Paul McCartney at Target Field, Minneapolis (02 Aug 2014)

Paul McCartney Setlist

Eight Days a Week Save Us All My Loving Listen to What the Man Said Let Me Roll It (w/Foxy Lady guitar instrumental) Paperback Writer My Valentine Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five The Long and Winding Road Maybe I’m Amazed I’ve Just Seen a Face We Can Work It Out Another Day And I Love Her Blackbird Here Today New Queenie Eye Lady Madonna All Together Now Lovely Rita Everybody Out There Eleanor Rigby Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite Something Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da Band on the Run Back in the U.S.S.R. Let It Be Live and Let Die Hey Jude — Encore 1 — Day Tripper Hi, Hi, Hi Get Back — Encore 2 — Yesterday Helter Skelter Golden Slumbers Carry That Weight The End

Soundcheck Setlist

Minneapolis Jam Matchbox Drive My Car Celebration Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five > Band on the Run I’ve Just Seen a Face On My Way To Work Ram On San Francisco Bay Blues Bluebird Queenie Eye Lady Madonna

Tour Dates

Paul McCartney just showed us all up.

While most 72 year olds are contemplating a home in Boca Raton or counting the minutes until the early-bird dinner specials start, Sir Paul had the day named after him by the state’s governor and played 39 songs in 2 hours 45 min., at a very sold-out Target Field on a clear Saturday night in Minneapolis.

The evening started less-than-positively, with skies threatening more rain (which thankfully passed) and obscenely slow and long lines at every gate into the venue, thanks in part to Major League Baseball’s requirement that all their parks be equipped with metal detectors.  Staff and McCartney’s people no doubt were aware of the situation and thankfully didn’t begin the show until just after 8:45, 45 min. after the tickets’ start time.

Paul and his solid veteran band that has backed him for almost fifteen years (Rusty Anderson – Guitar, Brian Ray -Bass, Guitar, Abe Laboriel, Jr. – Drums, Percussion, and Paul “Wix” Wickens- Keyboards, Percussion, Guitar, Accordion who has been with him since 1989) rather nonchalantly took to the massive stage, adorned with LED background screen and right and left vertical video boards, for his first area show since the Xcel Center in 2005.

The Beatles’ ‘Eight Days a Week’ had people up and moving from the first chord, with McCartney center stage in a bright blue suit (w/suspendered pants), and white shirt. From a bit of the old to some of the new, as in ‘Save Us’, the opening number from Paul’s latest record, New (Hear Music), then to more Beatles and ‘All My Loving’.

Though the setlist seemed a little overall familiar and Paul didn’t move about much or provide a lot of stage banter (i.e. taking a minute to “drink it all in” and name-checking “Minnesota” and “Minneapolis” a couple times, was it), it didn’t ever seem to matter- this was a living legend playing songs from his last fifty years, that almost everyone knows by heart.  Fingers were crossed for McCartney’s version of MN native’s Eddie Cochran’s ‘Twenty Flight Rock’ with a local shout-out, but it didn’t happen, though he did play the Carl Perkins classic ‘Matchbox’ earlier in soundcheck.

The 1973 classic ‘Let Me Roll It’ from Band on the Run was somewhat surprisingly punctuated by an ending instrumental of Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Foxy Lady’, the only time McCartney and band really roared on guitar and 1982’s ‘Here Today’ was touchingly prefaced by Sir Paul telling the crowd that the lyrics were a conversation that he and John Lennon, never got to have.

 

Songs, ‘New’ and the romping ‘Queenie Eye’ from the recent album fit in well with the older tracks, though the multi-generational crowd naturally responded strongest to The Beatles classics the most.  People had brought entire families to the show and could be seen swaying in unison to songs half a century old, with cellphones lighting up the night sky for some of the later ballads.

Though he’s done this version in prior tours, it was still endearing to see McCartney professing George Harrison’s love of the ukulele before picking up the instrument and launching into his own luau version of ‘Something’.  ‘Band on the Run’ remains a sprawling three-songs-in-one epic, ‘Live and Let Die’ nearly blinded with the song’s choral fireworks and pyro shots, and classics ‘Let it Be’ and ‘Hey Jude’ were sing-a-longs to end the main set, the way everyone wanted them to perfectly be.

The first encore, over two hours in, was a quick combination of ‘Day Tripper’, Wings’ ‘Hi Hi Hi’, and classic ‘Get Back’, before non-stop applause goaded McCartney and band to err, get back for a second encore, starting with a gentle ‘Yesterday’ that found McCartney solo and acoustic, on a raised platform.

The still-scathing ‘Helter Skelter’ followed, with the Abbey Road-ending ‘Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End’ being the ideal way to send all 40,000+ people back into the streets with smiles on their faces, amidst a barrage of post-show fireworks.  There was no “Maybe” – we were all “Amazed”.