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<\/div>\n<\/div>\nBeatles’ bandmates McCartney, Starr perform classics during UK show<\/p>\n
Paul McCartney brought out Beatles bandmate Ringo Starr during his “Got Back Tour” stop in London.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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<\/story-highlights> As the title of the “Got Back Tour”<\/a> indicates, Paul McCartney<\/a> is unabashedly embracing nostalgia on his latest North American trek, memorializing his late bandmates, reminicising about hearing Jimi Hendrix<\/a> perform at a small London club and recounting how the Beatles desegregated<\/a> a Jacksonville, Florida, venue in the 1960s.<\/p>\n But McCartney<\/a> \u2014 who, even at 83, possesses the same boyish grin and boundless charm that made him the heartthrob of the Fab Four \u2014 is still a rock star determined to wow the crowds as he continues playing sold-out arenas. So, his wistful, captivating storytelling is accompanied by high-tech, eye-popping \u2014 and occasionally ear-blasting \u2014 production values, from a digital blackbird escaping from the stage-turned-cage to literal indoor fireworks bursting above the crowd.<\/p>\n Still, it was the music that provided most of the magic on the “Got Back Tour’s” Sooner State stop<\/a>.<\/p>\n The 19-date arena and stadium tour<\/a> \u2014 the living legend’s first extensive series of shows across the U.S. and Canada since 2022 \u2014 played Oklahoma on Wednesday, Oct. 22, at Tulsa’s BOK Center, which was packed with an estimated 15,000 fervent fans.<\/p>\n McCartney and his longtime band, accompanied by the truly sizzling Hot City Horns<\/a>, treated the wildly enthusiastic all-ages audience \u2014 including some entire families, from grade-schoolers to grandparents \u2014 to a nearly three-hour, 35-song set that spanned Macca’s almost seven-decade music career.<\/p>\n In his third BOK Center engagement \u2014 he previously played the Tulsa venue in 2009<\/a> and 2013 and the downtown Oklahoma City arena now known as Paycom Center<\/a> in 2017 and 2002 \u2014 the two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s<\/a> voice wasn’t quite as robust as in the past, which isn’t surprising since he’s now an octogenarian.<\/p>\n But his charisma, energy and musicianship remain unrivaled, as the Englishman played bass, guitar, piano, ukulele and mandolin while singing songs from the Beatles, Wings, his solo career and even the Beatles forerunners The Quarrymen<\/a>.<\/p>\n Here are seven highlights of McCartney’s Tulsa tour stop on his 2025 “Got Back Tour:”<\/p>\n After opening on an exclamation point with the Fab Four favorite “Help!,”<\/a> followed by his buoyant solo tune “Coming Up,” McCartney greeted the loud and loyal BOK Center crowd with “well, hello.”<\/p>\n “I get the feeling we’re gonna have some fun in this place tonight. We’ve got some new songs, some old ones and some in-between ones. This one is definitely not a new one,” said McCartney as he launched into another Beatles classic, “Got to Get You Into My Life.”<\/p>\n By the time he and his band reached the “The End” of the show more than two hours and 45 minutes later, they had featured 20-plus Fab Four songs in McCartney’s career-spanning set, including \u201cBeing for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!,” “Let It Be,” “Getting Better,” “Love Me Do” and the first song the Beatles’ ever recorded, “In Spite of All the Danger,”<\/a> back when they were still The Quarrymen<\/a>. The 1965 ballad “I’ve Just Seen a Face,” which will have a new version released Nov. 21 via the Beatles’ “Anthology 4,” was among the deeper cuts.<\/p>\n When the crowd happily took over belting the whimsical lyrics to \u201cOb-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” Macca took his turn to graciously applaud the audience. He showed similar appreciation after he got plenty of fan assistance on the “beep, beep, yeahs” on “Drive My Car.”