McCartney Returns in Bubbles & Strobes (Cincinnatti 1976)

 McCartney Returns in Bubbles and Strobes

By Steve Konicki

Dayton Daily News

May 28, 1976

    Paul McCartney has the rare kind of magic that seems to follow him from recording studio to concert hall, almost unnoticed. It turns everything he does into a golden circus.

     Thursday night at Cincinnati's Riverfront Coliseum proved no exception. The mere appearance on stage of McCartney and his band Wings brought a three-minute standing ovation. There were swooning teenage girls, a barrage of balloons, fluorescent glow lights, and 1000s of soap bubbles that rose from beneath the stage. 

    Some in the audience of 30,000, it seemed, had been waiting to see McCartney since June 1966 when the Beatles played their last concert together at San Francisco's Candlestick Park. A teenage girl in a white halter top asked a friend named Debbie, "Do you think he'll do, 'Michelle'? What about 'Band on the Run'?" Though the teenager was barely seven in 1966, she seemed straight out of the days when what was known as Beatlemania swept the land.

     "Oh, Debbie, I can't stand it," she said.

     Wings responded to the energy of the moment and broke into an impressive medley of "Venus and Mars", "Hollywood Bowl," and "Jet." McCartney, in a black and white satin cowboy suit, carefully directed the band from center stage in front of his bass guitar amplifier and from his elevated grand piano. The surprisingly tasteful use of the standard for a rock concert-- smoke bombs and strobes was complemented by a newer gizmo-- a blue laser beam.

    The music, not the flash, ruled, however.

     The teenage girl begged to know whether McCartney would play any old Beatles songs. "Debbie, is this going to be it?" she said. "Debbie, this is going to be it, isn't it?"  But Wings played the Beatles' "Blackbird", and although Debbie never told her friend whether this was "it," the teenager complained no more.

     Skipping skillfully from the Beatles era to the Wings era, the band allowed the pace to slow only briefly. The second and third standing ovations came back-to-back after McCartney's rendition of "Lady Madonna" and "The Long and Winding Road."

     Linda McCartney's harmonies blended perfectly with her husband's voice. Denny Laine bounced from his rhythm guitar to the bass and then to a piano, filling in wherever he was needed. Laine also provided some rock star hip wiggles.

     McCartney participated in much of the stage craziness. He egged the crowd into a roaring applause at the end of each song, while playing his current top 40 bonanza "Silly Love Songs." He sighted a balloon falling to the stage and kicked it back into the audience without missing a beat on his bass guitar, a feat that brought enthusiastic applause from the audience.

     In a more intimate moment, McCartney sat alone on stage with his six-string Ovation guitar. He drove the crowd to near madness when he said, "See if you remember this one."  He began the classic Lennon McCartney song "Yesterday."

     Several songs, two encores and one near miss with a bottle rocket later McCartney was gone. Daytonian Steve Klein, 24, had waited for nine hours with his date since 11:30am Thursday to get a seat to the 8pm show. "Hell with the Beatles getting back together," Klein said. "McCartney is making it on his own. He doesn't need those other guys." Dorothy Garrett, 19, Klein's date agreed.