Seattle • Monday, May 2, 2022

About

This was the first of two consecutive nights at the Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle. This was also the second night of the “Got Back” tour. The setlist was the same as for the opening date for the tour in Spokane on April 28, 2022, except “New” replaced “Queenie Eye“.

From cascadiadaily.com, May 12, 2022:

The cheers of nearly 17,000 people reverberated as Sir Paul McCartney took the stage Monday, May 2 in Seattle’s newly renovated Climate Pledge Arena. The 79-year-old musician, back in Seattle for the first time since 2016, played the arena for two nights as part of his Got Back tour.

Fans were treated to a setlist full of McCartney’s solo works along with hits from his days in Wings and The Beatles. Though he may not have been moving much as he sang, McCartney commanded the stage as one with almost six decades of touring experience would do. The ever-polite musical legend thanked the audience after every song, waving, blowing kisses, throwing up a peace sign or making a heart with his hands. […]

From The Seattle Times, May 2, 2022:

Climate Pledge Arena was as packed as I’ve seen. The thousands of out-of-towners who’ve witnessed Paul McCartney perform dozens of times and locals — some who were there when the living Beatle played the old Kingdome back in 1976 — had already been on their feet for the better part of two hours when the sweet piano-set intro to Wings’ James Bond tune “Live and Let Die” lulled them into a false sense of security.

Boom!

There was an audible gasp when the flame cannons at the front of the stage thunder-clapped in, seemingly to the delight of McCartney’s longtime guitarist Rusty Anderson, who was either tickled by the crowd’s reaction or a little spooked himself. […]

While there was undoubtedly a nostalgia factor for the many baby boomers in the house, it wasn’t entirely a night of throwbacks. McCartney joked about how the sea of cellphones that lit up for every Beatles hit go dark whenever he plays a new one. “Women and Wives,” a standout off his savory pandemic album “McCartney III,” might not have been a crowd favorite by comparison, but perfectly suits the huskiness in his voice these days. The brooding piano ballad had Macca sounding more like a less raspy Mark Lanegan than the boyish singer who just wanted to hold your hand 60 years ago.

The closest thing to a dud was the Coldplay-channeling “Fuh You” from Macca’s 2018 album “Egypt Station.” Though the cheeky tune came off better live than on record, its buoyant modern pop swing felt a little out of step nestled between “Lady Madonna” and the whirling, psychedelic quirks of “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!”

With a number of baby boomers’ musical icons getting up there in age, there was speculation that COVID-19 could inadvertently mean the end of touring days for some of the generation’s still-active stars. Broadly speaking, it hasn’t exactly played out that way, although sadly, the Beatles old rival the Rolling Stones would never again get to tour with founding drummer Charlie Watts, who died last year. While Macca seems to be in great shape, still playfully shaking his hips to remind us he’ll always be the cute one, it’s hard not to wonder when or if the sounds of a manic “Helter Skelter” will shake a Seattle arena again after McCartney’s second show on Tuesday.

If the pandemic taught us anything, it’s not to take these moments for granted.

From paulmccartney.com, May 23, 2022:

A measure of how time flies: in the six years since Paul last visited the Emerald City, the venue he played—the Key Arena—has been razed and replaced by the sparkling new Climate Pledge Arena. Perhaps it was the sonic vibrations of Paul’s 2016 encore featuring Nirvana’s Krist Novoselic on a monolithic twin-bass-attack rendition of ‘Helter Skelter’ that compromised the Key’s foundations?  Whatever the case, Paul is back in Washington’s biggest city for the first time in more than half a decade and the nearly 20,000 a night attending — a notably diverse lot, one local alternative weekly The Stranger observed “was respectful and downright worshipful, and skewed much younger than expected” — are united in their love for all things Paul.

And Paul has plenty of love for Seattle, going all the way back to 1964 when The Beatles played the Seattle Center Coliseum—another venue that once stood on this same site, and where Paul first sang tonight’s opener ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ for a Seattle audience. Another example is tonight’s searing rendition of the traditional ‘Foxy Lady’ coda to ‘Let Me Roll It’, Paul’s red-hot licks on the red Les Paul channeling the spirit of the Pacific Northwest’s deity of the six-string—and fellow leftie—Jimi Hendrix. Paul paid further tribute by regaling the crowd with a tale of UK rock royalty attending Hendrix’s London debut, a show Jimi opened with ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ mere days after the release of the original.
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⁠Elsewhere during Paul’s first night at the now preeminent Seattle arena, ‘New’ received its first airing of the tour — its enthusiastic reception in the form of a galaxy of phone cameras, defying the typical “new song = black hole” pattern Paul has humorously observed since the dawn of the smartphone era. The even newer ‘Fuh You’ fared similarly well with the phone cam-wielders — even sandwiched between a positively jubilant ‘Lady Madonna’ and psychedelic tour de force ‘Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite’!

Later ‘Let It Be’ would find the arena fully awash in mobile phone illumination, while ‘Live And Let Die’ had Paul and the boys returning the favor with pyrotechnic salvos, fireworks, lasers and flash bangs. The show culminated, as always, in that greatest singalong in rock history, ‘Hey Jude’—a communion that, on this night, moved the Seattle Times to observe, “Glancing around at the multigenerational faces na-na-na’ing in unison, it was one of those one of those arena-show moments that make you feel like everyone on the planet is vibing out to the same song at exactly the same time”.

Following a well-deserved and even more well-received encore opening with the Seattle debut of the ‘I’ve Got A Feeling’ virtual McCartney/Lennon duet (“It blows my mind every time I see that,” says Paul) and ending with, naturally, ‘The End’, the Hot City Horns convened on the loading dock ramp to play Paul off with a victory lap brass band take on ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ (Nirvana-na-na, anyone? Thank you, I’ll be here all week…) and it’s onto night two… […]

Steve Martin – Paul McCartney’s US publicist Steve Martin

Last updated on June 16, 2022

Seattle Climate Pledge Arena

This was the 1st concert played at Seattle Climate Pledge Arena.

A total of 2 concerts have been played there • 2022 • May 2nd • May 3rd

Setlist for the soundcheck

The setlist for this soundcheck is incomplete, or we have not be able to confirm in an accurate way that this was the setlist. If you have any clue, pls let us know and leave a comment.

Setlist for the concert