I was lucky to be one of the fortunate people whose hearts were bursting with the love of the Beatles and Paul McCartney and his music Friday night (Sept. 26) at the Santa Barbara Bowl.
In addition to the adoration for the astonishing Sir Paul, we for the rare privilege for being present a much more intimate concert setting with Paul in the Santa Barbara Bowl (4,600 seats) amphitheater under the stars.
Because there was a “No phone” policy, I knew I wasn’t going to get a picture of the concert. I was fine with that. I was going to settle for a simple photo of the marquee.
But by virtue of finally being in exactly the right place at the right time, I had quite an unexpected thrill. I had lined up quite early and so I was close enough to the VIP driveway when suddenly I heard screams. Sir Paul was arriving!
None of the other 300 early birds even moved, but I ran over and amazingly was 15 feet from Paul when I snapped photos of him as he lowered his window to wave to us. It’s a precious moment I won’t forget.
As for the concert – spectacular – the best of the five I had seen with Paul and this band. I am convinced this was due to the incredible intimate feeling of our wonderful Santa Barbara Bowl, this lovely small amphitheater sculpted on a hillside.
The last time I saw Paul there were 56,000 people – no way to connect on that massive scale. Here you could feel energy as Paul and his band connected with the audience right in from of them. The audience felt as one and responded as one – several times everyone leapt to their feet at the same time.
A magical experience. Thanks to the incredible Santa Barbara Bowl Team and Paul McCartney for making this happen.
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Very lucky to have this legend start his tour at the bowl. I got picked to buy tickets but couldn’t find the will to drop $1200 bucks for two seats but I thought about it for sure. If I hadn’t already seen Ringo (also at the Bowl) I probably would have. I’m sure everyone who attended enjoyed the show immensely. Bravo!
Very glad that we’ve already seen him when we weren’t required to fight for tickets and pay stratospheric prices for nosebleed seats. I hear this concert was great….for people who wanted to hustle and fight a lottery system and who had mountains of cash.
Really sad to see what live music has come to, but super glad that I got to hear him and many others back when regular folks were allowed to enjoy these artists.