Another Review Of James' Liverpool Gig

Here is a fan reviiew of te show

http://newbeatsmedia.com/blog/reviews/gig/james-mccartney-plays-liverpool-o2-academy/

James McCartney plays Liverpool


by chris on March 5, 2010

It can’t be easy to open your UK tour in Liv­er­pool, when your last name is McCart­ney… but not THAT McCart­ney. But still, it felt only right that James McCart­ney should kick of his first head­line tour in the city that cre­ated the most famous group in musi­cal history.

James was quick to acknowl­edge this con­nec­tion, as he ded­i­cated the first song, New York Times to his Liv­er­pool fam­ily, of which his uncle Mike McCart­ney was present backstage. Three more rock­ing songs fol­lowed, until he paused long enough to say that the next song was ded­i­cated to George Har­ri­son, whose birth­day it was that night, before launch­ing into My Friend a very mov­ing tribute.

Not only very adapt on the gui­tar, James switched to the piano for the next cou­ple of songs, one of them bear­ing quite a resem­blance to Lady Madonna, and def­i­nitely dri­ving the point home, that this guy is influ­enced by The Bea­t­les, but also Oasis, Blur and The Cure made their pres­ence felt in the arrange­ment of his songs. His musi­cal back­ground shines through Although he is very good at writ­ing melodic tunes, I find he some­times over­did the instru­men­ta­tion, and thus, some­what ruin­ing a song.

He also played a song on the man­dolin, called I Love You Dad which was very sweet and mov­ing. He closed the 12 song set with Angel then came back for an encore, play­ing a bril­liant cover of Neil Young’s Old Man and Wings Of A Light­est Weight that may have been co-written with McCart­ney senior.
He some­times seemed to strug­gle to com­mu­ni­cate with the audi­ence, keep­ing ban­ter short and only announc­ing the name of the next song, lack­ing the flair of his old man. That was until some guy in the audi­ence shouted out in typ­i­cal Liv­er­pudlian fash­ion ”Go on Jim lad!” after this, he seemed more relaxed and smiling.

At the end of the evening, he said his thanks to the audi­ence, announc­ing, ”You are a heav­enly audi­ence. You’ve been the best audi­ence in the whole wide world” and with a shy lit­tle wave, he was gone.



Writ­ten by Ida Ottesen