Cutting class to spend a weekend with your 73-year-old grandfather isn’t most people’s idea of a typical Friday night. But when the plan involves seeing one of two surviving Beatles, you don’t argue. You pack up and go.
The Beatles music has always been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, thanks in large part to my grandfather. I would go as far as to say that he is the catalyst for my deep love and adoration for music. When I was little, my parents would drop me off at his house in the town of Poughquag, New York, where inside, right above the Casio keyboard, hung a massive framed photo of the four lads clad in full psychedelic attire, a press shot from the Sgt. Pepper’s sessions. Maybe a foreshadow of what was to come.
So, when the time came for Paul McCartney to make his long awaited return back to New York, there was no question who I wanted next to me. My grandfather and I piled into his rickety old Honda and headed westbound on the New York State Thruway, through chilly November wind, toward a night yet unseen.
Touching down inside the hockey arena after 6 grueling hours of driving felt almost dreamlike. Shoulder to shoulder in a sea of white hair and overpriced tour shirts, I felt more sardine than man. I might’ve been the youngest person in that entire arena, but truth be told I was buzzing harder than anyone. That energy exploded the second Paul walked onstage, bowed graciously, and tore into a roaring rendition of “Help!” It might as well have blown the roof off of the venue.
For the next three hours McCartney did it all. Beatles, Wings, all time classics. It was a spectacle to say the least, fitting for a man who is essentially Beethoven reincarnated . Song after song rolled in, each one bringing back memories of yesteryear. The best was yet to come.
In the midst of a rendition of Something; a tribute to the late George Harrison, my face started to heat up. I had never cried at a concert before. Maybe it was the weight of hearing these songs live, maybe it was the memories attached, but I have never felt that way before at a concert. I glanced over at my grandfather, and all he could say was, “Wow.”
Wow was right.
Wow was how I felt walking out of the arena, while the cold Buffalo wind smacked my face and made my nose run. Wow is how I still feel more than a week later. To me it was more than a concert. Maybe that’s why young people still love music, for the sounds, and the memories attached. Sometimes it turns an ordinary weekend into something you’ll never forget, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.
-Kyle Catavero