The show was announced suddenly at noon, with no advance warning:
PAUL McCARTNEY ROCKS THE BOWERY
Tuesday, February 11th
Bowery Ballroom
5:00 Doors
6:30 Showtime
Tickets on sale now only at Bowery Ballroom box office. No tickets sold online.
First come, first served. One ticket per person.
And at 6:44 p.m. on the nose, the band walked down the narrow stairs leading from the Bowery dressing room to the stage and launched straight into “A Hard Day’s Night,” soaring through a tight but relaxed career-spanning set that featured lots of banter, much of it in direct response to comments shouted by audience members.
McCartney said they’d had just one rehearsal the day before, this band — guitarist Rusty Anderson, guitarist-bassist Brian Ray, keyboardist Paul “Wix” Wickens and drummer Abe Laboriel Jr., accompanied on some songs by a three-piece horn section.
McCartney here, he was responding directly to fans’ shouts, which this time he could actually hear, although they were usually “We love you!”s or calls for another songs. After one man shouted loudly for the 1980 single, “Temporary Secretary,” McCartney chuckled and said to the band, “Can we work that one in?”; after another shouted “Yeah!” to a mundane comment, he joked, “You’ll say ‘Yeah!’ to anything!”
Paul He also recalled how young the Beatles were on their first American visit — “I’ve got grandchildren older than we were!” — and how impressed he and John Lennon were with the unconventional chord progression they placed in the middle of “From Me to You” — “G-minor, hey, we’re really coming along!” And he made multiple references to New York City, notably how much Lennon “loved living here — let’s hear it for John.”
“Hey, that was a Beatles scream!” Paul McCartney said, responding to a female audience member’s shriek midway through his exuberant surprise concert at New York’s Bowery Ballroom on Tuesday night. “Okay girls, let’s get it over with,” he mock-sighed. “Let’s hear your Beatles screams.”
A huge percentage of the audience complied, producing a credible impersonation of the shrieks that shook the world in 1964 while McCartney listened, then nodded in approval and said, “OK that’s enough.”
After a finale of “Lady Madonna,” “Let It Be” and a massive “Hey Jude,” Paul and the band bowed and exited the stage precisely 90 minutes after they’d walked onto it. Of course, they were back for an encore after just a couple of minutes: The “Golden Slumbers-The End” finale of “Abbey Road,” which saw McCartney, Anderson and Ray trading off the famous guitar solos.
“This has been a blast — we’ve looved it,” McCartney said as the band left the stage.
Paul McCartney setlist
Bowery Ballroom, New York, 11 Feb. 2025
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