Excitement builds for Paul’s visit McCartney sings Yesterday, but Winnipeggers are focused on tomorrow By: Alan Small Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Wednesday, Sep. 26, 2018 Last Modified: 1:07 PM CDT Friday, Sep. 28, 2018

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This article was published 25/09/2018 (2286 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Paul McCartney’s coming to town, and that means Maggie Svaling and her teddy bears can’t be far away.

She’s seen McCartney’s concerts 18 times, going back to a 1990 show at Chicago’s Soldier Field. No. 19 will be Friday night, when McCartney and his band take the stage at Bell MTS Place.

Svaling began her teddy bear tradition in 1993 when McCartney played Winnipeg Stadium. Her goal then was to somehow get one of her teddy bears into the former Beatle’s hands (or as close to him as possible).

“In ’93, when he came to Winnipeg… I bought a little teddy bear I was going to throw on the stage. I went to the soundcheck the day before and thought, ‘I’m going to bring this bear with me.’ We were trying to peek in the nooks and crannies of the old stadium, hoping to see him. I waited by the entranceway and this limo came out and there he was — he was right in front of me.

“Some Winnipeg Enterprises guy was probably going to grab me, but I’m going to try to give (the bear) to him. I jumped out into the street and went, ‘Paul!’ and I handed it to him through the limo window. He grabbed it, and my hand, and said, ‘Oh, thank you.’

“Supposedly he waved it out the limo window as it drove away, but I was hysterical,” Svaling says.

“I’ve been throwing teddy bears at him at the next 13 concerts (I’ve attended).”

Svaling, who drives a Volkswagen Beetle with “ABBEYRD” as her licence plate, also has the words Let it Be — after the Beatles’ famous 1970 anthem — tattooed on her back as a permanent reminder of their meeting.

“So, my goal is to get there onstage with the bear and give it to him — and have him sign my tattoo,” says Svaling, who would then have the signature inked permanently. “That’s what I’ve been trying to do, but I haven’t been successful.”

She had no luck on the autograph front when she went to Quebec City on Sept. 17 to see McCartney at the beginning of his latest tour. But the concert was a pretty good consolation prize. Her review? “Awesome, like they all are.”

While Svaling has likely memorized the setlist for Friday’s concert, for Winnipegger Jean-Paul Vanderkooy, seeing one of the Beatles has been a longtime dream.

He never got a chance to see the Beatles live, nor a concert by any of the Fab Four’s members — McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr — during their solo careers. He figures seeing the 76-year-old McCartney on Friday night might be his last shot. He’s got a ticket on the floor and is excited as a 62-year-old retired railroad worker can get.

“You know what, I am (excited), but because I’m old enough, not like a teenager… Controlled anxiety, how’s that?” says Vanderkooy, who says the first record he bought was the Beatles’ 45 with Love Me Do one side and P.S. I Love You on the other.

“I’m not going to be disappointed, no matter what,” he says. “I’ll be there and be listening to one of the original Beatles. That band is iconic, and still strong in today’s music world, given its history.

“Once these guys are gone… there’s nobody down the road to replace these bands. There’s a lot of groups coming up, but they’re one-hit wonders and one-album wonders — the Beatles have longevity.”

Vanderkooy remembers watching the Beatles make their debut on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 on his family’s black-and-white TV in New Brunswick. It remains one of the biggest moments in television history, he says.

“You’re a kid, you’re so impressionable. You knew they had a magical quality about them, and they were very captivating and were young and innocent,” he remembered. “They were just themselves, and so talented. They were like nothing I’d ever heard before.

“To me, seeing that was a better memory than the moon landing, and I saw that too.”

How much does Vanderkooy love the Beatles? In 1980, his wife bought him a gift: John Lennon’s new album Double Fantasy. He said he’d save the record for the right moment when the couple could listen to it together. When Lennon was murdered on Dec. 8, 1980, however, Vanderkooy decided to leave the album sealed in its plastic wrapping and have it framed.

His marriage has since ended, but he has hung onto the record as his railroad career has taken him to Gillam, Sioux Lookout, Ont., Regina and Winnipeg, where he lives today. While he’s heard Double Fantasy’s hits on the radio — songs such as (Just Like) Starting Over and Watching the Wheels — he’s never broken down and pulled the record from the wall and given it a spin.

“You know what?” he says. “I’m going to keep it as a souvenir and as a remembrance to him.”

alan.small@freepress.mb.ca Twitter:@AlanDSmall

Alan Small
Reporter

Alan Small has been a journalist at the Free Press for more than 22 years in a variety of roles, the latest being a reporter in the Arts and Life section.

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