<\/p>\n “Thank you, it’s great to be back in Tulsa. Love it,” said McCartney, who frequently finished his songs with a fist pump or a happy dance, accompanied by his familiar crooked smile. “I came through here when I was doing Route 66.<\/a> That was fun.”<\/p>\n Throughout the show, McCartney’s production team mashed up a slew of vintage photos and video clips on the high-definition video screens to help bring Ringo Starr<\/a> as well as the late John Lennon<\/a> and George Harrison<\/a> to Tulsa, too.<\/p>\n Standing atop a hyper-realistic video of a spinning Earth with deep-space phenomena swirling around him, the superstar seemed to get emotional as he sang his lament “Here and Now,”<\/a> which he penned after Lennon’s 1980 murder<\/a>.<\/p>\n “When you’re kids growing up somewhere like Liverpool \u2014 boys, mainly \u2014 you’re just trying to be hard. You’re just trying to be tough. So, you never say to each other, ‘I love you, man.’ We would’ve never said that. So, all the years went by, and after everything we went through, we never really just said, ‘I love you, man.’ So, I wanted to write a song after John died \u2014 let’s hear it for John,” McCartney said as the audience erupted in impassioned applause.<\/p>\n He followed up with the Fab Four’s last “new” song, the atmospheric ballad “Now and Then<\/a>.”<\/p>\n “Now that we’ve brought you to the depths of despair, we’ll lighten it up a bit,” said McCartney, pounding out the peppy \u201cLady Madonna” on piano.<\/p>\n He also paid earnest homage to Harrison, who died of cancer in 2001<\/a>, by playing the so-called “quiet Beatle’s” masterful love song “Something<\/a>” on a ukulele McCartney said his late bandmate gifted him.<\/p>\n “Let’s hear it for George,” Macca said, prompting more appreciative applause.<\/p>\n The superstar swiftly showed off the capability and camaraderie of his longtime band<\/a> \u2014 keyboardist Paul \u201cWix\u201d Wickens, lead guitarist Rusty Anderson, drummer Abe Laboriel Jr. and guitarist\/bassist Brian Ray, plus the Hot City Horns Mike Davis on trumpet and flugelhorn, Paul Burton on trombone and Kenji Fenton on saxophone \u2014 on the Wings blues-rocker “Let Me Roll It.”<\/p>\n The talented musicians made it a medley by tacking on a partial cover of the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s “Foxy Lady,” which led into McCartney sharing the time he was “lucky enough” to witness “great guy” Hendrix and his band’s live UK debut<\/a> in 1966 at the Bag O’Nails Club in London.<\/p>\n “It was late, and there was hardly anyone in the club \u2014 just a few of us \u2014 and we were mainly listening to records. But there was a little stage in the corner, and suddenly, you saw these three guys just come along onto the stage. Then, you heard the sound of a guitar getting plugged into a big Marshall amp<\/a>. It’s like, ‘What was that?’ That was Jimi and Noel (Redding) and Mitch (Mitchell)<\/a>,” McCartney recalled.<\/p>\n “They were kind of playing to us \u2014 we were the only ones in the club \u2014 but they did the whole thing. And it was fantastic. … Two nights later, the club was packed, so it (Eric) Clapton, (Pete) Townshend<\/a>, (Jeff) Beck, all the boys. And Jimi. I can hardly believe I was there.”<\/p>\n In one of the concert’s most emotionally stirring and technologically innovative moments, Macca strummed an acoustic guitar and crooned his U.S. Civil Rights Movement<\/a> ode “Blackbird” while a wide lift platform steadily bore him up high above the arena floor.<\/p>\n As he ascended, a state-of-the-art video screen unfurled to show a supersize songbird escaping a cage, and more than one fan (including this one) had tears escaping down their cheeks by the end of the song.<\/p>\n “I’m very proud of having written that song. I wrote that back in the ’60s. … We would see the news coming over from America, and I wanted to try and write a song that, if it got over to the people going through the troubles, it might just give them a little bit of hope,” he said.