There aren’t very many shows where you can reasonably claim that if it ended after the first number, you’d have gone home happy. And maybe even in the case of Paul McCartney‘s concert Friday night at the Santa Barbara Bowl, it would count as hyperbolic. An audience that paid $300-600 for tickets to see him in an uncharacteristically smallish venue would have expected — and got — a little more for their money than that. Even so, let’s just go with that slightly exaggerated feeling and emphasize what a major kick it was to see McCartney open his 2025 tour by singing the John Lennon-associated Beatles song “Help!” in full in public for the first time in his career.
It was a you had to be there moment, but a lot more people will be there in the weeks to come, and presuming this stays as the opener for all the shows to come, the joy will be spread around to considerably more than just the roughly 4,900 people who got to see it in Friday’s underplay gig. The tour continues Monday night on a different end of southern California, at Palm Springs’ Acrisure Arena, where it will have what was initially set to be (and may still count as) its official opening, and will definitely count as the first truly representative show of the tour, with no staging or curfew restrictions.
We won’t be sure until Palm Springs, in other words, whether McCartney’s regular setlists might be a little longer than the hour and 55 minutes that he played in Santa Barbara, which due to its mid-residential nature has a hard out of 10 p.m. But who cares about curfew issues, anyway? Didn’t I just say it could have ended at 8:05 and it’d have been fine?
The asterisk on his performance of “Help!” is that, as Macca-holics will well remember, McCartney did have it in his nighty setlist back in 1990 — but only a 50-seconds-or-so snippet of it as part of a Lennon tribute medley late in the show. Kicking off his shows with the number now is a more radical and expansive move. It follows in a recent tradition, actually, of beginning concerts with a Lennon-associated number, something he did a decade ago with “A Hard Day’s Night.” But “Help!” is even more identified as a John song … some of us would even consider it the best John song, if forced to do something so foolish as single out such a thing. And as tributes to his fallen comrade go, this is a hundred times more effective at this point than reviving “Here Today” again would be. No speeches or preambles necessary — it’s an inherently sentimental choice that’s also just viscerally exciting, regardless of whether you’re giving its rarity or heritage a second thought.
The second number of the show was, if not as much of a surprise, equally a corker… and a thematically appropriate choice for the followup choice in the set. Right after singing “I’m feeling down,” he kicked into “Coming Up”… because let’s face it, in Paul McCartney’s oft-rosy world, no one is going to suffer from depression, even exhilarating depression, for more than one song at a time. And “Coming Up” is underrated, if anything, as one of McCartney’s great explosions of joy (at least in the live single version that became a No. 1 hit in 1980). On a big screen behind the stage, McCartney’s crew put up animated footage of an apocalyptic cityscape giving way to massive flower blooms, as a three-man brass section, the Hot City Horns, came out for the first of many appearances to help McCartney and his funk-efficient band in set the world aright again. (It didn’t hurt that the ensemble worked a few bars of Henry Mancini’s “Peter Gunn Theme” into the song as a smoking interpolation,) This might be the best one-two punch to open a show that McCartney has ever had on one of his tours.
From there, the concert followed along more expected lines in its sequence and content, as largely a condensed version of the epic show that passed through SoCal in 2022, when he was playing SoFi Stadium. If you were hoping that he would be using the occasion of an upcoming Wings book, documentary and best-of collection to start pulling out some ’70s obscurities, no, this tour is not offering that kind of a refresh, at least as of opening night. At 83, McCartney is definitely staying focused on what he now considers to be his core concert repertoire, But it’s a solidification, not a calcification. If you’ve seen him in recent years, you have a very good idea of what’s coming in the setlist, following that startling opening.
But what you don’t see or remember coming, maybe, is how good it feels to hear this band playing those songs, in a way that makes you feel like you’re setting the needle down on “Let Me Roll It” or “Jet” for the first or second time. As has been noted, his ensemble — guitarist Rusty Anderson, guitarist-bassist Brian Ray, drummer Abe Laboriel Jr. and keyboardist Paul “Wix” Wickens — has been with him for about a thousand years longer than the Beatles were ever together, give or take. And they still seem to be having as much fun as McCartney is, which is a high bar. Collectively with their front-legend, they are pulling off a neat hat trick: playing the classics very close to the way they were recorded — there’s hardly anything in the set you could even call a re-arrangement — but as fresh takes that are living and breathing on their own with little flourishes and ad libs that reinforce we are hearing the songs in real time. It’s no wonder he wants to stay on the road: Against the odds, everything comes together to make it feel like there is still a lot of tread on the tires of everything that is being performed.
