“Salut la belle France!”: it was in French that Paul McCartney announced Monday in a video message two concerts on December 4 and 5 at Paris La Défense Arena, where he last played in France in 2018.
After this introduction, the ex-Beatles, with three days’ beard, continues his mischievous intervention in English, sent in advance to the press. “It’s Paul here, Paul McCartney, we’re coming to play in France. We had a great time the last time we came, it’s always great in France. So come on, we’re going to party.”
In November 2018, the left-handed bassist and his group performed in front of 40,000 people at Paris La Défense Arena, the largest closed venue in Europe, where Taylor Swift recently visited. The Liverpool native had promised to return.
“Macca”, 81, performs as part of his “Got Back” world tour. A nod to “Get back”, the original name of the project for which the Beatles entered the studio in London in January 1969.
But the tapes from this album are put away in the closet. These sessions would later provide ammunition for “Abbey Road” (1969). And, above all, the tracks reworked by producer Phil Spector — known for his famous effect called wall of sound — will give “Let it be”, the final album released (1970), with a piece entitled “Get back”.
The “Got Back” tour was launched in the United States in 2022 and then visited Australia, Mexico and Brazil in 2023. For this singing tour, “Sir Paul” and his musicians draw on the repertoire of the Beatles, the Wings – another McCartney project – and the solo albums of the ex-Beatles.
Tickets go on sale June 21.
– Album exhumed 50 years later –
There is always news around Paul McCartney. Friday, “One hand clapping”, a Wings album recorded live in 1974 and never exhumed, was finally published.
“Fifty years ago, Wings went to Abbey Road Studios in London to film a documentary and record an eventual live album in the studio.
Canned in four days, with mega-hits from the Wings and reworked bits of Beatles classics, these recordings had never been officially released,” writes Paul McCartney on his Instagram account.
Ultra-fans of Paul McCartney already know this album, pirated versions of which have been circulating. A DVD was released in 2010, as a bonus to the reissue of the Wings album “Band on the Run”, but not with all of the tracks recorded.
“One hand clapping” contains 26, 27 even counting the piano solo medley of “Macca” merging “The long and winding road” and “Lady Madonna”.
We also hear on this album a surprising and short version of “Let it be”. There are also Wings standards like “Live and let die”, used for the theme song of the James Bond film “Live and let die” (1973).
When “One hand clapping” was recorded, Paul McCartney, then 32, and his Wings were at the top, for the seventh consecutive week at the top of the charts in the United Kingdom with “Band on the run”, album recorded in part in Lagos, Nigeria and carried by the title track.
