Will Paul McCartney be more at home in Vegas or Coachella?

April 16, 4:58 PMBeatles ExaminerSteve Marinucci

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  Paul McCartney (Photo by Ruth Ward.)

Within the next couple of days, Paul McCartney will be playing at two very different venues.

On Friday, he'll headline the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, CA. It'll outdoors, hot and very very crowded.

On Sunday, he'll open the New Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. A new venue, indoors, a seated show.

The differences don't stop there. The crowd at Coachella will be on the young side.  Most of the bill that night -- with the notable exception of Leonard Cohen -- doesn't have anything close to the musical resumé McCartney does. But they might like "Electric Arguments," the edgy album McCartney put out as the Fireman.

The crowd in Las Vegas, where many veteran performers play regularly, will be older and expect lots of hits, especially Beatles hits. 

In a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, McCartney alluded to the question of doing Fireman songs at Coachella, but left the answer open, an indication he probably will add a Fireman song. "It seems like the natural spot for it, but I'm not saying too much because when we rehearse if we don't like the noise we make, it'll get cut," he said.

Will McCartney will be a good fit in Cochella playing mostly Beatle songs? In the Times interview, he seemed to be comfortable with it.  "People come up and say, 'You're the soundtrack of my life; thanks, man, for the music,' and they all have a little story. Now a lot of the time it's not even the Beatles songs, it's [the 1971 album] 'Ram' or Wings . . . I like that. Of course I like that." 

But what about the audience? Certainly, McCartney's name will bring people to Coachella who wouldn't attend otherwise. You would think Beatle music, with the revered place it holds in our pop culture, should be welcome anywhere, even in Coachella.

Personally, I'd like to see McCartney pull a surprise in both Coachella and Vegas. Do a few Fireman songs. Even better, take a couple of Beatle songs and give them a different arrangement. After all, there have been numerous attempts at taking Beatle songs and making them edgy. Who would better be qualified to play it risky and show a new side to a Beatle song than the man who helped write it?

And it makes sense. In the course of his career, Paul has tested the waters artistically many times. The "Electric Arguments" album was a test -- and an artistic success.

What's another test among a few thousand friends.