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Beatles Rarity Of The Week – The Hippy Hippy Shake Live in Liverpool

Posted by on July 26, 2010 at 7:00 am.

Welcome to the Beatles Rarity of the Week. I’ve decided to let this post be in celebration of my trip to Nashville, TN to see Sir Paul tonight. Since he hasn’t been to Nashville since 1974, when he recorded Junior’s Farm and Sally G there with Wings, I was even hoping he might modify his set list, and at least throw Junior’s Farm in for the occasion (it’s such a good rocker). We’ll see…but hey! I’m getting off track here.

On June 1, 2008, Liverpool, UK had one of it’s greatest concerts in history when Paul showed up in celebration for his birth-city’s year as the European Capital of Culture. The pre-show music was from his obscure UK Twin Freaks album and also some remixes of the Memory Almost Full track, Nod Your Head. Then Paul and band hit the stage and surprised everyone by opening with something he hasn’t performed live in nearly 50 years – The Hippy Hippy Shake. The Beatles used to cover this little rocker when they played in Hamburg Germany from 1960-1962.

The Hippy Hippy Shake was written by Chan Romero but The Beatles were probably more familiar with the version by Italian rocker Little Tony, because that is the version that made it big in the UK around 1959. The Beatles can be heard on some of the releases of the Hamburg, Star Club recordings, covering the song. The Beatles also performed it 5 times for the BBC radio programs in the early 60′s and one of these recordings (from July 10, 1963) is on the Live At The BBC Beatles release on Apple. Paul sang lead on all accounts, as he does with equal energy here.

So if the set list was modified for Liverpool, might it be for Nashville too? Again, we’ll see…

Paul McCartney - The Hippy Hippy Shake
Paul McCartney & Brian Ray on stage, Liverpool, 2008

Paul McCartney & Brian Ray on stage, Liverpool, 2008

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Want to make a suggestion for a future Beatles Rarity of the Week? If so, I will do my best to deliver, so let me hear from you. To browse for ideas, check out this search-able listing of 9,074 Beatle-related recordings to choose from. Then let me hear from you here.
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^ Well, there's a few high-pitched squeals at the end that are spot on!

Have a great time tonight, Mark! Saw Macca at Hollywood Bowl a few months ago and he changed the set list from one show to the next (I got to hear And I Love Her and my friend who went the night before didn't...), so here's hoping he'll do Junior's Farm for ya!

Thanks Cara. There was no performance of Junior's Farm or Sally G for Nashville, yet I did enjoy the setlist. I will not list it here because I know there are plenty of people out there who are still going to an upcoming show and are like me and don't like to know ahead of time. Besides if someone does want to know, it's usually just a Google search away, for his shows are always widely covered. I will say it was a Wings-heavy list of songs which, for me, was a good thing) and that there were a lot of tunes included that weren't on any previous tours. There was an interesting cover performed of the 1958 mostly instrumental hit by The Champs called Tequila. I was one of the lucky few who heard the soundcheck and that included It's So Easy (the Buddy Holly song), Yesterday, San Francisco Bay Blues, Dance Tonight, Ram On (with ukelele), and an instrumental that sounded like a new keyboard arrangement of the instrumental part of Summer's Day Song from McCartney II and Lady Madonna. During the encore, Paul called a young Hispanic boy from the audience to come up on stage with him and dance and give a little bit of vocal help on Get Back and then told him to "get back" to his dad. Also Paul read an audience sign where a woman claimed to have Paul's Hofner bass tattooed on her back and that she needed him to sign her back so she could turn that into a tattoo also. During the encore he called her to the stage, and trembling, she told him it had to be signed below the tattoo and Paul told her that in that case she better turn around and not face the audience because he didn't want to her to get him in any trouble. He then pulled the back part of her dress down and signed her back under the bass tattoo and the video screens were zoomed into the tattoo and Paul's fresh new signature. I was able a week or so before the show to upgrade my ticket to Section 3 and viewed the stage from the 10th row which was great.
The showtime was 7:30pm and by 7:45 there played about 30 minutes of alternate mixes of Beatles/McCartney/Fireman music while the video screens showed a giant vertically moving collage of memorabilia and Beatle/Wings photos. Paul hit the stage at 8:15 and including the two encores, played for an incredible 3 hours.

OMG! Talk about the ultimate tattoo!! What an amazing story that woman will tell for the rest of her life.

Sounds like another great show. Tequila?! Did Paul say anything about why they played that song?

No specific reason. He just had a sort of mischievous smile on his face and explained they just felt like playing that. Other than the addition of Tequila the set list matched the Denver show from last week. Some of the other recent shows (e.g. Lake City, Kansas City) had a slightly different setlist. I think the Nashville setlist had the most songs.

Energy is great, but the vocals are SO ragged. Maybe he needs to lower the key, or maybe the fact that he opened with it meant he hadn't warmed up the pipes yet.