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There can also be some element of surprise in what most galvanizes a crowd. The audience in Santa Barbara, not surprisingly, looked to be a little older on average than even the median age for a McCartney show “in town,” as it were — and so there was just a surprising amount of sitting, up in the seated areas of the house, if obviously not in the GA floor area. But looking through the setlist, would you guess the number that finally got everyone in the Bowl on their feet, en masse, no exceptions? You would probably not, because that song was… “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.” Nothing against it, bra, but we would not have pegged it as the completely irresistible, take-no-prisoners barnburner of the night. (At future tour stops, your crowd’s mileage may vary.)
The Santa Barbara show was tacked on to the beginning of the tour with the proviso that it would not be the full, full production than fans would see beginning Monday in Palm Springs. But you could have fooled the Santa Barbarians: Far from a bare-bones presentation, Friday’s show certainly looked as if it could be the whole setup, with two vertical screens on either side of the stage for musician closeups and a rear screen for pre-recorded video and the occasional crowd shot. The green lasers we’ve been seeing since the “Wings Over the World” tour of ’75-76, which by now have to count as a nostalgic touch? Still present and accounted for. During “Live and Let Die,” smoke plumes went up, violently, on the appropriate beats — but the only flames were on the screen, so it’s possible that actual pyro is the one thing fans missed out on that will turn up from Palm Springs forward. We’ll quickly find out.
(An additional side note about the Santa Barbara show, set at one of the world’s loveliest amphitheater settings: As much turmoil as there was around untold thousands of people trying and failing to get tickets through the online lottery earlier in the week… there were tickets on sale at the Bowl box office, after all, in the run-up to showtime, for those willing to brave their way first to SB and then navigate the long and rather confusing box office lines. Read it and weep.)
The real beginning of the show, pre-“Help!,” was a computer-graphics video that climaxed with the sight of McCartney’s Hofner bass exploding into tiny shards. Noooo, he just got it back, the crowd cried (not really, but there is a forthcoming documentary movie about that). Not to worry, this very intact artifact was his instrument of choice for the beginning of the show, though he naturally switched to electric and acoustic guitars, piano and (for “Dance Tonight”) mandolin over the course of the next two hours. (No drums; some vintage footage of him on a kit during the “Get Back” sessions had to suffice there.)
He played only a little bit of lead guitar, but the fact that this is a band with three lead guitarists of course comes into play during the climactic “The End” when he, Ray and Anderson take turns playing elaborate variations on the solo bits that he, Lennon and Harrison played on the same stretch of “Abbey Road.” This is a reliable conceit of theirs, thrilling in the final moments, that still gives “three-ways” a good name.
At the outset, McCartney promised “some old songs, some new songs and some in-betweeners.” The “new songs” part was a bit of a misnomer; no, he was not about to offer a sneak preview of the album he’s apparently been working on in spurts with producer Andrew Watt since 2021, and the freshest solo song in the set was 207’s “Dance Tonight.” But technically, we would count as new the one number that post-dates his previous stop in these parts three years ago, the “final” Beatles song, “Now and Then.” The other Beatles were only spliced into this number on the big screen, not on audiotape — although, for the encore of “I’ve Got a Feeling,” he continues to bring in both audio and video of Lennon’s duet part. (Those of us who have longed to hear McCartney take over the entire tune and be the one to sing “everybody had a wet dream” still just have to wait.)
Speaking of “I’ve Got a Feeling,” there is a moment in that great, great song that provides a sort of a test for McCartney: How long into his advanced years will he be able to sing that uppity bridge — “All that I been lookin’ for was somebody who looked like you!” — and still sound at least a little like Little Richard?
The answer, I’m happy to report, is that at 83, he has not rounded that bend. Fans, of course, will be looking for a report on the state of McCartney’s voice, just as they are before or after buying tickets for any of the rockers who are now out there doing it in their 80s, whether it’s the ones who were not belters per se but still are among the great idiosyncratic voices, like Paul Simon and Mick Jagger, or those whom we might worry about more, who are all-time howlers, like Roger Daltrey (whose farewell tour with the Who is also passing through SoCal this week). McCartney, of course, belongs in that latter camp — he’s got arguably the greatest rock ‘n’ roll voice of all time, and just for the sake of argument, let’s go ahead and say that’s inarguable.
