Six decades later, and both men have been proved right. Now 82, McCartney is probably the 20th century’s most influential living cultural figure. And on Saturday night at Manchester’s new Co-op Live arena, at the first of the final run of shows in McCartney’s Got Back tour, which began in April 2022, it was very good fun, too. When he and his five-piece band opened by ripping into “A Hard Day’s Night” with gusto, it set the tone for a joyous two-and-a-half hours to follow.
Sir Paul McCartney performing on stage at Co-op Live in Manchester. Danny Lawson/PA Wire
There was also plenty of Wings material, providing McCartney with a rock outlet. He suffixed the irresistibly bluesy “Let Me Roll It” by jamming on Jimi Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady” before swaggering through a towering, groove-driven “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five”. One of the night’s biggest singalongs was reserved for “Band on the Run”, which still sounded fresh 50 years after its release.
Sir Paul McCartney performs during his Got Back tour. Danny Lawson/PA Wire
McCartney played Harrison’s old ukulele on “Sometime”, and later, during the encore, reprised the “duet” with Lennon on “I’ve Got a Feeling”, which he debuted at his last UK show, when he headlined Glastonbury in 2022. That evocation of Lennon’s ghost was simple and striking, but more discomfiting was the inclusion of “Now and Then”, the “final” Beatles song that was finished and released last year with the help of artificial intelligence – its accompanying visuals featuring a grinning Lennon and Harrison flailing around unsettlingly alongside present-day McCartney and Ringo Starr were anything but reassuring.
That was a rare misstep, though. Every other Beatles song served as a stirring reminder of why the group are scorched so indelibly into the world’s cultural consciousness. McCartney tore through the likes of “Let It Be”, “Helter Skelter”, “Hey Jude” and the Abbey Road suite with palpable emotion, his eyes still twinkling after all these years. A McCartney concert in 2024 feels like a kind of cultural monument – but it is also, just as in 1964, a good laugh.
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