Adelaide • Wednesday, October 18, 2023

About

On this day, October 18, 2023, Paul McCartney kicked off the Australian leg of his “Got Back” tour in Adelaide. This was his first concert since the Glastonbury Festival in June 2022. He made a few minor adjustments to the setlist, but the most notable changes were the inclusion of “She’s a Woman,” which he had not played since the 2004 Summer tour, and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” which he had not played since the Freshen Up tour in 2019.

Picture the scene: It’s 11.57am on Friday 12th June 1964 in Adelaide, Australia, and a chartered Ansett ANA jet has just landed at Adelaide Airport a couple of hours after its departure from Sydney. The Beatles – well, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Jimmie Nicol, who was temporarily replacing a hospitalised Ringo Starr – disembark the plane, and climb into an open-top car that is waiting for them. They have a 10-mile journey to make from the airport to the city centre, and it proves anything but ordinary.

A reported 350,000 people – literally more than half the city’s population – line the streets for the entire length of their drive, greeting the most famous band in the world with waves and screams. “It was like a heroes’ welcome,” Paul would later say. As The Beatles reach their destination – the Town Hall, where they’re due to meet the mayor – 30,000 Adelaideans cram around to catch a glimpse of the visiting dignitaries.

The sheer scale of that frenzy made an impactful impression on The Beatles, who realised that the growing phenomenon that was Beatlemania was truly beginning to span the globe. “Wherever we go, anywhere in the world,” John Lennon said that day, “this reception which Adelaide has given us will stick in our memories.”

It’s no wonder, then, that Paul chose that auspicious city to open the Australian leg of his 2023 Got Back tour. Okay, so our reception this time around may have been a little more restrained in comparison, but nevertheless, it was clear to see that Paul was just as delighted to be back in Adelaide as they were to have him. On my own drive into the city, I saw the posters and banners that hung on the streets welcoming Paul back there. It was a returning hero’s welcome.

On the afternoon of October 18th, we held a special Q&A event for fans at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre, and of course the subject of that memorable arrival was brought up. “It was overwhelming really,” Paul remarked. “We’d got famous and we’d seen big crowds and we’d had all the screaming and stuff. But that many people, it was insane! We were just standing there like, this will do!”

The following evening, in front of a relatively intimate 8,000-capacity audience, Paul took to the stage for his first show in Adelaide in 30 years, and marked the occasion with a specially chosen introductory number: ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’, which incidentally was Number One in Australia when The Beatles touched down there.

From there, Paul’s set rode that transcendental adventure through his vast back catalogue that can magically please every generation assembled under one roof, with Beatles, Wings and solo songs all rocketing the excitement levels at different points. Rolling Stone Australia called it “the greatest rock and roll show on Earth,” and who could argue with that?

Stuart Bell – Paul’s UK publicist – From Paul McCartney | News | For Whom The Bell Tells: ‘GOT BACK’ Australia Tour 2023, December 20, 2023

From The Guardian, October 18, 2023:

“When we were kids, you couldn’t really say to each other that you loved each other,” Paul McCartney reflects midway through the first show of his Australian tour. “You tried to be hard, young guys. We never got around to it really.” For a musician whose back catalogue is, famously, not short of love songs, it’s a poignant reflection. […]

Half a century later, in his first set in Adelaide in 30 years, he’s making up for lost time. On his seven-date Got Back tour McCartney is due to play some of Australia’s biggest arenas, but has opted to start it off with a relatively small and very sold-out 8,000-capacity show: the first Australian city he ever played is a gentle setting for his first live appearance since Glastonbury over a year ago.

Eighty-one years old, spry and light on his feet, McCartney and his longtime band get some Wings stuff out of the way early, McCartney holding it down on bass while his comrades shred on guitar and horns. There’s a twinkle in his eye, an old hand still hooked on the formula of a few mates, some guitars, some drums and a stage. […]

McCartney’s fingers nimbly picking out a rubbery bassline on that well-loved old Höfner. Those same fingers plucking out the melodic runs of Blackbird that every aspiring high school guitarist tries to nail and, according to McCartney, fails. (“How many people here tried to learn Blackbird?” he says. “And you got it wrong.”)

It isn’t all about the past, of course. McCartney intersperses songs such as Let Me Roll It, Got to Get You Into My Life and Maybe I’m Amazed with newer tracks and deep cuts. He and his band know which option crowds prefer: “When we play an old Beatles song the place lights up with all your phones, it’s like a galaxy of stars. When we play a new song … it’s like a black hole. But we play ’em anyway!”

As he revealed in a fan event the day before, this “hobby” of songwriting – a bottomless lucky dip pitting “skill” against “magic” – will never get old to him.

Some of the newer songs are, at least, not bad. Come On to Me from 2018’s Egypt Station packs an appropriate amount of horniness for an octogenarian, served with a wink and some nice organ on the chorus.

He has another laugh while trying to read signs held up in the crowd: “Sign my butt? No no no!” Then, “Oh come on, let’s have a look at it.”

Midway through, a screen cuts the stage in half as McCartney and the band play a few stripped-back numbers before an image of a boarded-up old house. “Let’s hear it for a long time ago,” he says, before launching into an old skiffle track, the first thing the proto-Beatles recorded.

It’s at this point that he reflects about his love for his old friend, performing Here Today from 1982’s Tug of War. “I wrote this song after John died – let’s hear it for John,” he says, before singing: “I am holding back the tears no more, I love you.”

Later, a weathered ukulele signals another tribute. “This one was given to me by George,” he says, launching into a jaunty music hall take on Something. It’s lovely.

A thick succession of rolled-gold classics rounds out the first three hours. Live and Let Die features flames and pyrotechnics you might expect from an AC/DC concert, while a medley of medleys (You Never Give Me Your Money turns into Band On the Run) is an unexpected delight – he’s never played the former in Australia before.

In the encore, McCartney reprises the Peter Jackson-assisted redux of I’ve Got a Feeling that he showed off at Glastonbury, with McCartney duetting with footage of Lennon filmed on the Abbey Road rooftop before it all fell apart. I expected to cringe at this digital resurrection, enabled by AI tech that seems poised to undermine the creative spark, the very human spark, upon which all this is built. But it’s quite moving. “So amazing to be singing along with John again,” Paul says. “Sweet memories.”

They then finish the rest of the Abbey Road medley, Golden Slumbers right through to The End. As McCartney sings about carrying that weight, it hits differently than it did in those sessions, the band barely keeping it together for one last ride. His voice is a little shaggier, his mop a little greyer, but it seems the past is a weight McCartney carries lightly – with love, remembrance and, occasionally, an ear-splitting “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!”

Last updated on December 21, 2023

Entertainment Centre

This was the 2nd concert played at Entertainment Centre.

A total of 2 concerts have been played there • 2023 • Oct 17th • Oct 18th

Setlist for the soundcheck

Setlist for the concert

1.

Can't Buy Me Love

Written by Lennon - McCartney

2.

Junior's Farm

Written by Paul McCartney, Linda McCartney