Macca live: The Setlist

Even though he is already 76 years old, McCartney doesn’t seem to get enough of touring. And he is doing this with a setlist especially Beatles fans will enjoy. In almost three hours’ time there are no less than 25 Beatles classics being played.

A McCartney concert is like a trip down memory lane: they’re all passing by, from Hey Jude to Let It Be and from Yesterday to Lady Madonna, the great McCartney tunes from his time with The Beatles. And that’s not all, there is also room for songs that are less familiar to the general public. As with the Out There Tour (2013-2015) when Lovely Rita and Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite from the Sgt. Pepper's album were part of the setlist. Or songs like All Together Now and Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da, not The Beatles’ strongest, but live they are real party pieces, as McCartney would call them. And there are gems like Blackbird and I've Just Seen A Face' or the rough Helter Skelter. Lovely are the homages to Lennon and Harrison. Together with the big solo hits Band On The Run, Live And Let Die and Maybe I'm Amazed, it's an impressive setlist.

And yet there is criticism; especially by the hard-core McCartney fans. For whoever looks at the setlist of, for example, the Out There Tour, they will see that at the beginning of this tour in 2013, it contained only two songs from beyond 1974: Here Today, McCartney's 1982 homage to John Lennon, and the pretty recent My Valentine, dedicated to his wife Nancy. During the tour, the setlist was complemented by some songs from his last album NEW, but if you look at percentages, the ratio is pretty skew: The setlist consists of more than eighty percent of material from the first eleven, twelve years, or the first quarter, of McCartney's career. "He’s neglecting his solo career", according to some.
Also at the start of the newest One-on-One Tour in 2016, the disappointment among fans of his solo career seems big. Some new songs from The Beatles, like A Hard Days Night, Love Me Do and You Won’t See Me, were added but again no material from 1975-2016. McCartney seems to play safe here: The majority of the audience is coming to hear the songs of his early years.

Video: Love Me Do / Blackbird / Give Peace A Chance / Here Today

Another point of criticism is that there is little variation between the setlists of the various tours. Indeed, in McCartney’s case a new tour doesn’t mean that a setlist will be changed entirely. The base of the show has been the same for a about fifteen years, and with every new tour six to seven songs are being replaced by others, of which most of them have never played before. But McCartney does make surprising choices sometimes. For example, the bombastic final of the Band on the Run album, Ninety Hundred and Eighty Five, has been a solid contribution since 2010, pleasing the Wings fans. And in 2005 he surprised with Too Many People, taken from RAM. Sometimes there are some changes during the tour, as in 2015, when suddenly the obscure Temporary Secretary is being played.

Video: Temporary Secretary

At first sight the changes don’t seem to be big, but in the meantime, McCartney has brought an incredible amount of songs to the audience in recent years. Those who regularly visit a concert, like myself, finally come to terms. Since my first concert in 1989, I have heard almost 130 different songs during fourteen concerts (yes, you are reading it well, I’m counting). Except for a handful of covers, it's all his own material. There aren’t many artists who can match that. And despite this achievement, I still have a long wish list too. So, to express it euphemistically, it is quite a luxury issue. McCartney's keyboard player Paul Wickens: 

One of the big problems in the set is, what do you leave out, when you put something in?

McCartney's oeuvre is not only qualitative on a high level but quantitative it’s of an enormous, and still growing, size. The man could easily fill two totally different setlists, each with about 35 songs from The Beatles. And both times the roof will be raising off. The same with its Wings and solo material and even then, there still will be a lot to be desired. And that’s actually quite nice, it makes it always fun to go. And if I get to hear Hey Jude for the fifteenth time I'll be singing ‘na-na-na’ just as loud (and out of tune unfortunately, sorry neighbor) as always. After all, we're having a ball!

Video: Let It Be / Live And Let Die / Hey Jude

Related Posts:

Macca Live: The Soundcheck

André Homan

André Homan is a Dutch writer and journalist.

Nieuwere post Oudere post