Former Beatles bassist Sir Paul McCartney played for almost three hours in Prague’s O2 Arena on June 16, covering his career from 1958 when he was in the Quarrymen up his 2015 collaboration with Rihanna and Kanye West, “FourFiveSeconds.”
There was no opening act as such. A DJ played a sonic mashup of songs and cover versions from McCartney’s career set to new background beats, while a scrolling video showed pictures and video clips.
The show, part of the One on One tour, had 38 songs in total. McCartney began the show wearing a blue Nehru jacket, reminiscent of the style the Beatles made famous in the early 1960s. He opened the show playing his distinctive Höfner 500/1 violin bass, and with his retro haircut he looked very much like the classic pre-Seargant Pepper image of himself.
He took the jacket off after a few songs, announcing it would be the only wardrobe change of the evening.
The 73-year-old musician showed some strain on a few of the vocals, but otherwise was in good form and was backed by a four-piece group of younger musicians that he has been working with for at least over a decade.
The first song was “A Hard Day’s Night,” which McCartney as a solo artist had not performed live before the current One on One tour, although the Beatles performed it live several times in 1964–65. It put the crowd in a good mood, signaling that the show would have a lot of favorite songs that hadn’t been done live recently.
The set had vertical screens on the side to show the musicians and one horizontal screen behind the band to show some video effects for each song. An elaborate lighting array obscured the view of the main video screen for those in the higher seats.
McCartney announced that the evening was going to be a party of old and new music, and he made several efforts throughout the night to speak some Czech, usually with a very thick accent.
Another Beatles song he did early on was “Can’t Buy Me Love” before going into his first Wings-era song, “Letting Go,” which segued into a few riffs of Jimi Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady.” McCartney said a few words about the late Hendrix, and would later reminisce about John Lennon and George Harrison, two of his fellow Beatles who are sadly no longer with us.
The first real surprise was “Temporary Secretary,” which McCartney began playing live for the first time in 2015. The electronic song from 1980 got rather bad reviews at the time of its release, but now sounds fairly mainstream. He did tone the dissonant aspects down a bit so as not to jar the show n the wrong direction. The video background was in a 1980s style, with crude green-line drawings of office equipment.
Another unexpected number was “In Spite of All the Danger,” a song by the Quarrymen, one of the early names of the group featuring John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison, among others. The song, written by McCartney and Harrison, was recorded in 1958 and eventually released as part of the Anthology series.
Production wise, the highlight of the show was “Blackbird,” which featured McCartney on a rising platform, with video screens on all sides of the base creating the illusion of a cascading waterfall. An elaborate video of flocks of birds played in background.
While McCartney tends to stick to the songs he wrote as a Beatle, he branched out to do “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” which is more closely associated with John Lennon. Suitably psychedelic images of colorful circus tents were on the video screen, and keyboardist Paul Wickens did a good approximation of the trippy calliope-inspired music.
This was followed by Paul taking up the ukulele and talking about how he and George Harrison used to sit around and play music together. He began playing George Harrison’s song “Something” on the ukulele before switching to a proper guitar.
For “Back in the U.S.S.R.” McCartney recounted playing the song in 2003 in Moscow’s Red Square, and government officials telling him that they had owned copies of Beatles records, and had learned to speak English from listening to them.
That song was followed by “Let It Be” and then “Live and Let Die,” which has become a signature showstopper for McCartney. This time it was accompanied by flames blasting from the stage, as the show was indoors. Outdoors it usually has fireworks.
“Hey Jude” closed out the main set, with McCartney in Czech urging first men and then women to sing the “nana na na” chorus, and then everyone together. He seemed to like the Czech word “ženy,“ meaning women.
The encore had a touching solo acoustic version of “Yesterday” before rocking into the Wings hit “Hi, Hi, Hi” and then the Beatles song “Birthday, ” as McCartney’s birthday is June 18, though the song has been in many of the One on One shows.
The show finished with the Abbey Road medley of “Golden Slumbers,” “Carry that Weight” and “The End.”
Compared to his previous show in Prague, which was June 6, 2004, at an outdoor venue called T-Mobile Park, the current show was a bit more relaxed.
The songs in the current tour were for the most part laid back numbers, with 22 coming form the Beatles era, six from Wings and the rest from solo and miscellaneous work.
Some hard rocking numbers like “Helter Skelter,” “Drive My Car” and “Jet” were missing from the playlist this time, as were some emotional tunes he usually plays like “The Long and Winding Road.” The set list has varied a bit from show to show, so some of these have made appearances, just not in Prague.
But the new songs made up for it, as hew can’t perform his whole catalog at once and he needs to keep the shows fresh.