Would you believe me if I tell you he’s still got it? Granted, he had a few shaky moments near the beginning of the show, including in “Help!”; if I had just one wish for the show, it would’ve been that he would have come back around at the end and reprised it as a final encore, when he was completely warmed up and then some. Because McCartney completely came into his power over the course of the first few numbers, and unless you are the kind of nitpicker who is unable to make any allowance for the effects of age, there were few nits to pick with his performance Friday night. The suppleness of a tender reverie like “My Valentine” may not be 100% what it was to when he first recorded it, but it’s close enough for balladic rock ‘n’ roll. Certainly by the time he got to a solo acoustic “Blackbird,” he was in pitch-perfect form. And when it comes to the actual rockers, he is still going for it and seemingly holding almost nothing back, going screamo on us in “Helter Skelter” or engaging in fun little bits of falsetto melisma, not seeming or sounding at all like a guy who is worried he needs to be conservative with his voice.
All to say: his marvelous singing continues to be one of the wonders of the world, even without an 83-is-the-new-38 handicap, but especially taking that into account. (The act of dragging one’s sorry ass up the hundreds of steps required to reach the scenic heights of the Santa Barbara Bowl does give one time to consider decrepitude, or someone else’s lack of it.) Simply put: If you are one of the folks we occasionally encounter on the internet saying they won’t consider coming because they prefer to remember McCartney as he was (versus more defensible reasons, like distance or economics), then you, sir, may be the fool on the hill.
Here’s one trivial question that may lead to a less trivial one: Does this count as a new tour, or is it the continuation of an ongoing one? It’s kind of both: The attendant publicity and McCartney himself have described it as a tour kickoff, yet the advertising and poster art still have it as the “Got Back” tour, which officially extends back to 2022. But he has adopted an off-again, on-again touring model that kind of renders this a moot point. He’s rather like Bob Dylan, in that way, who has been on his so-called “never ending tour” for decades now, putting batches of fresh dates on sale without making clear demarcations between which “era” the concerts belong to. For both these artists, it’s not about the act of plugging, it’s about the joy of playing. And about hitting markets they have rarely or even never played before, as they spread their immortality around.
Their approaches couldn’t be more different, when it comes to on-stage personas: Dylan is acting his age, while McCartney is defying his. Either mindset is valid and has its own separate rewards for the audience and themselves. But what a life-giving kick it is to see Sir Paul with the preternatural ability to do this raucous of a show as effectively, as merrily and even ras apturously as he has for decades. From every indication, he will be doing this until the wheels come off and, until they do, riding atop this very sturdy vehicle, saying: Let me roll it to you.
Setlist for Paul McCartney at the Santa Barbara Bowl, Sept. 26, 2025:
Help!
Coming Up
Got to Get You Into My Life
Let Me Roll It/Foxy Lady
Getting Better
Let ‘Em In
My Valentine
Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five
I’ve Just Seen a Face
Love Me Do
Dance Tonight
Blackbird
Now and Then
Lady Madonna
Jet
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
Get Back
Let It Be
Live and Let Die
Hey Jude
Encore:
I’ve Got a Feeling
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)
Helter Skelter
Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End
“Got Back” tour dates for 2025:
September 29 — Palm Desert, CA — Acrisure Arena
October 4 – Las Vegas, NV — Allegiant Stadium
October 7 – Albuquerque, NM — Isleta Amphitheater
October 11 – Denver, CO — Coors Field
October 14 – Des Moines, IA — Casey’s Center
October 17 – Minneapolis, MN — U.S. Bank Stadium
October 22 – Tulsa, OK – BOK Center
October 29 – New Orleans, LA — Smoothie King Center
November 2 – Atlanta, GA — State Farm Arena
November 3 – Atlanta, GA — State Farm Arena
November 6 – Nashville, TN – The Pinnacle
November 8 – Columbus, OH — Nationwide Arena
November 11 – Pittsburgh, PA — PPG Paints Arena
November 14 – Buffalo, NY — KeyBank Center
November 17 – Montreal, QC — Bell Centre
November 18 – Montreal, QC — Bell Centre
November 21 – Hamilton, ON – TD Coliseum
November 24 – Chicago, IL — United Center
November 25 – Chicago, IL — United Center
From Variety US