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Paul McCartney he came back Manchester for his first show in the city in more than a decade on Saturday, treating more than 23,000 fans to a career-spanning set featuring songs from his Beatles, Wings and solo catalogs.
In the first of two sold-out shows – part of his celebrated Got Back tour and his first UK show since 2018 – the veteran artist “duets” with the isolated vocals of his late bandmate, John Lennonand paid tribute to his wife Nancy, who was in the audience along with his daughter Stella.
“We traveled around the world; we were in South America and now we are back in the North! And it’s good to be back,” the eight-year-old told the crowd. He decided to open with an exciting version The Beatles“Hard Day’s Night,” the title track from their third album, which celebrated its 60th birthday earlier this year.
The 82-year-old showed no signs of fatigue as he neared the end of his Got Back tour, after launching it on April 28, 2022 in Spokane, Washington. Sixteen stations later, headlined the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury Festival, where he was joined by surprise guests Bruce Springsteen and Dave Grohl.
Since then he has played in Australia and Europe, and embarked on two Latin American legs, including a show in Uruguay where he made his live debut with a performance of “Now and Then”. Billed as the last Beatles song, it was released in November 2023 with the help of AI technologywhich separated Lennon’s vocals and piano playing from a recording made at his home in New York around 1977.
Outside the Co-Op Arena, it’s going full steam ahead after a somewhat chaotic opening in May this year, fans were in high spirits despite the rain and December cold, as they spoke with reverence and joy about one of the greatest songwriters of all time.
The married couple Stefan and Steffi from East Germany held hands on the way to the arena, they said The Independent about how they first met at The Beatles museum in Halle 23 years ago. Saturday marked the 20th time they’ve seen McCartney together.
“His music is the soundtrack to our lives,” Steffi said, while Stefan recalled: “We loved seeing him play Liverpool. He’s at home, everyone there loves him… You can feel it.”
Sisters Eleanor and Gillian flew in from Drogheda, Co Louth, as a tribute to their late father, Tony Rogers. A big Beatles fan and local hero, he ran a taxi firm in the city for 30 years until he died during surgery in Istanbul, Turkey, aged 62. Manchester in his honor and carried an Irish flag with his name and photo.
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“Everybody loved him — his funeral took over the town,” said Eleanor, who was named after Tony’s favorite Beatles song, “Eleanor Rigby.” “He was a pillar of the community.”
McCartney also paid tribute to his loved ones during the show, including his former bandmates as he played the first song The Beatles wrote together, “In In Spite Of All the Danger”, while three additional microphones were deployed on stage. This was immediately followed by a 23,000-strong song, “Love Me Do”, the first song they wrote with “the fifth Beatles” George Martin. Later, there was a moving rendition of “Here Today,” his imagined conversation with Lennon written after the singer’s death in 1980.
He dedicated his performance of “My Valentine” to his wife, Nancy Shevell, whom he met in 2007. The song was included on his 2012 album. bottom kisses and was inspired by the secret journey they embarked on when they first started dating, where “it was raining all the time, but Nancy said, ‘I don’t mind!'” he told the crowd.
The Got Back tour is part of a particularly fruitful period for McCartney, which has included the release of the Grammy-nominated ‘Now and Then’ – performed tonight for the first time in the UK – and the accompanying music video, directed by Peter Jackson.
“It’s really great,” McCartney said in the tour program about how it feels to play the song live. “When you introduce a new song, even if it’s an old song, like ‘Now and Then,’ the first reaction is that people aren’t really sure what it is or what you’re doing.
“But over the course of the concerts, they get the idea. They talk about it on the internet, you know. So now the reaction is really strong… it’s especially great because it’s a John song. And so it’s very emotional for me. I love that. I love doing it, and the audience seems to love it too.”
Along with “Now and Then”, McCartney also collaborated with Jackson for documentary series from 2021 The Beatles: Come Back, which used specialized film and audio technology and explored the making of the Fab Four’s 1970 album. Let it be.
Another Beatles documentary was released this year – produced by Martin Scorsese the beatles ’64,about the arrival of Beatlemania in the USA – as well as clapping with one hand, David Litchfield’s previously lost 1974 film that followed McCartney and Wings as they worked on a potential live-in-studio album.
McCartney previously explained how he chooses from such a staggering collection of songs: “If I watch a movie and then hear one of my songs in it, I’m like, ‘Oh, I should do that.’ Sometimes that will give me the impetus to really look at that song and think about making it.”
He continued: “One of my Wings albums, I’ll be like, ‘Well, it didn’t do well, so maybe it wasn’t that good,’ and then you’ll find some kids playing the hell out of it says, ‘This is a great album,’ so it makes me back into it.”
Fans were certainly enthralled by Saturday’s setlist, as they joined McCartney in a rousing rendition of “Something in the Way,” which he opened by playing a ukulele given to him by the late George Harrison (“ukulele enthusiast”). He got into the holiday spirit with a surprise performance of “Wonderful Christmastime”, accompanied by confetti “snow” and a local children’s choir.
By this point in the tour, many social media fans in the crowd knew to expect the moment McCartney appeared to “explode,” Spinal Tap-style, as smoke machines and pyrotechnics obscured the musician for Wings’ “Live and Let Die.” the James Bond theme for the 1973 film of the same name.
Then came another singalong, this time for “Hey Jude”, before an encore in which he performed the famous “duet” with Lennon on “I’ve Got a Feeling”. It’s “a good feeling for me,” he told the crowd, “because I’m going to sing with John again.” McCartney made a strong comeback, and his fans couldn’t be more thrilled. “There’s only one thing left to say,” he said, closing the show. “See you next time!”