The McCartney Years

If all goes well on Friday, Yuri George Jan Pool will no longer need to feel like a band on the run.
Pool and company bring a multi-song event The McCartney Years concert show, to its big-stage debut on Friday at Aeolian Hall. After Friday, the show and all its Paul McCartney tunes can be expected to tour other Canadian venues.
That’s exciting – but McCartney, not money, is not the point, says Pool.
“If I wanted to be rich, I’d be a banker,” says London’s most knowledgeable Paul McCartney fan.
“As far as I know it’s a unique project in Canada,” says the Dutch-born Pool, who once took the McCartney role in a big international Beatles tribute act. The McCartney Years show – which includes such songs as Maybe I’m Amazed, Live And Let Die and Can’t Buy Me Love – is a different type of tribute.
“What differs us from the traditional Beatles tribute is, first of all, we do not focus on trying to look like the band,” Pool says. It’s way more important to focus on what it’s really about, which is the music.”
After being based in Toronto, Pool found his way to London. It was here that he began to bring his plans for a bigger McCartney presentation into reality. Speaking of reality, to help pay the bills for The McCartney Years, Pool sold a prized instrument.
Pool and the band have been rehearsing McCartney’s words and melodies for more than six months. The show, which has a sneak peek or two at other venues, takes in McCartney songs from the Beatles, Wings & more.
“We want to make sure the sound is impeccable,” says Pool, who can play bass, guitar and piano as he sings the McCartney tunes.
“I really have a lot of faith in the band as well as the project,” he says of the musicians who have joined him for the run. Also in The McCartney Years project are guitarists James (Jim) Nestor and David Wright, drummer Ken McLennan and “keyboards, orchestras, percussion, guitar” player John Brocksom. All four share backup singing duties. Nestor plays bass if Pool is at the piano.

The show is divided into three blocks. The first is from McCartney’s 1970s’ band, Wings. Then, there’s an acoustic set including Yesterday and We Can Work It Out,
“The third block is The Beatles, obviously McCartney had a very big role with The Beatles,” Pool says.
After finding out that if they didn’t trim some of the 270-odd songs on the set list, the show might never get off the stage. “We downsized it,” Pool says of the hits that survived. “We’re feeding the audience a couple of obscure songs, songs that you know, but you don’t hear often enough… a good example of that would be a great song like Getting Better.”
The six-foot-two leader was known as “Tall” McCartney in his tribute era. Pool has stayed in the public eye and ear during the rehearsals with occasional solo gigs. His solo McCartney-themed performances have been a hit at the London Music Club. It’s not far from the downtown London apartment he shares with his girlfriend.
Sir Paul turns 66 next Wednesday. His recent album, Memory Almost Full, is his 21st solo outing.
The McCartney Years is the second major salute to Sir Paul here recently. Last fall, Orchestra London, London Pro Musica and scores of their allies saluted another side of McCartney the composer with the Canadian premiere of his award-winning oratorio Ecce Cor Meum (Behold My Heart). - The London Free Press

Days after Paul McCartney played Quebec City for its 400th anniversary, a McCartney tribute artist will perform in Ingersoll. According to Sid Bernstein – the man who brought The Beatles to America in 1964 - Yuri George Jan Pool has the best Paul McCartney voice in the world today. Pool, who opened for Mariah Carey in Moscow last summer, will perform McCartney Years concerts at ITOPA July 25 and 26 at 8 p.m. More recently he has performed as part of a successful Beatles ensemble in the U.K., playing to up to 25,000 people at a time. “Having played in several major Beatles productions over the past number of years, Yuri not only captures McCartney’s melodic bass playing but also all of his piano and guitar work, to the point where it becomes almost impossible to tell the difference,“ states the artists biography. His fascination with The Beatles started when he was four-years-old. Driving home with his parents from visiting family, two songs came on the radio – A Hard Days Night and Can’t Buy Me Love. From that moment on, he knew his life would never be the same, he says. At age 11, he got his first guitar after completing a year of playing the recorder. “The very first song that I ever played on guitar was Obla-Di Obla-Da which was easy to play, seeing that it contained the only three chords I could play at the time,’ he recalls. ’I continued playing music throughout high school and at 23 wrote my first three-hour stage production show, performing a large selection of the hits by the Fab Four.“ He credits the great songs written by McCartney and the other Beatles for much of his success. ’No matter where we would go, I was always amazed to see that whatever language was spoken, everyone knew the lyrics to every song we played,’ Pool says.

Presented in three parts, The McCartney Years cover the songs done by McCartney during his Wings career, then an acoustic set with some of the most memorable songs, from Yesterday to We Can Work It Out and, finally, McCartney’s songs from the Beatles years. Tickets for the concerts are $15 and are available at the box office (485-6466), or Patina’s Gifts of Art and Craft. They can also be purchased on the Internet at: themccartneyyears.net. - The Ingersoll Times

"Yuri George Jan Pool is probably the best voice to portray McCartney on the scene today" - Sid Bernstein