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Paul McCartney Played a Surprise Club Show in New York Last Night. No One There Will Ever Forget It
Paul's show at the small beloved NYC venue was full of Beatles classics, solo gems, and screaming fans who couldn't believe they were there
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âWe had a blastâand you were the blasters!,â Paul McCartney told the crowd at the end of his surprise Tuesday show at New York City. McCartney played a spontaneous gig at the Bowery Ballroom, a beloved rock bar on the Lower East Side that holds only 575 people. He was presumably warming up to play the Saturday Night Live anniversary this weekend. But he blew the minds of a few hundred shocked but lucky fans, none of whom woke up that day imagining they might be in store for a McCartney show. âI canât believe weâre here doing this,â he said with a grin. âBut we are. We are HERE. Doing THIS.â
Everybody in the room was having the night of our lives â but nobody was having more fun than Paul. He always thrives in a smaller venue, but he made Bowery feel like a basement full of noise, like the Cavern Club where the Beatles played their early Liverpool gigs. Early on, when a fan yelled âBilly Shears!,â Paul replied, âYOU are!â
McCartney just announced the gig at noon on Tuesday, with the warning that tickets were available only at the venue â first come, first served. Fans were grabbing coats and literally running through the streets of lower Manhattan â one fan said it was like seeing the opening chase in A Hard Dayâs Night, except instead of teenagers, it was mobs of middle-aged people dashing through the city streets. Sixty years later, Paul inspires that same kind of hysteria. See how they run.
In the hours before the venue opened its doors at 5 p.m., the sidewalk was full, some of whom snagged a ticket in time ($50 â talk about value for money) or just hoped to get lucky, with strangers trading our Paul stories or our crazed theories about what surprises or guests he might have in store. But there were no special guests â just Paul, all boyish energy and vigor at 82, with the magnificent four-man band heâs fronted for the past three decades, ripping through nearly two hours of one classic after another. âWe just had one dayâs rehearsal, yesterday,â he told the crowd. âWe usually rehearse more than that, but we just donât care.â
The whole night had that impulsive âsuddenly I see you, did I tell you I need youâ energy. He kicked off with âA Hard Dayâs Night,â then mixed up hits â âBlackbird,â âJet,â âLet It Be,â âMaybe Iâm Amazedâ â with left-field delights like âMrs. Vanderbilt.â He did a surprisingly hearty âCome on To Me,â from his superb 2018 Egypt Station, a pick nobody saw coming. The three-man Hot City Horns joined for jams like âGot To Get You Into My Life,â âOb-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,â and the dusty Wings groove âLetting Go.â
The crowd up front was packed with young women, a fact that Paul did not fail to notice, as they screamed, danced, and did weâre-not-worthy bows. It is a fact universally acknowledged that Paul gains superhuman powers from being in a room packed with female energy. âOkay, letâs get this out of the way,â he said at his psychedelic-painted piano. âGirls, give me a Beatles scream.â The room exploded, as Paul drank in every last drop of those screams, admitting, âI canât resist!â
The room was full of rowdy punters yelling for obscure faves from his solo catalog, like âCalico Skiesâ and âRam On.â Paul laughed out loud when one fan called out for âFlying to My Home.â âThereâs always old folks looking for deep cuts!,â he said. He told a great story about listening to the Sirius Beatles channel in his car and hearing a tune he fancied. âI made the driver turn it up,â Paul recalled. âHe said it was a song called ââSweet Sweet Memoriesâ and I said, âI donât remember that at all!ââ Itâs a 1993 outtake from Off the Ground. âHe said it was a B-side to a CD single! Do they even have B-sides, CD singles? Maybe they do.â
MJ Kim/© MPL Communications Ltd.He sat at the piano for a beautiful âMy Valentine,â for his wife Nancy, recalling how he wrote it on their first trip to Morocco. As my Rolling Stone colleague Angie Martoccio pointed out, this night happened to be the 60th anniversary of Ringo Starrâs wedding to Maureen Cox. (Paul didnât mention it, but maybe thatâs why it felt like Mo was there in spirit for âGet Back.â)Â
The high point? You mean besides âBlackbirdâ? The 1968 White Album gem has been at the heart of his live show for nearly 25 years, just Paul and his acoustic guitar. When he asked if weâd heard the story of how he wrote the song, everyone yelled yes, but he naturally shrugged, âIâm gonna tell it anyway,â a beautifully typical Macca moment. He recalled the Beatlesâ arrival in the U.S. in February 1964, their shock at the sight of racism, and their refusal to play a segregated show in Jacksonville. âWe were just kids,â McCartney said. âIâve got grandchildren older than that now.â
But there was an even huger emotional watershed in store. At the piano, right after drinking in the audienceâs âBeatle scream,â McCartney casually began a rare performance of âNow and Then,â the 1977 John demo that he lovingly turned into âNow and Then,â the Beatlesâ 2022 farewell single. Hearing Paul sing âNow and Thenâ in his old friendâs adopted city felt intensely emotional for him as well as the audience. âJohn had so much love for New York City,â he said. âWe love you, John. Letâs hear it for John!â
MJ Kim/© MPL Communications Ltd.Lennon wrote âNow and Thenâ alone at the Dakota in NYC, feeling far away from old friends, dreaming of them and singing to them. But of the thousands of people who heard this demo over the years, Paul was the only one who really heard what his oldest friend was trying to express. He spent years on a quest to bring his mateâs unfinished song to life. So it was devastatingly powerful to hear Paul sing âNow and Thenâ in the city where John wrote it, bringing it all back home. It was a moment that felt intensely private â as if we were eavesdropping on the two of them â yet massive, as he summed up the whole pained story of their friendship in one performance.Â
But almost exactly 61 years after the Beatles invaded the Big Apple for The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964 â in fact, the exact date of the Fabsâ first U.S. concert â Paul made that same magic happen, on a snowy winter night, sometime in New York City. The sense of emotional urgency went deep in moments like âLet Me Roll Itâ â one of the nightâs big crowd-flattenersâwhen he gave a little extra intensity to the key line, âI want to tell you, and NOWâs the time.âÂ
At his last gig in the New York area, playing MetLife Stadium in June 2022, it was the night before his 80th birthday. That night, he sent everyone home with the four words every McCartney fan craves hearing: âSee you next time.â He ended this show with the same words, and he made them sound like a statement of purpose. Nowâs the time, now and then, now and forever.
