…you get what you need

The year was 1990, or thereabouts. I had been married for a few years, and was busy trudging along the singularly unwise career path of the professional musician. My guiding stars musically (then as now), were Rush and The Beatles. Having the passions of youth, I held both bands in a near-religious esteem; particularly The Beatles, whom I'd been raised on. So when I heard that Paul McCartney was going on tour for the first time in ten years to support his Flowers In The Dirt CD, and would be playing a substantial amount of live Beatles material for the first time since he walked off the rooftop of 3 Savile Row in early 1969, I was frantic to go.

Word eventually came to me that he would be playing at an arena about a four-hour drive from my doorstep. This concert took place in the less-than-halcyon days before the Internet, when getting concert tickets involved standing in long lines, or waiting in interminable phone queues for the next available operator. Just finding out the date and time the seats would go on sale wasn't easy to come by. And so it was that, by the time we found out about it, it came with the word that seats were going for $200-$400 apiece. And just like that, the dream of seeing an actual Beatle in the flesh — one of my heroes — popped like a soap bubble.

Bitterness naturally ensued. I wasted a couple years hating the circumstances that had deprived me of this holy experience (and even McCartney himself a little — did he really need that much money?). I bought the 2-disc CD of the tour when it was released (in fact, I'm listening to it as I type this), but didn't listen to it much. The wound was still too fresh, and it only made me remember what had nearly been within my grasp.

It is surprising to me how quickly that wound healed when I finally secured tickets to a subsequent Memphis appearance by the Great Man some three years later. This time, the tickets were $35 — a hefty sum for concert tickets then, but one I considered, then as now, to be altogether reasonable.

I am delighted to report that the concert, when it occurred, was all that I had needed it to be. It began with the inevitable excitement I felt as McCartney casually strolled onto the sun-soaked stage (it would be dark when we finished three hours later), carrying the same Hofner bass he'd used with The Beatles, and ripped into "Drive My Car." Not only was he doing Beatles songs, he was opening with one! It was one of the first of a happy, hazy jumble of memories of that show —things like the mist rolling slowly down the sides of the Liberty Bowl during "Michelle;" joining with 60,000 people as we sang "Hey Jude;" the ripple of excitement I felt during the opening of "Paperback Writer," and, in pride of place, the massive, fireworks-fueled percussion kick during "Live and Let Die," which raises the hair on the back of my neck every time I think about it.

In fact, my adreneline-soaked emotional reactions are really what I treasure about that show. Because ultimately, what makes a concert special isn't what you see or hear in that tiny march of minutes, it's your emotional reactions to what you're experiencing. It wasn't the mists of "Michelle" that stands out in my mind — it was the relaxed, serene joy I felt at that instant. It was a phenomena that the late Spaulding Gray called "a perfect moment."

Needless to say, that show was replete with perfect moments, and it still stands as one of the high points of my life. Because the show happened as I was winding up my baccalaureate studies, and because of the utter perfection of the experience, I often refer to the concert as 'my graduation present from God.'

Sometimes — though not often — I'm even joking when I say it.

Flash forward 17 years.

I learned a few months ago that Sir James Paul McCartney was coming to Nashville, my concert city of preference, and the closest he had ever come to the home of your humble author. After coming down from the ceiling, I told several people that I didn't care what seats I had; I just "wanted to be in the building." I said this a lot over the weeks leading up to tickets going on sale, almost like a mantra. Every time I said it, thought, there was also an always-unspoken second part — "... but I also want really good seats."

At the same time, my daughter was equally excited about seeing one of her musical idols, one Adam Lambert. Naturally, the pre-sale for that show went on sale on that same day in early June as the McCartney show. The thankless task of juggling Ticketmaster orders fell to my wife, and she had a very tense morning indeed. I say thankless, because after finding out the location of our seats, the first words out of my mouth weren't "Brava," "Good show," or even "I love you." What I said was, and I quote, "Wow - we're really far back there, aren't we?"

And to be fair, there are only a few hundred people — at most a thousand — who can say they are farther from the stage than we are. That doesn't matter; this is among the more ungrateful things I've ever said in a long history of saying ungrateful things. It wasn't until that moment that I realized the existence of the unspoken second part of the mantra "…but I also want really good seats."

It continued to be a very tense morning; I had to convince my wife that I was, indeed, very thankful to have tickets, and very grateful for her efforts. Thankfully, she believed me, eventually. She then turned to getting tickets to Adam Lambert. We had planned to go as a family, in part so that we could experience the show, but also in part because we wanted to watch our daughter enjoying the show. And after many mighty struggles with the ticket gods, and some timely assistance from a friend, we were able to obtain two, individual tickets.

Elsewhere, other battles were raging. My best friend and musical partner in crime was having problems with McCartney tickets of his own. We had long known that we wouldn't be sitting together this trip because we needed three tickets each, and the limit was four tickets per sale. So sadly, we wouldn't be sitting together. But he came very close to not being able to get tickets at all; it is only because of a friend's generosity that he and his wife were able to obtain seats, but that is a tale for another time.

By noon, it was over. No, we did not have great seats to Paul McCartney. We did not even have good seats. But we had seats.

I would not be able to watch my daughter seeing one of her musical heroes. But she would get to see him.

My best friend and I would not be able to sit together and share the experience of seeing one of our musical heroes, as we had 17 years earlier. But we were each going.

Since that day in June, I've had a snatch of a Rolling Stones song in my head — ironic, for a lifelong Beatles fan like me.

You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes you might find you get what you need.

We leave for Nashville in a few hours. Look for a full report soon.