It was 1993. Paul McCartney was doing his New World Tour. It was announced that he was going to play in Atlanta at the Omni. Del, Chris and I had to go. After all, this was Paul McCartney. A Beatle. We had seen Ringo Starr in Charlotte earlier, so it just was a must see for us. I got tickets on the left side of the stage in the stands. We made reservations at a "motel" outside of Atlanta near Snapfinger Rd. (One should always snap their fingers when passing by Snapfinger). The concert was scheduled for May 1st.
A couple of weeks before going to Atlanta, they announced that Paul would be coming to Columbia to play a show at Williams-Brice Stadium on May 7th. We already had our tickets for Atlanta, but we couldn't pass up seeing him again, so we got tickets for that show too. Our tickets were in the upper deck of the stadium.
The State Newspaper put out a call for anyone with a big Beatles collection to contact them about running a story on them. We reached out, because at that time, our combined collection was valued somewhere around $200,000. They scheduled a time for us to come into their offices and bring our most expensive stuff. We brought picture sleeves, memorabilia, and other stuff. They put us in a room with a sheet on the floor. They wanted us to lie down on the sheet with our collection around us. The photographer stood on a ladder and shot down at us. We had to be very careful not to lay on our stuff to damage it. A reporter interviewed us on how we got interested in The Beatles. They used a quote of mine where I said that I was zapped through the TV screen, when I saw them on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. As we were finishing up the interview, I asked the reporter not to use my age in the article. I was acting, and I was doing roles that were younger than I was. I looked younger than my age. The reporter said he would do as I asked. When the article came out, it said "Walter Durst, 39". I was livid. I called the reporter, and he said that his editor made him put my age in the article because it was "company policy". I was irked to put it mildly.
Anyway, we went to Atlanta and saw the show. It was great. We sang along with almost all the songs. A few months later, I got audio and video copies of that show from a guy in Alabama. It was good, except for telling his friend to go get him a beer just as Paul finished singing "Yesterday".
The show in Columbia was almost exactly the same as the one in Atlanta, including all the intros to the songs that Paul spoke about. The only difference was in Atlanta he had a false start on "Michelle", and a scenery piece fell down during "Paperback Writer". They had told everyone not to bring audio or video devices into the concert in Columbia. There turned out to be no one checking for that. One could have brought an entire TV crew in, and no one would have said anything. I didn't get a copy of that show, but I do have a video of the soundcheck.
It was amazing to see Paul McCartney. I saw him again in 2015 and sang along to all of the songs again.
