McCartney Still a Superstar (Washington D.C. 1976)

 

Backstage in Maryland 

McCartney Still a Superstar

By Jeannette Smyth

The Washington Post

May 18, 1976

    Paul McCartney was the first Beatle to take LSD 11 years ago and turn on a generation. Saturday night, 10 years after the Beatles' last tour of America, six years after the Beatles broke up, Paul McCartney introduced the girl he married to more than 22,000 roaring fans at the Capitol Center in suburban Maryland. 

    "I'd like to introduce you to my missus," he said. "My better half, Linda!"

     Oh, Paul, you broke a million hearts now approaching the shady side of 30 when you married her. The times have settled down now, and so have you. There's nothing like the chagrin an aging hippie feels to know that the Woodstock generation is fighting flab instead of a revolution. Nothing like the wrinkles one feels deepening in one's brow as one looks around the Capitol Center full of Beatle Maniacs, and baby, you still have their number after all these years. 

    They first heard you when they were six years old, but Paul, they'll never boogie like we did. They didn't have to flaunt their dope the other night because nobody would arrest them anyway. They didn't even dance. The only sign that there ever was a revolution was that long-haired girl in a pant suit integrating the men's room. "The lines in the women's bathrooms were too long. They're all in there, combing their hair," growls one young woman.

     Rock and roll is dead, along with the innocents who died in Vietnam, Height- Ashbury, and Mississippi. The only people who are outlaws enough to dance well anymore, the only people under 30 you can trust are the desperados at gay discos. 

    McCartney, who grossed $200,000 Saturday night for himself, his wife, and his new band Wings, doesn't think rock and roll is dead. "No way," he said in a dressing room interview after the concert, in which he was on stage for an extraordinary two hours. "It's good." He said, " It's been through a bit of a dip, and now it's better. I think people just like music: rock and roll, reggae, soul, funk, and the R&B. It looked a bit rough at times," he conceded.

     McCartney is one of the few '60s superstars who is still alive, still making money, still a superstar. "There are still definitely other stars," said Ben Fong-Torres, veteran editor of Rolling Stone Magazine, in a recent interview. "But not the phenomenon. There are no heroic statures of The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin. They signaled new things. They went to the edge or over it, and signaled a new lifestyle."

     For McCartney, at least, who has settled down to domesticity. Sales are good. Nearly 25% of Britain's top 100 single records are old Beatles tunes. Capitol Records plans to recycle 26 old Beatles hits and an album to be released in tune with what a spokesman calls "the largest campaign in the history of the music business." Wing's latest album sold a million copies. 

    "They don't scream like they used to," McCartney said when asked how this generation of American audiences, differed from those 10 years ago. "But when I looked out at the audience tonight, they were going potty out there, weren't they? This was a crazy audience, one of the craziest we've had on this tour."

     How crazy could they be, baby? Only two were treated for fainting at the first aid station. Only 11 arrests were made, most for possession of alcohol, one for interfering with an officer. No drug possession arrests. Even though the Prince George's County Police doubled their usual rock concert patrol from 8 to 15 officers, "it was relatively quiet for a concert that size," said a police spokeswoman.

     Yes, some of them waited all night to get First Come First Served festival seating. Yes, they stampeded the barricades down in front of the stage where McCartney could see them. They elbowed each other to catch a glimpse of him. "He's the most important person I'll probably ever see," as one Woodstock generation oldie put it.

     Up in the stands, they loved him, giving him standing ovations and screaming, but they didn't dance on their seats or in the aisles. If that's the pottiest crowd he's had, then this is the oldest generation of young people we've ever seen. 

    "People don't want to lose their seats," said a 17-year-old Alexandria girl with braces and jeans who asked that her name not be used. "Most of them are drunk or stoned, and besides, people don't dance at rock concerts, not really." Yellow Submarine was the first Beatles tune she remembers hearing 10 years ago when she was in the second grade.