A Magical History Tour

By Guy Garcia

SHOW: PAUL MCCARTNEY UP CLOSE

TIME: FEB. 3, 10 P.M. E.S.T., MTV

THE BOTTOM LINE: In a TV concert and a new album, McCartney finds fresh inspiration in his Beatles past.

There is a jolt of deja vu right at the opening of Paul McCartney Up Close. It comes when the boyish ex-Beatle walks onstage and waves to the throng of cheering fans at New York City's Ed Sullivan Theater -- the same theater where ! the Beatles made their American TV debut on Feb. 9, 1964. "We didn't even know who Ed Sullivan was when we got here," McCartney recalls in one of the reflective segments interspersed between songs. "But that was part of the fun of it."

Twenty-nine years and 21 solo albums later, McCartney is still enjoying the fun of it -- and provoking those female screams of adoration. MTV's 90-minute concert special, which airs this Wednesday, goes out of its way to tap memories of Beatlemania by letting the studio audience crush against the stage and switching between color and black-and-white camera work. For his part, McCartney uses the occasion to preview an upcoming world tour and offer a potent mix of Beatles hits and other songs from his new album, Off the Ground (Capitol Records), to be released next week.

Catching his breath after a rollicking version of Twenty Flight Rock, the aging icon jokes, "I'm too pooped to pop, man." But McCartney, 50, is hardly ready to give up the ghost of his creative past. After decades of distancing himself from the Beatles, he has in recent years embraced the music that made him famous, and on Up Close he cheerfully continues that trend. His renditions of Lennon-McCartney classics like Fixing a Hole, Lady Madonna and Michelle are enlivened by the unabashed enthusiasm of his band. And McCartney has never rocked harder than on the extended version of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which includes a blistering jam of dueling electric guitars.

McCartney's Beatles days also echo through Off the Ground, his best and brashest record since the 1973 Band on the Run. His tendency toward sentimentality is held in check by boisterous guitars and lyrics that raise an activist banner against animal abuse and social intolerance. The quirky orchestral embellishments on Golden Earth Girl and Mistress and Maid recall the Fab Four's psychedelic phase, while C'mon People, with its heartfelt appeal to "get it right this time," evokes the Utopian sweep of Golden Slumbers and Hey Jude.

In the epilogue of Up Close, McCartney dangles the possibility of a reunion with the two other surviving Beatles, a prospect that has already generated feverish media anticipation. "If we get together for one piece of music," Paul predicts, "we're bound to say, 'C'mon, let's do another little thing.' " The Fab Three could even dust off their old Sgt. Pepper uniforms and hit the road, showing that their esprit de corps is as timeless as the Beatles' ( music. Then again, it might be wiser to respect the immutability of the past and simply let it be.