PAUL LIVE: 18th ANNUAL BRIDGE SCHOOL BENEFIT

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On Saturday, October 23rd and Sunday, October 24th 2004, Paul played at the 18th Annual Bridge School Benefit at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, CA.  Other performers (in order of appearance) included Tegan & Sara, Eddie Vedder, Los Lonely Boys, Sonic Youth, Ben Harper & the Innocent Criminals, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tony Bennett, and Neil Young (with Paul performing last, followed by a "Hey Jude" finale featuring all of the musicians).

I saw Paul's Saturday performance, and it was perhaps one of his most moving shows of all time.

        The Bridge School - originally founded by Pegi Young (the wife of Neil Young) and James Forderer - opened its doors in 1987 with the aim of aiding physically-impaired and speech-impaired children:

"The Bridge School is an educational program dedicated to ensuring that children with severe speech and physical impairments achieve full participation in their communities through the use of augmentative & alternative means of communication (AAC) and assistive technology (AT) applications. Bridge School has established an outreach program to share what is developed at the school with parents, professionals and users of AAC/AT across the world." (intro from bridgeschool.org)

    Since 1986, Neil Young has held annual benefit concerts for the Bridge School (view a complete list of performers in past concerts).  The musicians play mostly acoustic sets, and students from the Bridge School sit on stage behind the performers.  For the grand finale, all of the musicians from the evening perform one song together.

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* please note: we took all of the following pictures ourselves, so if you would like to use them, I'd appreciate it if you would provide credit.  Thank you!

getting the tickets
       
        You can imagine my delight when I discovered that Paul was confirmed to play at this prestigious concert.  My friend, Diana, is a huge Neil Young fan (she'd gone to several previous Bridge Schools) and had told me about the rumors that Paul might play at the Bridge in 2004.  I tried not to get my hopes up.  After a dreary Latin class one day, though, I walked outside to be met by an ecstatic Diana waving a print-out of the good news: Paul was confirmed to play!  I could barely contain myself - it had been two years since I'd last seen Paul.

        Getting tickets for the show was pretty stressful - we were bent on getting good seats.  Diana's skills managed to secure us a pair of tickets in the third row of the middle section - it was amazing.  We started a countdown for the concert what seemed like eons before it was actually going to happen.


pre-concert

        We flew from our university to CA for the weekend of Bridge.  Two of Diana's friends from CA had tickets for the lawn section, and we all spent the day exploring Haight & Ashbury before heading to Mountain View.  The traffic, unfortunately, was insane.  Since Diana and I had both been living for this day, we were freaking out about missing the beginning of the concert.  We jumped out of the car once we got close enough to the Shoreline Amphitheater and trudged through the pouring rain, only to realize that Diana had forgotten to leave her camera in the car (cameras were not allowed in the amphitheater).  We asked an employee about this issue as our tickets were being scan...

        And this is where the drama begins.  The employee scanned Diana's ticket, and it didn't register with the machine.  The employee tried wiping the rain off of the scanner, only for it to fail again.  Then she looked at Diana's ticket, and the next few minutes were in slow motion.  "These tickets are for tomorrow's show."  At this point, Diana and I began to go through several different stages of grief in no particular order.  Diana burst into tears, and I went into denial.  "There's no way - they have to be for today..."  Now, keep in mind that we're both pretty intelligent people, and I still have no idea how a mistake like that happened.  The tickets we had were not actually the ones we had originally purchased; once better seats became available, we gave our old tickets away.  Plus, the tickets had been mailed to Diana's home in CA, so we had not actually laid eyes on them until we arrived for the concert.  Maybe the confusion arose somewhere in that...it's hard to say.  The problem, of course, was that our flight was leaving the next morning to return to school.

        We were led into the box office, where I was still in shock and Diana was in tears.  Fortunately, we had brought a box of tissues to use during the concert...but we went through it rather prematurely.  I finally  broke down into hysterics when I saw someone walk in the box office wearing a "No more land mines" t-shirt...I couldn't handle the thought of being at the Bridge and actually missing Paul that night. 

        An absolutely wonderful human being fixed things for us.  He calmed us down as best he could and told us he would take our tickets and relocate us back a few rows (to about row 9, I believe).  So our seats were still amazing.  We were incredibly lucky to have been able to see the concert at all.  If that had not worked out, we would have of course cancelled our plane flight back, but that would have posed a big problem for school.

        Also, as a result of the ticket drama, everyone forgot about Diana's camera - so we were able to get some amazing pictures at the show.


at the concert

        Once we finally sat down, we were still recovering from our crying fits and trying to calm down.  The musicians and bands were amazing.  Eddie Vedder, appropriately, played his cover of "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away."  We bought some Bridge School merch and used a sweatshirt to figure out the order of appearance.  As the time neared for Paul's set, I got more and more excited.  According to the set on the shirts, he was supposed to play after Tony Bennett.


