Nostalgia is not the same as melancholy, argues philosopher Clara Ramas, because the former does not have to be much more than longing for what is not here while the latter is what the ancients called 鈥渁n ailment of the soul.鈥� Western humans began to 鈥渇all ill with melancholy鈥� -psychiatry would discover a varied description of pathologies for these ailments much later- with modernity, because in order to suffer from regrets about time, it must stop being circular and become a vector of progress, so that what we trample on cannot return. Therefore, one longs for what is not here, it is not possible to miss what has not gone or what returns, so the musical ceremony this Monday at the WiZink Center in Madrid, overflowing, could not be strictly classified as a ritual of nostalgia, because even in his eighties, the one who was present in body and voice -vulnerable, fragile, but finely tuned even in the high ranges- was none other than the Beatle of good feelings, the survivor, Paul McCartney.
A long life is not the shortest path to becoming a rock legend; in fact, it is the opposite of a shortcut. However, for the composer from Liverpool, his longevity has granted him a rich repertoire that allows him to wander back and forth in a catalog shared by the audience, without the need to constantly rely on appeals to his own anthems from the Beatles' miracle years, and to confidently lean on his later songbook, which is more rooted in the geography of rock classicism than in the pop manners avant la lettre of the Fab Four. Therefore, last night's performance, with a 鈥渉int of Spanish鈥� as a courtesy to a devoted audience, was a memorial service without the funeral temptations of year-end farewells.
The concert was a memorial Mass without funeral temptations at the end of the year
In that certainty, the protagonist seemed to be entrenched, opening the recital with the succession of Can鈥檛 Buy My Love, Junior Farm, Letting Go, and Drive My Car. Backed by Bryan Ray and Rusty Anderson on guitars, Paul Wickens on keyboards, and Abe Laboriel Jr. on drums, the idol performed comfortably, well supported in vocals, enveloped in a robust, sober, and festive sound, without a hint of fatigue or taxidermic cult, and vibrated with the occasional additions of the Hot City Horns brass ensemble.
McCartney played the role of what he has always been: the cheerful and unorthodox legend of music, surely the greatest blessed icon of pop-rock, far removed from the curse that haunted, in very different ways, the musical pantheon, and, why not say it, vice versa, as many saints lived in pursuit of that dark condition that seems to enhance the importance of descents into hell. An antithesis of John Lennon, therefore, and of many others with whom his status as an equal was questioned due to the well-known 19th-century prestige of artistic curses. McCartney, with the face of a good boy, thus shone brightly at the piano, when the concert seemed to be based on a framework of genuine, slightly sentimental joy. In this way, he opened the part of the concert dedicated to the inevitable Liverpool quartet, a temple that we entered by passing under the Romanesque arch of the group's first composition, In spite of all danger, and then moving through the Gothic vault of Love me do, the first recording they made with George Martin at Abbey Road.
The singer-songwriter and composer Paul McCartney
Given that the pop crafts of the house do not traverse anger and barely darkness, the country tempo dancer of Dance tonight was the gift that followed, along with the privilege of hearing McCartney for a moment with only the company of an acoustic guitar, elevated on a sudden altar, fifteen meters above the audience, to perform the warm twilight sounds of Blackbird and the sentimental Here today, dedicated to 鈥渕y great friend John,鈥� as he meant to say in Spanish. With Now and then, the recital closed the prayer for those who left and returned to the seasons of joy that characterize McCartney's infectious 4/4 staccato compositions in Lady Madonna, once again with the Hot City Horns on stage.
McCartney closed the concert pursuing ecstasy with 'Hey Jude', the anthem of a country that really exists called '苍补苍补苍补苍谩'
From there, there was a back and forth spanning decades, with Sargeant Peppers hovering over, dedicating Something to George Harrison in a moment of emotional epiphany at the WiZink that had to be corrected by returning to the revelry of Obladi-Oblada. The audience, a cross-section of the population very much of the moment 鈥搕hat is to say, no more nor less aged than the country鈥� could barely sit still from there until the end, where McCartney traversed some of the stations of the miracle, such as Get Back, Let It Be (back at the piano), Live and Let Die (the pyrotechnic moment of the night, in which we could see the Houses of Parliament in London blow up for the delight, we suppose, of Guy Fawkes) and chasing a final ecstasy with, now yes, that anthem, Hey Jude, of a truly existing country called 苍补苍补苍补苍谩.
Clara Ramas asserts that the new melancholic ends up loving the loss more than the fetish, finding more pleasure and moral reason - authority and power, that is - in the celebration of their own wound than in the futile pursuit of what is gone, which is replaced by an inanimate object, a placebo for a feeling of self-indulgence. There was therefore no melancholy in the long two-and-a-half-hour McCartney recital, cheerful, elderly, and proud possessor of a rather unusual title: the blessed Beatle.
