These days the words “legend” and “icon” are tossed around pretty freely. Yet few would argue that Sir Paul McCartney fits the bill for both.
At 7:30 p.m. Dec. 3, “The McCartney Years” takes the stage at the Bromeley Family Theater at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford for the second show in the Bradford Creative and Performing Arts Center (BCPAC) season.
Lead singer Yuri Pool takes on the legendary musician in a tribute show unlike others.
“This show not only pays tribute to the songs, but to the man himself,” Pool explained to The Era. “People get drawn back into the 70s and experience what it was like at the height of his career. The band is transformed into the 70s.
“We play the original instruments, we have even the wardrobe and the mannerisms,” he explained. “It’s as close as it’s going to get to the McCartney show.
“A Beatles tribute is more of a theatrical thing,” he said. “They stopped touring in 1966, and they wrote a lot of music after that. When a Beatles tribute band comes along and performs them, they have to invent a scenario of what it might have been like for the Beatles to perform it.”
Yet with “The McCartney Years,” that isn’t necessary. McCartney continued after the Beatles, in Paul McCartney and Wings, and is performing solo still to this day.
“He is a great performer,” Pool said of McCartney. Of the tribute show, Pool added, “The energy the show has was similar to what Paul McCartney did in the 60s and 70s.”
Pool explained how he came to be “Sir Paul” in what has been called the world’s premier McCartney concert experience.
“I started in England performing in a Beatles production there,” he said. “Often I would get people who approached me to say ‘do you guys do any Wings?’ We didn’t because we performed the music of just the Beatles.
“I started looking around and nobody was doing any post-Beatle material,” Pool said. “I thought ‘I guess I’m going to be that guy.’”
He spoke of the popularity of Wings in North America. “People over here didn’t get introduced to the Beatles until well into the 60s. People in North America were catching up and wanted to hear more.
“They stopped touring in 1966,” he said. When McCartney and Wings started touring, it was a hit.
“McCartney after the Beatles went on to pioneer arena rock,” Pool said. Generally, the music of McCartney spans generations — the Baby Boomers who were Beatles worshippers, to the children of the 1970s who grew up with Wings.
Pool said typically, a wide range of ages make up the audience for “The McCartney Years.”
“We get 30- and 40-year-olds just sort of reinventing the music and what it means to them,” he said. “I was born well after the Beatles stopped touring. I never really experienced any of that, but yet the music hit me because it’s so timeless.
“We’ve seen a lot of younger people in the audience reinventing the music,” he added.
Audiences at his show will “get drawn back into the 70s and experience what it was like at what I feel was the height of Paul McCartney’s career. The music, the energy, the whole show fits together so well.
“People are really going to experience a concert rather than a theatrical performance,” Pool said.
Fans will hear some hits from the Beatles and from Wings — “Let it Be,” “Band on the Run,” “Live and Let Die” — as well as some deeper tracks like “Magneto and Titanium Man.”
“We’ve been performing for 10 years and it’s just great to see the audiences here in North America respond to the music,” Pool said. “We’re living the dream right now.”