Paul's surprise performance with Tony Bennett

        I was absolutely emotionally-unprepared, then, when Paul waltzed out on stage during Tony's set.  I burst into sobs the second I heard his voice.  It was amazing to see him so close up - when I'd last seen him, my seats weren't nearly as good.  I could barely see him through my tears.  Paul sang "The Very Thought of You" with Tony Bennett, and they did a fantastic job together.  They even did a little dance (Paul's silly concert quirks are so wonderful).  After the song, Paul thanked the audience and left the stage.

Neil Young's set

        I assumed, of course, that Paul would play next, since Neil Young always headlines the Bridge concerts.  I was surprised to see the stage being set up - a circle of guitars was being formed, just like Neil Young's set from when I saw him at FarmAid.  It was, of course, Neil Young who played then.  He did a beautiful set.

        Paul's performance was the final act of the night.  The audience was intensely excited for him to come on stage - as a merch salesman had said (when we asked for a particular shirt that had been sold out), "I don't know why they didn't order more of this style - after all, a quarter of the Beatles is here."


Paul's set

        Neil provided a touching introduction for Paul and the two legends embraced when Paul came on stage.  The audience went wild.  The Shoreline can fit about 22,000 people in it - hearing them all scream for Paul was amazing.  I burst into tears of course.  Paul began his set with "Drive My Car," which brought a lot of energy into the audience.  The whole audience stood for his entire set.  He followed with "'Til There Was You," and then "In Spite of All the Danger" - an incredibly early tune which (to the best of my knowledge) he had never performed live before.  He had the audience sing along to portions of it.  Next was "Blackbird" - one of my favorite Beatles songs, and the first song that I ever learned to play on the guitar.  His voice was magnificent, and it echoed through the huge amphitheater, which was dead silent...except, of course, for a rather annoying woman next to me who wouldn't stop talking.  I was getting incredibly irritated that somebody would interrupt such an amazing song, and finally we managed to silence her and enjoy the song in peace.  Paul next played "Here Today" (written in honor of John) which of course brought the audience to tears.  I always feel as if Paul is about to cry when he plays this song - it must be so emotional for him to perform it. 

        Then Paul played a new song, the title of which he didn't announce - only later would we realize that it had been "Follow Me" from his newest album, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard.  The song was beautiful, and I was thrilled to hear an unreleased tune.  Paul next covered "Only Love Can Break Your Heart," and Neil Young came on stage to join him.  The two were obviously having a lot of fun playing together, and they laughed as they briefly messed up a verse.  Once Neil Young left the stage again, Paul played "Michelle," followed by "Yesterday."  He spoke briefly about his performance of "Yesterday" on the Ed Sullivan Show and played the song beautifully.  He next played "Get Back," which again brought tons of energy into the audience.  He followed this with "Let It Be," which is one of my two all-time favorite songs.  This song changed my life - it has seen me through everything, both the good and the bad.  It always gives me courage, and I find solace in it in difficult times and inspiration in easier times. 

        Paul next played "Lady Madonna," which was another energetic performance.  His band, as always, was in top form.  Paul then went into "Baby Face" briefly, only to transition into my absolute favorite song: "Hey Jude."  I was brought to tears again, of course.  The entire audience was linked arm-in-arm and swaying from side to side.  The rest of the musicians came out on stage to sing along with the "na na na" chorus.  What made this finale even more impressive was that the musicians were additionally backed by a chorus of 22,000 people in the amphitheater, all of whom were singing.  I have never seen people as close to one another and as happy as they are when Paul performs "Hey Jude."  There is something in that song that every soul in that audience could recognize and connect with.

        After the song was finished, Paul and the others received an intense standing ovation.  Diana and I gathered our things and ran to the front of the stage to try to grab Paul's set list.  We only managed to get to Sonic Youth's and tried in vain to trade it with luckier people.  Paul was still on stage all this time - he was meeting every single child from the Bridge School who had sat on the stage.  It was incredibly moving.  I was particularly struck when Paul shook hands with a young girl in a wheelchair, who burst into tears of happiness.  Lives were changed this night.

        That's what Paul is good at - changing lives.  Or at least helping people to realize the beauty that exists all around them.  Not a single person could have left that amphitheater without feeling a glimmer of hope and contentment.

        Eternal thanks go to Paul, Neil, and all the other musicians who played for this amazing benefit and have helped these children.

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You can read more accounts of the 2004 Bridge School Benefit at Macca-Central.

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