Desert Trip October 2016 (Goldenvoice Brings Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Rolling Stones and More to Coachella Site) | Page 4 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

I don’t usually add concert reviews to the forum, but this one seems special to me.

Me, My Mom, and Paul McCartney: From the Iron Curtain to the California Desert

Andrea Domanick
Oct 20 2016, 2:23pm

(I only copied over some of the article.)

Fifty years after she discovered The Beatles at secret listening parties in Communist Hungary, I took my mom to her first music festival at Desert Trip.

My mother first learned English from The Beatles growing up in Communist Hungary in the 1960s. On weekend nights she’d huddle around speakers in friends’ bedrooms and basements, listening to smuggled vinyl and reel-to-reel bootlegs they recorded from Radio Free Europe. They were large, cumbersome things, often warped, always murky, but effective enough to coax a group of otherwise obedient youth into Saturday night subversion.

They couldn’t understand the lyrics, so they made up their own: “Ticket To Ride ” was “Chicka Choo Rye,” “Hard Day’s Night” became “Har Daze Nigh.” “Sheluzyoo yeh ye ye!,” they sang with gusto, and no clue whatsoever. But she loved them, and shrieked along with the girls in the studio audiences just the same. George was her favorite.

The melody was everything. Nobody cared about the lyrics. For that they had Pete Seeger and Joan Baez and Bob Dylan—those condoned by their dear leaders. And so the subversives dubbed “hülyegyerek-frizurás”—which translates, unforgivingly, to “the boys with the retarded haircuts”—were banished to bootleg land. The idea of ever seeing them in person never occurred to her. “They may as well have been on the moon,” she says.

That, 50 years later, she would be watching a Beatle with her daughter at a music festival in Amerika would’ve been beyond science fiction. But it’s where we found ourselves, 130 miles southeast of our home in Los Angeles, at Desert Trip, Macca himself within spitting distance from us in the pit.

Perhaps I’m biased by this bit of family lore, but there’s something about Paul McCartney that makes him feel more massive than his Oldchella counterparts The Rolling Stones, Neil Young, The Who, Roger Waters, and even Bob Dylan. No one says they’re “going to a Paul McCartney concert.” You say you’re “seeing Paul Fuckin’ McCartney.” (emphasis mine)

Of all the artists on the lineup, he’s the only one, with maybe the exception of the newly Nobel-ed Dylan, whose musical accomplishments and accolades alone read like a House Targaryen title: He’s Sir James Paul McCartney , Member of the Order of the British Empire, Macca for Short, Multi-Instrumental Solo Artist and Frontman of Wings, 21-Time Grammy Winner, Two-Time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductee, Oscar Winner, and Author of Some of the Greatest Songs of All Time, Etc. But before any of that, he will always be a Beatle. And The Beatles, perhaps more than any other act represented at Desert Trip, epitomize what the festival both eulogized and elegized: The joy and sorrow of longevity.

On a July morning in 1967, my mom and grandmother packed a suitcase full of summer clothes, told their friends and family they were going on vacation to Vienna, and never came back. Defecting in complete secrecy was the only escape from the abuse of a manic depressive ex-husband, and a country that offered them neither protection nor a future. At one point, they seriously considered moving to Siberia.

While we camp out for McCartney—my mom insists—a pre-show soundtrack of Beatles and Wings songs plays, accompanied by a slideshow of Macca-through-the-years, in case you forgot that Paul McCartney was in The Beatles. He was the festival’s cheesiest act by a mile, all sepia photographs, peace sign projections, and pyrotechnic bombast. He’s also the only artist who can get away with it.

If Dylan deals in philosophy, The Stones in immortality, and Neil Young in authenticity, McCartney deals in hope. He is, as Young would dub him during their surprise duet, the Charlie Chaplin of rock n’ roll: A tragic artist trading in innocence and pathos, defiantly vulnerable and unapologetically fun.

The rock n’ roll success of McCartney’s Desert Trip peers’ was predicated on their ability to not give a damn, but McCartney’s has been the opposite. He’s a fastidious, resilient showman, fine-tuned and rehearsed down to the stage bows, key adjustments, and inter-song banter. If he strains on some high notes, he can still wail for Linda on “Maybe I’m Amazed “—but not without first honoring current wife Nancy on “My Valentine .” He’ll school us all in regret and forgiveness with Lennon homage “Here Today ,” then insist “Now let’s have some fun!” before jumping into the glorified children’s song that is 2013’s “Queenie Eye .” In a life marred by grudges and loss, he’s preserved the Beatles’ self-abbreviated legacy by celebrating the past via the present, whether that’s collaborating with Kanye or playing “Let It Be ” for the umpteenth time, because he knows it might help you do the same.

The Beatles, more than any other musical act, epitomized the soft danger of rock n’ roll—the long embraces and dance floor imperatives that seem preposterously innocent now, but genuinely were innocent then. Their early hits weren’t about the devil or drugs or getting your rocks off. They’re “I Saw Her Standing There ” and “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.” It’s decidedly unpolitical: “Twist And Shout ” became the soundtrack to the ultimate safe rebellion movie of all time, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

But for people like my mom and grandmother, the unpolitical was inherently political. If stolen kisses and holding hands could undermine the state, then what of the sounds that eschewed translation? Watching her update Facebook at the festival, it’s strange to think she also remembers what music sounded like before rock n’ roll: “Kind of crappy homegrown pop with unoffensive lyrics,” she explained. “Rock and roll was entirely different, original, something we could feel in our bones, but not necessarily define.”

McCartney’s brand of hope doesn’t mean everything is going to be OK. It’s that things might get a little bit better, for a little while, and sometimes that’s all we’ve got. It’s that really tiny light we’ve got to hold onto for dear life. For two hours and 30 minutes, my mom got a chance to hold that again.

“We were the first rock n’ roll act to play Red Square,” McCartney recalled towards the end of his set following “Back In The USSR .” “All of the government was seated behind me on stage. The Minister of Defense comes up to me and says, ‘First record I ever bought, ‘Love Me Do .’ Then another one comes up, he says, ‘We learn how to speak English from listening to Beatles songs! ‘Hello! Goodbye!'”

My mom and I look at each other and smile knowingly. I put my arm around her.

“You know, I never thought for a minute, ‘This guy is so old,'” my mom tells my friends and me over coffee the morning after the show. “The music spoke for itself. It overshadowed everything. These songs are as current and good as they were then. It lifted some of the mystery. I don’t have to associate these songs forever with my life 50 years ago. I never thought I could be this close.”

At 9:40 PM, the lights dim, and the disco remix of “Yellow Submarine ” cuts out. The crowd is still, and McCartney strolls out like your next door neighbor fetching the morning paper, a genteel nod and wave to the crowd before slinging on his Hofner.

The twang of “Hard Day’s Night” hits the PAs, and my mother is 15 again. We are all 15 again, or whatever age we are when we first heard The Beatles. Her jaw drops, her hands jump to her face, and she screams. She bounces under the soft glow of the stage lights, and her skin is smooth and radiant; her green eyes, which have never faded as she aged, widen as she gazes upwards; her smile is one I haven’t seen before. She’s beautiful. I imagine her in a friend’s basement, gathered close to the radio, jumping up and down and twisting her hips as she sings along. This time she knows all the words.