Philadelphia • Saturday, August 14, 2010

About

From TheBeatlesBible:

The band took to the stage at 8.30pm, and played before 30,000 people. Following a solo performance of ‘Yesterday’, McCartney called a woman, Marta McGovern, onto the stage. She had been holding up a sign saying “I beat breast cancer! Sign me for a tattoo?” McCartney signed her lower back.

A disabled girl, Dara Roberts, was then brought onto the stage. McCartney hugged her and brought the microphone to her, and to cheers she said “Hello Philadelphia” to the crowd.

From The Philadelphia Inquirer, August 15, 2010:

When Paul McCartney first sang “Two of Us” with John Lennon on the Beatles’ 1970 album Let It Be, the lyric to the song’s bridge seemed to pertain to an unsurpassed songwriting partnership that was about to come to an end: “You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.”

But when the 68-year-old McCartney sang the gently plucked acoustic number to a sold-out crowd at the Wells Fargo (formerly Wachovia) Center on Saturday, it was clear that the song’s meaning had expanded. Now it took in the nearly five-decade-long past shared by McCartney and the audience that showered him with adoration throughout the three hours they spent together in South Philadelphia on the first of two nights his “Up and Coming” tour stops here.

A funny thing happened, though, on the way to the retirement home for Sir Paul and his people. Thanks to a not-bad dye job, the “what’s the use of worrying?” world view that he sang like a mantra in the ebullient “Mrs. Vandebilt” (off Band on The Run, his 1973 album with Wings), and a vegetarian diet that’s kept him fit and trim (a DVD of a PETA documentary narrated by McCartney was handed out gratis on the concourse), the cute Beatle still comes off as remarkably youthful.

And while the same can’t be said for many fans who’ve taken the whole “Long and Winding Road” (which opened a four-song Paul-at-the-piano interlude) with him, Macca’s following as a whole has gotten remarkably younger over the years. In the first decade of this century, only Eminem sold more CDs than the Fab Four, and the power of the Beatles as a unifying cultural force in a fractured world remains is undiminished. […]

In the midst of his final encore, McCartney brought two female fans on stage. He gladly obliged the first woman’s request to have him autograph the small of her back in preparation for a tattoo to be applied.

The second was 19-year-old Dara Roberts, a recent graduate of Unionville High School in Kennett Square who attends Stanford University and suffers from cerebral palsy and scoliosis. She came on stage in a wheelchair, wearing a “Got Paul?” t-shirt, and her ardor was rewarded with a hug.

With that, McCartney got back to business: “You still want to keep rockin’, don’t you? ” he asked.

Then he put the overstuffed evening to bed with a raucous “Helter Skelter,” (rollercoasters, not the Manson Family, were shown on the video screen), plus the closing reprise of “Sgt. Pepper,” mashed up with Abbey Road‘s “Carry That Weight” and “The End,” leaving the arena full of Fab Four fans with an improbably fresh set of memories to take home with them, 40 years after their favorite band broke up.

Last updated on November 28, 2020

Wachovia Center

This was the 3rd concert played at Wachovia Center.

A total of 4 concerts have been played there • 2005 • Sep 22nd • Sep 23rd • 2010 • Aug 14th • Aug 15th

Setlist for the soundcheck

Setlist for the concert