Time For A Legendary Rockshow!
One of rock’s greatest tours flew around the world and high over Seattle as well!
Paul McCartney’s now legendary world tour in 1976 touched upon Seattle in a couple of fascinating ways! First, let’s catch you up on a bit of Seattle history…
Behold The Majestic KINGDOME!
For those who aren’t from the Pacific Northwest, The Kingdome was Seattle’s entree into the world of professional sports stadiums. Prior to that, the only professional franchise that Seattle had was the infamous “Seattle Pilots” baseball club, which fled the city after one season in amazingly small ballpark that held under 20,000 fans – Sicks Stadium!
Ball Four!
The greatest non-fiction book ever written was “Ball Four”, Pitcher Jim Bouton’s memoir of his wacky year pitching for the Pilots…ultimately a cautionary tale for ANY city that wants a professional sports franchise – the Pilots fled to Milwaukee and became the Brewers after only ONE season – and it happened on April Fool’s Day!
It’s a great story, and you can read all about it HERE:
http://johnrieber.com/2013/09/17/ball-four-baseballs-most-controversial-and-best-book/
So why all the Seattle sports history? Because I was there the night Paul McCartney & Wings SOARED over America in one of the greatest concerts of all time, thanks to the Pilots!
The Pilots / McCartney Connection!
As I said, the Pilots left Seattle in 1970, and the city sued major league baseball. The end result was that Seattle was awarded a new franchise – the Seattle Mariners – as part of the settlement of the lawsuit – and of course the city needed a REAL stadium this time…and The Kingdome was born!
The Kingdome was, at that time it was built, Seattle’s bright new shining star – the city’s way to show it was now world class – able to compete with the finest stadiums in the country…
And of course, it was 1976, and no one was bigger and grander at the time than Paul McCartney! It was inevitable that Macca and Wings would be one of the first bands to play the new Kingdome…
Six years after the breakup of The Beatles, McCartney was the most popular musical artist in the world! Macca was on a roll with a string of smash hit singles like “Maybe I’m Amazed, “My Love”, the James Bond theme “Live And Let Die” and of course the iconic megahit “Band On The Run”…
Wings Over America!
After a smash followup album “Venus & Mars”, Paul McCartney & Wings toured the entire world in 1976 – a victory lap to celebrate their incredible success – and Seattle’s BRAND NEW Kingdome was on the tour!
Here’s Paul on arrival in Seattle – I always loved how Macca would flash the Wings logo – and how unassuming he was and still is – and The Kingdome plays a big part in the legacy of the show!
I was at that Kingdome show – and it was incredible…but the most amazing thing happened BEFORE the show as I was waiting, along with 50,000 other fans, to get in! First, when you were inside the Kingdome, this is what you see looking up: an enormous cement dome – actually very ugly and grey…
Wings Over Seattle!
Unknown to most people was the fact that you could actually go to the top of the dome and then EXIT onto a deck on the roof! Here is a shot of the top of the Kingdome…
As I was waiting to get into the show, I looked up to see Paul and Linda McCartney, along with the rest of Wings, standing on the roof and waving down to the crowd! The crowd went crazy when they recognized him!
Once inside, we got an incredible performance, like this live version of “Band On The Run”:
The documentary “RockShow” was released showing the entire concert, along with lots of bonus features – at least five of the performances were taken from the Kingdome concert – and when you watch it, you can see how great this band was…and how open, endearing and happy Macca is when performing, especially with Linda right there by his side…
The tour was turned into a double live album…which has now been released on CD in a beautiful remastered version, including such classic songs as “Venus And Mars / Rock Show”:
The TRIPLE live album “Wings Over America” came out later that year and went straight to #1 – a great testament to the band – they sounded great…
Goodbye To The Dome!
Wings disbanded three years later, and alas, The Kingdome was destined to follow…the magnificent dome was demolished by implosion on March 26, 2000 – here is that incredible video capturing the end of Seattle’s domed era…
More McCartney!
And of course, Beatles fans know that Paul went out on his own in 1970 amid that acrimonious breakup of The Beatles…
Ram On!
McCartney’s second solo album “RAM” is a masterpiece, recorded by Paul on his farm – in virtual isolation – with only Linda and the kids. It was during the messiest of The Beatle’s legal battles, and Macca’s bitter feud was publicly played out when John Lennon published this scatting parody of McCartney’s RAM cover…
You can read my whole story on this legendary feud by clicking HERE:
You can also go to my main page at “Johnrieber.com” and search “Beatles” or “McCartney” – there are lots more great Beatles stories as well – thanks for reading, let me know what you think!
