Tom Dunne: The most surreal gig I ever attended was Paul McCartney's secret set
Paul McCartney back at The Cavern club in Liverpool. Picture: Denis O'Regan/PA
The need to see a gig is reaching fever pitch. To be stopped in my tracks, to be with others, to feel that old time travel sensation when a song seems to make the world stand still and transport you to various versions of yourself, past, present and future.
Like in Páirc Uí Chaoimh when Springsteen started Thunder Road. He was silhouetted by old footage of his younger self. Vintage Bruce, from the time in his life when all that mattered was getting Mary into that fast car and out of there.
I welled up a bit. Bruce was still powerful, but not that powerful. Like the rest of us, a little bowed by time. A woman, a total stranger, passed me a hip flask. We toasted Bruce, the gig, being alive.
The most searing experience though, surreal even, was the time I saw Paul McCartney in the Cavern Club. If you sat forward at this point and said, "That’s impossible, Tom, the last time the Beatles played there was August 1963," I would understand.
But then I would say, "Did I say Beatles?" and would tell you to draw up your chair.
It started with an email. This asked if I would like to see Macca play the Cavern two days hence. I googled the Cavern. Yep, it had been re-erected a few doors down. This might not be a hoax. I showed the email to our program director. He quietly booked cover for my show.
Two days later I was at Dublin Airport, one of two guests travelling for the secret gig. The other was Ireland’s most famous TV presenter, another McCartney nut. He too was in disbelief. Confidence that the gig would happen was low. "Until he is actually on that stage in front of you," the record company said, "he may never be on that stage."
In Liverpool, at Mathew Street, there were scenes of Beatlemania. Word of the gig was out. The streets were rammed, people hung from windows, even rooftops. There was talk of "public safety" and again whispers of "won’t happen".
Then suddenly it was a go. We were ushered inside. The new Cavern was no beauty spot, dark and smelly like the old McGonagle's. It held about 350 and wasn’t quite rammed, but God was it hot. Everyone was asking the same question: "How did you get a ticket for this?" I thought the same myself.
The stage looked right. Expensive equipment, a coloured keyboard, but no Hofner bass. I held my breath. The lights dimmed and then, incredibly, it happened. Paul McCartney, the most recognisable man on the planet, took to the stage.
I still expected it to be a PR exercise. One song perhaps to allow papers to run ‘Macca returns to the Cavern’ headlines, but five songs in it didn’t seem that way. And then, as they ended 'All My Loving', I recognised an opening riff and thought "No, it can’t be."
In the mid-70s, my sister, Marian, had started to date a boy called Declan. He was a Beatles fanatic and would woo her by bringing albums to play in my parents' front room. I had attached myself to them like a third wheel, probably spurred on by my mother to "stop them getting up to anything". Not that I knew.
I was there when he arrived with the brand new 'Venus and Mars'. I watched them open the sleeve, marvel at the inserts and put the record on. I loved every track, but one, 'Letting Go' was different. I’d listen to it in that little room over and over. It was sexy, brooding, masterful.
And here, if my ears didn’t deceive me, Macca was about to play it live, just feet away from me, in a room as intimate as Cyprus Avenue. It started. I was dumbfounded. I wanted to grab the person next to me and blubber out "'Letting Go', it’s 'Letting Go'."
I floated out of my body and away. Later I called Marian and Declan, their son Jonathan now one of the best players of Beatles songs in Ireland. I told her what I’d seen and she just said: "Thomas Dunne, 51, Donard Road, Drimnagh, Dublin 12, just saw Paul McCartney in the Cavern."
That was the way we’d learned that address, by rote, like it was just one word, in case we were ever lost. It brought home the enormity somehow, the journey, the extreme good fortune.
He played for TWO HOURS!
