Wing Concept Extends Beyond Beatles Magic (Atlanta 1976)

 Wings Concert Extends Beyond Beatles Magic

By Jerry Schwartz & Sally Smith

The Atlanta Constitution

May 19, 1976

    Paul McCartney hammered down the opening three piano chords of "Lady Madonna," and the Omni roared. Until that instant, McCartney and Wings had been cruising through the repertoire of Wings material to an enthusiastic but less than overwhelmed response from the jammed arena, but the instantly recognizable Beatles tune galvanized the 1000s of rock fans at the Omni and showed the unmistakable power the Beatles still exert over rock music nearly a decade after their demise.

     After "Lady Madonna," the Wings concert took flight. There were two more Beatles numbers, but the rest of the material was strictly Wings. There was clearly more power and a heavier rock line in the live performance than the Wings recordings have shown. And that pleased the crowd. 

    Tuesday night was the first of two Atlanta Wings concerts. The second is Wednesday night. Both were sold out within hours after the tickets went on sale.

     The crowd Tuesday night was enormous. The chicly dressed young people began arriving as early as 5:30pm. Three hours later, just before the music began, the crowd had jammed every seat in the Omni and was beginning to spill over into the aisles

    Wings burst onto the stage as clouds of purple smoke whooshed across the platform, and millions of bubbles floated from the ceiling. It was not the only theatrical effect. Flash pots exploded, strobes winked wildly, and a green laser cut patterns through the auditorium as the band performed the title song from the James Bond movie "Live and Let Die."

     But the theatrics were secondary to the music, and the music was crystal clear thanks to an incredibly engineered audio system with the power of 75 awesome 600-watt Crown amplifiers. Every instrument and every vocal could be heard with a clarity unique for rock concerts. Even horn solos, usually drowned in rock concerts, came through perfectly. 

    The middle section of the concert was devoted to numbers performed on an acoustic guitar left alone on stage. McCartney said to the audience, " See if you remember this," and started to sing, " Yesterday, all my troubles seem so far away." And what is perhaps the nearest thing to a classic rock music has produced. After the group did an extended version of "Band on the Run", accompanied by a movie in which the Band on the Run album cover came to life, Wings left, but they were called back by the screaming, jumping audience for two encores. 

    In the audience, opinion was divided on just what Wings' drawing power is.  It is Wings' music alone that would have brought the 1000s to the Omni? Some, like Lisa Cowley of Marietta, said, "I doubt it. It's really McCartney and the Beatles. It's great to see Paul. It would be even better if John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr were here."  But others were there strictly for Wings. "I think McCartney is fantastic. It's not the Beatles that brought me here. It's McCartney," said one young woman. "It's obvious he was the real talent in the Beatles."

     Immediately after the concert, Paul and his wife, Linda, collapsed, flushed and exhausted, in their dressing room backstage. "The reception's been wonderful everywhere," McCartney said, "and we're really pulling together, working tight. It's fine. In fact, when we first set out on the tour, it felt like a holiday. Everybody was so high, but...." He rubbed his eyes and shook his head. "Now the traveling is starting to get to us."

     McCartney was enthusiastic about the future of rock. "I suppose a lot of people do get blase about rock music about the age of 30, but I've always felt that rock was a mating thing, a physical thing, and there's a certain age group that's always going to do that."