Awesome Paul McCartney show in Toronto sparks a Beatles/travel thought

August 09, 2010

Awesome Paul McCartney show in Toronto sparks a Beatles/travel thought

Bopping to Back in the USSR and swaying to The Long and Winding Road at Paul McCartney's spectacular show at the Air Canada Centre last night prompted a thought (always dangerous) about Beatles tunes and travel.

There are, obviously, a billion point three million great Beatles tunes. But, when you really get down to it, there aren't all that many that are purely about travel. Paul and John and George and Ringo, as Paul points out on the Anthology DVD, sang a lot about love and peace and not so much about other stuff when you get right down to it.

Still, I managed to think up ten tunes, and there are others, that at least have a travel component to them; be they about a particular place or a means of transportation or an actual trip, so here's my early-morning-only-one-cup-of-coffee-sue-me-if-name-them-wrong Beatles travel titles.

1. Drive My Car (performed last night; beep-beep-mm-beep, yeah)

2. Back in the USSR (a classic)

3. Blue Jay Way (a George Harrison song about LA)

4. Yellow Submarine (a no-brainer)

5. Strawberry Fields Forever (about Liverpool)

6. Penny Lane (even more about Liverpool)

7. One After 909 (one of the first songs John and Paul wrote together)

8. The Long and Winding Road (much better without the strings Phil Spector added on the Let it Be LP)

9. Ticket to Ride (great lead guitar work by Paul in that one)

10. Two of Us (an underrated, jaunty tune with lots of charm)

Day Tripper didn't quite make the list, as it's not really about travel except for the title. And I didn't include She's Leaving Home as I've always found it too saccharine. So there. I guess you could suggest "All Together Now," that entirely silly but fun little ditty on Yellow Submarine where they sing "sail a ship," but that's a stretch.

If you include McCartney's solo stuff, you could of course add a million tunes, including Band on the Run and Jet and the wonderfully presented Mull of Kintyre....

Posted by Jim Byers at 10:02:24 AM in Music, toronto, Travel

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We saw the show last night at The ACC..It was the best show we have ever seen. Sir Paul is the master at his craft in the music world...bar none!!!!

Posted by: Geoff | August 09, 2010 at 12:19 PM

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Travel Blog by Jim Byers

Jim Byers is the Star's Travel Editor. He has been writing travel stories for more than a decade, covered five Olympic Games and spent years covering the Blue Jays, the Toronto Raptors and the PGA Tour. He's been everywhere from Bonavista to Vancouver Island, as well as China, Hong Kong, Australia, the Caribbean, Thailand, Mexico, Tahiti, New Zealand, Vietnam, a dozen countries in Europe and just about every major city in the U.S. Okay, he was only in Liechtenstein for a couple hours in a rental car and his only visit to New Orleans was when he was 12, but you get the picture.

August 09, 2010