Beatles fan shares how ‘Yellow Submarine’ changed his life
Chase Ciccotti, 22, of Murrieta, shared how he was introduced to the Beatles ahead of Paul McCartney’s Acrisure Arena show on Monday, Sept. 29.
Paul McCartney’s concert on Monday, Sept. 29 at Acrisure Arena was more than just a packed setlist of classic songs.
The show, which served as the official opening night of his Got Back North American Tour 2025, featured many surprises, including special guests in the audience, the use of innovative technology and some pyrotechnic elements to keep things exciting.
Here are three things you might have missed at Paul McCartney’s tour opener on Monday night.
Celebrity sightings at the Paul McCartney tour opener
McCartney’s concerts are known for attracting celebrities. Acrisure Arena staffers told The Desert Sun that Leonardo DiCaprio, Celine Dion, John Mayer, and Bill Gates attended the concert on Monday. Tobey Maguire was also spotted in the crowd.
In 2016, during his surprise concert at Pappy and Harriet’s, Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme, singer-songwriter Victoria Williams and artist David Hockney attended the show.
McCartney pays tribute to members of The Beatles
During the song “Now and Then,” a video played featuring McCartney and Ringo Starr interacting with the AI-generated visuals of their late bandmates John Lennon and George Harrison and the younger versions of themselves. It was touching and also frightening, and many appear to have feelings about this particular video.
As concerns grow regarding the use of AI in entertainment, the video serves as a stunning and emotional tribute to Lennon and Harrison. It also offers a playful way for McCartney and Starr to poke fun at themselves. But this raises important questions about the ethics of using posthumous representations of entertainers.
Pyrotechnics during ‘Live and Let Die’ fed into internet meme
During McCartney’s performance of “Live and Let Die,” the song transitioned between symphonic arrangements and symphonic rock. Some of these transitions featured loud, explosion-like pyrotechnics that scared some fans, while others laughed.
What was so funny? There’s an internet trend of Beatles/McCartney fans making memes of “Live and Let Die” performances where the pyrotechnic affects appear to explode right in front of McCartney after he sings the word “die.” The official McCartney TikTok account even made a video compilation of such moments and posted it in 2023 with the caption “50 years of exploding on stage.”
When the flames shot up from the Acrisure stage during “Live and Let Die” on Monday, many fans had to capture the moment and continue the trend — though the pyrotechnics were relatively mild compared to those at Desert Trip in 2016.
Paul McCartney setlist 2025
Didn’t catch the show, or want to relive the night by reviewing the setlist?
Brian Blueskye covers arts and entertainment for the Desert Sun. He can be reached at [email protected].
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.desertsun.com ’
