Paul McCartney warms up before returning to Santa Barbara

Santa Barbara – “In this next song,” said Paul McCartney, “we would like Cantes.”

Oh, this was the one?

At an hour or so in his concert on Friday night at Santa Barbara Bowl, basically the backyard of someone for the standards of the old Beatle, McCartney had already obtained the ability of the ability to join a lot of timers, including “I just saw a face”, “Love me do”, “Jet”, “Getting Better,” Lady Madonna ” My life “”. ” “” “” “.

But for Sir Paul, even (or especially) at 83, there is always a way to take a higher audience.

Then, when his keyboardist displayed the kind lick of the song, McCartney and his band criticized a rapid and nervous interpretation of “Ob-la-Di, Ob-la-Da” that did not leave anyone but up and scream about the sweet certainty of life.

Paul McCartney and his band.

(Michael Owen Baker / for the Times)

A best selling sale as soon as it was announced, Friday's program was a kind of warming concert before launch next week of the last stage of McCartney's Got Back World, which began to cross the world in 2022 and will resume on Monday night at Palm Desert after a nine -month break.

Along the way is playing sands and stadiums, but this hillside amphitheater has capacity for only 4,500 or so; To make the night even more intimate, fans had to block their phones in small bags along the way to the place. (The presence of several cameras that rose in cranes suggested that McCartney was filming the concert with some unstalled purpose).

“That is our change of costume of the night,” he said in a moment after taking off his jacket, and in fact, this was a slightly cut version of the striking multimedia production that brought the Sofi stadium three years ago. That night in 2022, he played three dozen melodies for 2½ hours; On Friday he made a dozen less, not “maybe I'm amazed”, without “band in the race”, in approximately an hour and 45 minutes.

The advantage of smallness, of course, was that you could really hear What McCartney and his lifelong support band were doing there: the vocal harmonies of folline fires in “I have seen a face”, the propulsive rhythm that “Get Back” drives, the chaos barely organized from a “Helter Skelter” barely organized.

On the other hand, that means that the monitoring of these details is why someone appeared in Santa Barbara.

Although he dropped an album of new solo songs in 2020, McCartney has been quite deep in the nostalgia mode since the launch of 2021 of the beloved “get back” docuseries by Peter Jackson. The machine will tend this fall with a new book about its years with wings and an expanded edition of the “Anthology” series of the mid 90s of the Beatles; Next year, a documentary about the era of the Wings of Director Morgan Neville; In 2028, director Sam Mendes will present the four separate biopics he is doing about each beatle, with Paul Mescal in the role of McCartney.

Everything that looks back can make even a devout fan to take the legend in front of them in the flesh; Instead of overwriting memories with new information, the mind full of myths can train to do the opposite (especially when the owner of that mind has disbursed hundreds of dollars for a concert ticket).

However, you have to deliver it to McCartney, whose face carried a silver stubble dust on Friday: as predetermined as this audience was to have a good time, it was used in the energy of a musician making decisions from minute to minute.

He opened the show with a spicy version of the “help” of the Beatles! “What Internet experts say that I had not touched in concert since 1990, then he followed him with one of his most extravagant solo melodies in the” Coming Up “theme of the album”, which he judged with a little of the theme of Henry Mancini “Peter Gunn.”

After a “Love Me” flirtatious, he asked the women of the crowd to “give me Beatles Scream”, then nodded with sound approval. “Imagine trying to play with that,” he added.

“Jet” had unpleasant arrogance and “I have a feeling” a sexy strut; “Living and letting die,” meanwhile, it was as garbage as I would expect.

McCartney said in motion if family stories about meeting Jimi Hendrix and about his mother who comes to him in the dream that inspired “Let It Be”; He also told one that he had never heard of ruining a performance of “Blackbird”, “Many changes,” he said about the complicated part of the song guitar, in front of Meryl Streep. Because his wife, Nancy, was in the house, he said, played “My Valentine's Day”, a tasty piano ballad, anyone that Nancy had probably changed with pleasure for “Junior's Farm” or “driving my car.”

But then, what was that option but a commitment to the circumstances of the moment?