The Royal Dublin Society arena's main use is for an annual horse jumping and dressage competition that's held in August each year. I got a hint of this as we finally entered from the road (possibly Anglesea Rd., but don't make me swear to it), and passed long ranks of roomy horse stalls. Beyond them was a nice open air grassed square where the bar and other concessions had set up. And beyond that, a large elongated oval (shaped more like a giant paper clip than anything else) which give plenty of room for the horses to romp around. There's a covered stand on one long side, and temporary stands had been set up in front of the permanent stand, and also to one side of the center of the oval. The stage was halfway along one long side of the oval, and the superstructure looked about three or four stories tall to me, and there was no seating in front of it--just a large mass of people standing on a protective cover over the grass.

I was in the covered stand, and the view was ... I'm sorry...distinctly symbolic as well as lovely. In the middle ground-- beyond the enclosure behind the stage-- was a very large church, gray stone floating in the trees --it might have been the better part of a block long, and its spires were austere, like the teeth of a comb. Frankly, from that angle, it was a forbidding building. But beyond it, and past the trees of the rest of the city of Dublin was a range of low, rounded hills, which were blue and lilac under a mildly cloudy sky. (The sky rained briefly on the assembled multitudes about 7:05, but quit again within ten minutes. The Irish simply put up a few umbrellas, then furled them again, quite undisturbed.)

But the symbolism really spoke to me that night--the hills of Ireland had been there before the church, and before the Beatles, and were patiently waiting for whatever hills wait for, and the excitement, the noise, the fireworks (literally) were in the foreground, on that stage. The church seemed ... irrelevant, except as a nice neutral shape in the landscape. The Beatles are still bigger than Jesus, but amazingly Christ-like, I think (for rock stars).

The pre-show had to be done entirely on the stage, but the cameras covered it as best they could on the three large screens that were angled so everybody would get a good view. For this show, there were giant inflated flowers to go with the blue and white balloons. And the screen show must have been almost completely redone for the outdoor shows Paul has been doing in Rome and Moscow and now Ireland. I hadn't seen much of the shifting patterns of colors that accompanied a lot of songs. And being outdoors, under that tall canopy made it possible to: TURN BOB HUNT LOOSE! (If you have the DVD, you remember Bob, introducing himself and stating flatly "...and I'm the pyrotechnician for the tour.") He must have been bored with the puny amount of pyrotechnics he could get into the show in all those enclosed arenas, because, come LILD, he set off everything he had--plumes of white stars going straight up, fire pots, and smoke, and I loved it!

Paul was in fine voice--it must have irked him to put it on a leash after he lost it entirely, but his voice had been cleared for takeoff again by the time he got to Ireland. He was, as one critic put it, "fearless in the face of the top note." And the audience was ready, ready, ready. They sang every word of every Beatle song, and lots of other songs too. They were warm, they roared, they waved, they danced, they lit lighters, and Paul and the band quivered, and played harder. I have to grudgingly admit that it is okay to speed Calico Skies up--the song stands up to it (it's another bloody classic), but then, you can do lots of things to McCartney songs, and they will still sound masterly.

When Paul came out near the end and waved a giant flag of Ireland, the audience immediately burst into song, one that seemed to start "Ole ole ole" and went on singing for another verse or so. My Irish companion said it wasn't the national anthem, but a song that's sung at soccer matches. Anyhow, Paul was the local hero that night--the captain of the Irish team of artists, the wandering son come home, and Paul quite deliberately said at the end "See you next time." I don't remember him saying that at any of the earlier concerts, and I could easily imagine him realizing he might have been neglecting such a fine audience as this one, and making up his mind to get back here again when the opportunity presents itself.

For me personally, it was the last manifestation of this magnificent concert that I was going to get to. The final moments are forever in my memory: sitting in that cool soft Irish air, looking out at the giant hearth that was the stage, my eyes delighting in the clear dancing colors on the screens and my ears hearing the triumphal march of Sgt. Pepper, the small figure in the red shirt on stage in the center of everything, and 30,000 other people calling out their entire approval, their love, and their unwillingness to go home. Paul has said that he feels blessed--that he still fancies doing it and that he still can do it. I felt just that, too--blessed.

Update (6/10/03) From Peter Fitzpatrick: