Sir Paul still packs ’em in

ARLINGTON, Texas — This photograph sets the stage — pun more or less intended — for a comment I want to make about the durability of a certain genre of music.

It looks down on the infield at Globe-Life Park, a baseball stadium where the Texas Rangers play hardball. All those people — tens of thousands of them — gathered Friday night to hear a musician play some music that helped raise a generation of folks … including yours truly.

Sir Paul McCartney returned to Texas and played music for nearly three hours before that rockin’, rollin’ and rollicking crowd.

You know who this fellow is, of course. He once was one-fourth of a band we remember as The Beatles. He still plays his share of Beatles hits, prompting the most spine-tingling sing-alongs one can imagine.

It’s that music that holds up. It is timeless. It is eternal. It will still be on people’s minds and in their hearts long after Sir Paul has left us. Two of his dear friends, John Lennon and George Harrison, already have departed, but Sir Paul took moments to honor them both — again to raucous cheers from the crowd that filled the stadium.

There was a wonderful moment, too, when Sir Paul recognized the difference between fan interest in Beatles songs vs. non-Beatles songs he performs — and last night he performed a healthy share of songs he has recorded since the breakup of the world’s greatest band. He said that when he plays Beatles tunes, fans light up the venue with light from their cell phones; when he plays something else, he said the venues turn into a “black hole.”

What do you suppose happened when he played the next song, which happened to be a non-Beatles tune: The place lit up with cell phone lights. It was, shall we say, fantastic! Of course, Sir Paul thanked us for “proving me wrong.”

It was an amazing evening for those of us old enough to remember hearing that music for the first time. I was a teenager when The Beatles burst on the scene. And for a time Friday night while sitting in the nosebleed section of Globe-Life Park enjoying the evening with one of my sons, I felt young again.

Thank goodness for jumbo-sized screens that allowed us to see what Sir Paul was doing on that faraway stage.

He was transporting us back in time to an era when music meant seemingly everything to us. He packed a large athletic venue with fans — who were of widely varying ages — and treated them to music that will stand the test of time for as long as there are those able to listen to it.

Well done, Sir Paul.