nine hours had been WORTH IT for this experience.

I definitely want to mention the Facebook groupthat we created for the occasion several weeks before the concert. It was where we "discussed" our questions and expectations about the trip to Vienna and the show, and now, after the concert, it is where we share our experiences with one another.

And finally, here is the video: from the two-and-a-half-hour concert we brought you twenty-two minutes! This is the quality we ended up with, and that is that . The lighting was not kind to the phone camera, and judging from the people standing around me, everyone had the same problem. It was difficult to take good photographs or videos. Besides the light, holding a trembling hand in the air for so long - and, let's admit it, an emotional heart - also made serious camera work rather difficult .