Secret gig at The Cavern Club • Thursday, July 26, 2018

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This exclusive show at the Cavern in Liverpool, 19 years after his last concert there, was announced by Paul the day before, when he was interviewed by Jarvis Cocker at LIPA (Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts):

We are playing at the Echo Arena in December but we also have tomorrow. We have a little secret gig somewhere in Liverpool – I’m not kidding you Jarvis.

Paul McCartney

But the details to get free tickets were only announced on the D-Day, on paulmccartney.com:

Paul McCartney will play at The Cavern today at 2pm. Space is EXTREMELY limited. Tickets will be made available for free from the Echo Arena Box Office from 10am this morning on a first come, first served basis. Tickets are strictly limited to one per-person and photo ID will need to be shown at the Box Office. Lucky fans will be issued with a wristband and a personalised printed ticket.

For entrance into The Cavern you will need photo ID, the wristband and personalised ticket. Tickets are non-transferable and void if transferred. No tickets will be available from The Cavern.

The queue for entrance into The Cavern will open at 12 noon. Doors scheduled to open at 1PM. All times are approximate and subject to change.

No under 16s allowed.

From bbc.com, July 26, 2018:

[…] Around 250 people crammed into a sweaty Cavern to hear the 28-song set. The set list ranged from classics he performed when the Beatles started out at the Liverpool venue in the early 1960s to songs from his new solo album.

“Coming back here is pretty amazing for me,” the 76-year-old told the crowd.

He skirted over the fact that the original Cavern was filled with rubble in 1973 and the venue for Thursday’s show was a more modern live room attached to a replica Cavern that was built nearby. “Imagine this for me – all these years ago when we played the Cavern we didn’t know if we’d have any future,” he said. “But we did OK.” […] Sir Paul greeted the crowd by adapting the lyrics from the song Michelle: “Liverpool! Cavern! These are words that go together well.“

After an introductory jam, he launched into “the song that got me in The Beatles” – Eddie Cochrane’s Twenty Flight Rock, which Sir Paul played as his audition for John Lennon in 1957. However, he stopped the song halfway through and showed a rare bad mood when he berated the crowd for filming and taking pictures on their phones. “I think you’ve all been told not to take photos,” he said. “And you’re taking them, and you’re taking them, and I don’t want to get put off, and you’re putting me off.” One fan was ejected for filming during the opening jam, even before Sir Paul had made his plea. […]

After finishing the song, he explained further: “The phone thing – I went to a Prince concert and he really was serious about that, he wouldn’t start, you know. Put ‘em down! You know what I’m saying?“.

The concert was filmed by director Paul Dugdale. It was first broadcast by BBC One on Christmas Day 2020.

Last updated on April 5, 2021