Syracuse • Saturday, June 4, 2022

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This was the twelfth date of the “Got Back” tour.

The #PaulMcCartneyGotBack tour has arrived in Syracuse, New York! Who’s coming to the show tonight?

From Paul McCartney on Twitter, June 4, 2022

During the soundcheck, Paul was seen playing a Gibson Les Paul electric guitar, painted with the Blue and Gold colors of the Ukrainian flag. This guitar, autographed by Paul, was auctioned by Gibson between November 11 and 13, 2022, and raised $76,800 to help Ukraine.

From syracuse.com, June 5, 2022:

Sir Paul McCartney is either lying about his age, or he discovered the fountain of youth at some point.

The Beatles legend performed 36 songs during a nearly three-hour concert at the JMA Wireless Dome in Syracuse on Saturday, mixing Fab Four classics like “Can’t Buy Me Love” and “Get Back” with his solo and Wings catalogs. It was his first show at the Syracuse University stadium since 2017 and the only Upstate New York stop on his 2022 “Got Back” tour dates.

“Welcome back to Syracuse, Paul,” multiple signs at the Dome said.

“It’s good to be back,” McCartney told the crowd of some 35,000 fans as the concert began.

McCartney turns 80 later this month, but he still has the boyish charm of a mop-top singer performing on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1964. He’s one of the greatest songwriters of all time, a two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, has won 18 Grammys and an Academy Award, and was a member of one of the most influential bands in music history.

Yet he’s still a humble and polite lad from Liverpool, thanking people for signs they made — cheers to the guy who said he was seeing his 127th McCartney show — or when they light up their cell phones during torch songs like “Let It Be.” He gave a shoutout to “the best crew on the planet” for the amps and stage setup brought in by 19 tractor-trailers, acknowledging roadies in a way that lesser artists almost never do.

McCartney played with the crowd, smiling as he threatened to jump off the stage and go crowd-surfing, or joking about the pyrotechnics during “Live and Let Die” being too old. (If it’s too loud, you’re too old, but we don’t believe you, Paul.) He also feigned modesty when the ladies screamed as he took off his coat.

“What? It’s just a jacket,” he said. […]

It was the first event at the newly renamed JMA Wireless Dome, previously known as the Carrier Dome for 42 years. Signs inside and outside the stadium simply called it the “JMA Dome.” […]

The show’s stage setup was fantastic, including 100-foot tall screens to help everyone in the back of the Dome to see everything. The stage lifted up McCartney on a platform during solo acoustic songs “Blackbird” and “Here Today,” an emotional letter to John Lennon that echoed through the stadium. Video visuals also complemented performances, such as psychedelic cartoons during “Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite” and footage of Lennon performing on a rooftop from Peter Jackson’s “Get Back” documentary for a virtual duet on “I’ve Got a Feeling.”

Everything was well choreographed with no breaks. McCartney only briefly left the stage for a minute before the encore, quickly returning with flags for the U.K., United States, Ukraine, Pride month and New York state.

But the best parts were the unexpected moments, like McCartney’s drummer channeling Ringo Starr goofiness during an accordion-featuring version of “Dance Tonight.” (He chose to dance the “Macarena” tonight, by the way.)

DJ Chris Holmes served as the opening act, playing remixes of Beatles songs like “Twist & Shout,” “Back in the USSR,” “Come Together,” “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?” and “Revolution.” Almost none of the songs overlapped with McCartney’s set list and helped ensure the biggest Beatlemaniacs got to hear as many of their favorite songs as possible.

It’s wonderful to hear songs that make people happy, and it’s magical how they make us feel young. Here’s hoping McCartney comes back to Syracuse so we can all “get back” to that fountain of youth.

From paulmccartney.com, June 22, 2022:

The Syracuse GOT BACK experience in a word? 
 
LOUD. 

Syracuse went straight to 11 on a scale of 1 to 10 from the get go. Exhibit A: the mob of superfans gathered early at the backstage barricade of the JMA Wireless Dome as a de facto welcoming committee for Paul’s return to the Salt City with a cappella choruses of ‘Hey Jude’, erupting into full-on Beatles Scream-ing at first glance of Paul’s approaching motorcade — the racket this lot kicked up at 3:30-ish certainly foreshadowed an extra-energetic crowd come showtime.  
 
And if anything, the roar that greeted Paul as he walked on stage for the second time ever at the newly rechristened JMA Dome — formerly known (until very recently) as the Carrier Dome and informally known (very appropriately) as the Loud House — exceeded expectations. One would think a reaction this frenzied was celebrating the end of the decades-long wait that led up to Paul’s 2017 concert at the largest domed stadium in the Northeastern U.S. (and of any college campus). But no, it would seem Paul’s visit to Syracuse five years prior had quite the opposite effect, stoking the flames of demand for a next dose of Macca magic. And the fire pun is intentional: the 2017 One On One tour appearance that inspired the Syracuse.com headline “Paul McCartney blazes through lifetime of music, sets Carrier Dome on fire” featured a version of ‘Live And Let Die’ that ended with a few steel beams illuminated by actual flames — the errant embers snuffed out by vigilant crew members well before ‘Hey Jude’ had shifted into full glorious singalong mode. 

Speaking of singalongs… The tailgaters passed that baton to those witnessing a soundcheck featuring ‘Jet’, ‘Women and Wives’ and ‘Ram On’ (to name but a few), maintaining and elevating the intensity levels throughout the late afternoon / early evening—until those levels virtually exploded off the meters with the opening notes of the main event.  The capacity crowd filling the Dome lived up to the promise of those earlier contingents, starting out on a loud and proud note from a frenetic opening ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ and not letting up for a fraction of a second — or of a decibel for that matter — until the closing strains of ‘The End’.  
 
For some three dozen or so numbers that kept those 35,000 or so voices raised in love and song, Paul treated his only upstate New York audience of the GOT BACK jaunt to a lifetime of memories both relived and newly formed — yet another once in a lifetime tour de force marathon trek through music’s most beloved songbook. The uniformly ecstatic crowd reaction was somehow never disrespectful, with the story of that 1958 Quarrymen session that resulted in ‘In Spite Of All The Danger’ or the ukulele intro to the George Harrison tribute ‘Something’, to cite two examples, receiving reverent attention—no mean feat from a crowd that could barely contain itself during an ebullient ‘Dance Tonight’ (were they celebrating Memory Almost Full’s 15th birthday? Maybe…), gave up a boisterous reaction to ‘Band On The Run’ that Paul answered with a heartfelt “Thank you, Syracuseans!” The Loud House then became the light house, it’s vast interior illuminated by tens of thousands of phones for ‘Let It Be’, which led seamlessly into an intensified ‘Live And Let Die’—which somehow managed not to set any scaffolding aflame this time—before the main set came to a close with an epic ‘Hey Jude’ singalong during which Syracuse Orange basketball coach Jim Boeheim and his wife Juli were spotted representing both the fellas and the ladies choruses. 
 
All in all, it was another unforgettable GOT BACK evening, one that moved Syracuse.com to theorize that “Paul McCartney is either lying about his age, or he discovered the fountain of youth at some point.”  

Steve Martin – Paul McCartney’s US publicist 

Last updated on December 23, 2022

JMA Wireless Dome

This was the 1st and only concert played at JMA Wireless Dome.

Setlist for the soundcheck

Setlist for the concert