<\/p>\n He explained that the Beatles were set to play a 1964 concert at Florida’s Gator Bowl<\/a> when the promoter informed them the show would be segregated. The Liverpool lads didn’t even know what that meant, and when it was explained, their reply was blunt.<\/p>\n “We said, ‘That’s just stupid. … We’re not playing the gig then. Sorry, forget it.’ I think there must have been a bit of money involved for him, so he relented. And it was the first desegregated gig that they’d had,” McCartney said as the Tulsa crowd cheered. “So, we got that written into our contract, that we’d never do segregated things.”<\/p>\n Years later, he said he met a Black woman who had attended that Florida concert as a kid.<\/p>\n “She said, ‘I’d never sat with white people before. … But it didn’t matter,” he recalled. “She said, ‘It was great. We were just all Beatle fans.'”<\/p>\n In another heartwarming highlight, McCartney performed his soulful 2012 piano ballad “My Valentine” while backed onscreen by the black-and-white music video<\/a> featuring Johnny Depp and Natalie Portman. Before he began tickling the ivories, he dedicated the song to his wife, Nancy Shevell, who was in the audience.<\/p>\n “This one’s for you, babe,” said McCartney, who celebrated his 14th wedding anniversary<\/a> with Shevell on Oct. 9.<\/p>\n Other songs from his solo career showcased in the set included “Come on to Me,” “Dance Tonight” and his beloved 1970 ballad “Maybe I’m Amazed,”<\/a> which he penned for his first wife, Linda Eastman, who died of cancer in 1998<\/a>.<\/p>\n With the anthology “Wings: \u2060The Definitive Self-Titled Collection”<\/a> due out Nov. 7, McCartney worked into his Tulsa show several songs from the 1970s chart-topping band he formed<\/a> with wife Linda and guitarist Denny Laine.<\/p>\n From the “Band on the Run” and “Jet” to “Letting Go” and “Let ‘Em In,” Wings was well-represented on the Oklahoma tour stop, although it was the rock band’s Bond movie theme “Live and Let Die”<\/a> that actually lit up the arena.<\/p>\n In case repeated plumes of pyrotechnics, cannon-like blasts and dazzling lights displays weren’t enough cinematic special effects, the explosive number culminated in literal fireworks popping off above the stage.<\/p>\n In “The End,” it was back to the Beatles for the Tulsa “Get Back Tour” concert, with McCartney closing his set by sitting at a colorfully decorated upright piano and leading the elated audience in an extended sing-along on “Hey Jude.”<\/p>\n Less than five minutes elapsed before Macca and Co. returned waving UK, American, Oklahoma and Pride flags and playing an all-Beatles encore that opened with a video-powered virtual Lennon-McCartney duet<\/a> on “I’ve Got a Feeling,” a song from the Fab Four’s famed 1969 rooftop concert<\/a>.<\/p>\n After hyping up the fans one more time with the classics \u201cSgt. Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)\u201d and “Helter Skelter,” McCartney and his cohorts sent the crowd back home with the glorious three-part lullaby “Golden Slumbers,” “Carry That Weight” and “The End.”<\/p>\n As a bonus, McCartney paid tribute to his most recent Oklahoma visit by posting a now-viral social media video<\/a> featuring the singer, songwriter and musician sunning near an overpass on the “big groovy” Arkansas River.<\/p>\n The Beatle looks relaxed as he’s hanging out on Tulsa time, admiring the springlike weather, an unseen little butterfly and the “usual grafitti” decorating the concrete.<\/p>\n\n
1. Beatle pays homage to John Lennon and George Harrison<\/h2>\n
2. McCartney remembers Jimi Hendrix’s UK live debut<\/h2>\n
3. ‘Blackbird’ songwriter shares the story behind the ballad<\/h2>\n
4. McCartney dedicates ‘My Valentine’ to his wife<\/h2>\n
5. ‘Live and Let Die’ literally fires up the Tulsa arena<\/h2>\n
6. ‘The End’ of the show brings more Beatles classics<\/h2>\n
7. McCartney pays tribute to ‘big groovy’ Arkansas River<\/h2>\n
Paul McCartney ‘Got Back Tour’ Tulsa setlist<\/h2>\n