Sir Paul McCartney, Music, and Me.

The first album I listened to on repeat was Rubber Soul. The homemade ceramic plaque in my kitchen proclaimed, “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one- I hope someday you join us, and the world will be as one.”

My dad with my siblings and me

Framed pictures of John, Paul, George, and Ringo watched over us, and every single room in had a guitar tucked innocuously in a corner. 

“They were the first band to play stadiums.” My father would say. “They couldn’t even hear themselves- they didn’t have the equipment bands have now, but they were pitch perfect every time.” Or “Paul, John, and George were all talented enough to front a band of their own, but because they played together they became more than they ever could have alone.”

I was taught to view the world through the filter of their songs. “Love really is all you need,” my mom would say as she and my father danced around the kitchen, and I marveled that they could still love one another so much after thirty years of marriage. “Dad and I lived in a shack when we first got married – with a chemical toilet!” 

When I went away to college, I would walk to my classes with my headphones in, and when I listened to "Strawberry Fields" or "Come Together" I’d feel less alone, as if I was home again, waking up on a Saturday morning to my mother making pancakes and singing (only slightly) off key.

When my father was diagnosed with intestinal cancer, I spent my winter break in his hospital room, reading the biggest book I could find: a Beatles Biography that went song by song through their entire life’s work: it was big enough to function effectively as a doorstop.

My dad died four months after the diagnosis, and the only album I listened to was Let It Be, on repeat, for another four months. It was the only thing I wanted to hear, the only songs that seemed to stand in memorial to him, a testament to my upbringing that soothed and enraged me all at the same time.

After my father died, I found myself drifting away from music. It became the background on the radio, or the playlist at the party: fun to dance to but emotionless, bland. For a year and a half my world was silent, devoid of a soundtrack

Then something incredible happened: I fell in love for the first time. It felt fated, like I had found my destiny: every moment came together to create magic, pure and simple. The night we met, we stayed up till sunrise, talking about everything and anything and at some point we spoke about music.

My love and I, Fall 2010

“Music is the truth.” He said, and I agreed, explaining my childhood, my parents, my father, the life I’d lived before. My entire existence was colored by this: before he died and after becoming two distinctly different lifetimes.

As we spent more time together I marveled at the talent my new love possessed: his miraculous singing voice, the depth of emotion in the lyrics he wrote. It became very clear: I’d fallen in love with someone whose world was centered on music, just as I thought I’d lost that part of my life forever.

Little by little, he introduced me to new bands and artists that I didn’t know existed, because they weren’t on the radio, they weren’t part of the corporate music machine, which has commercialized art and made it dull, bland, boring.

I realized great music was still being created; new albums were released every month that gave new meaning to my daily life.

I also began attending the shows that my boyfriend’s band was playing, and for the first time I saw live music regularly, weekly. Watching him on stage was like seeing a bird fly for the first time after watching it walk on the ground for weeks: a moment of clarity – that’s what you’re meant to be doing.

Eventually we decided to attend Bonnaroo, and suddenly what was color became Technicolor as I witnessed thousands of people flock to the middle of nowhere Tennessee to feel something, to experience a moment of magic. I came home changed, with a renewed sense of what I had been missing since my dad died three years earlier: music is good for the soul.

Waiting for Sir Paul

This year the lineup for Bonnaroo came out and to my great excitement and surprise, Paul McCartney was headlining. We bought our tickets immediately. As the festival grew closer, I put Sir Paul out of my mind and began to focus on the other artists that would be there. I wanted to hear the songs of my childhood, sung live by the man who wrote them, more than anything, but I was terrified that it wouldn’t live up to my expectations. Would he play Beatles songs or insist on doing Wings? Would he be a novelty act, like the Beach Boys were the year before, an old dog brought out to do old tricks?

On the day of his show, my boyfriend, two of my best friends, and myself went out to the stage six hours in advance to sit and wait for entry into the pit. Two thousand people would be let in, while another 88,000 would stretch out behind us. It was sunny and hot, unbearably so, but we sat and waited just the same. As the hours passed I continued to avoid thinking about what I was about to see. It would be easier, I reasoned, if I kept my expectations low.

We were finally allowed into the pit, packed tightly and herded like cattle to the slaughter. We milled around, excited and anxious and fried by the sun. The lights turned on, and the show began.

Sir Paul showing us a little piece of music history

It would be an understatement to say that the three-hour performance that followed was incredible. Life changing would be a better word for it, or mind blowing, perhaps. Maybe I should quote Rolling Stone Magazine and who called it “the single greatest Bonnaroo headlining performance in the festival’s 12-year history, as it was moment after awesome moment of fever-pitched collective transcendence.”

That description is quite true, but it leaves so many things out. I have never felt so many varied emotions in one live performance. To see Paul McCartney himself sing “Black Bird” “Yesterday”, “Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Dah”, “Helter Skelter”, “Paperback Writer”, “Eleanor Rigby”, “Hey Jude”, “Something” (in tribute to George Harrison) “Lady Madonna”, and more from only 20 feet away was like realizing that for just a few hours, I could fly. I experienced something I had thought I would never have the opportunity to experience, something that had seemed impossible.

So many thoughts bounced around my head, even as I gave myself over to the music entirely. I was at once overwhelmed with grief at the thought that I would never get to talk to my dad about this night, never get to share this experience with him, and yet elated at the knowledge that he would be so thrilled, so happy for me, so ecstatic that music had once again become one of the most important things in my life. I thought about my mother, brother, and sister and the pain we had endured when he died, and the great joys we had since experienced without him as our family expanded through the birth of nieces and a nephew. 

The elated crowd, a new generation of Beatles fans 

I silently wept tears of joy and sadness. I took my boyfriend’s hand, and felt so grateful that I had found my counterpart, my partner, without whom I wouldn’t be standing there.  I looked back at my best friends and felt blessed to have met two other people who I could spend 24 hours a day with for a week and enjoy every minute, who both understood the magic we were witnessing on that stage.

On top of those feelings was the realization that nearly 90,000 of my peers stretched out behind me, all engaged with the performance of a man who had been elevated to near godlike status by our mutual upbringing on his incredible songs. An entire generation who had been born after the Beatles had already broken up, after John Lennon was already assassinated, who sang the words to every song, a silent agreement: your music transcends generations.

Throughout all of it, I was struck by the feeling that my whole life so far was a build up to this moment, every choice, every hardship, had brought me here, to see a living legend sing me the songs that have been everything to me, for my entire life. With 88,000 other people who feel the same.

The four of us in front of the Bonnaroo Arch on our last night

After my return to the real world, the inevitable question was asked, over and over, “What was your favorite show at Bonnaroo?” If I thought I could, I would try to explain that it was less a show than a renewal of my soul, a moment of peace in a tumultuous existence, a  “collective transcendence”- but that is not something that can be explained. So I just smile and say, “Paul McCartney was mind-blowing. You should really come to Bonnaroo next year!” I know my dad would approve.