Paul McCartney gave his first concert of the year in Uruguay. His tour will take him through South America, Central America and Europe.
Tuesday evening, Paul McCartney gave his first concert of 2024 at the Centenario stadium in Montevideo, Uruguay. The setlist was very close to last year's, until halfway through the concert, when he performed ” Now and Then » for the first time.
John Lennon recorded this piano ballad on a tape recorder in his New York apartment in 1977. Yoko Ono gave the cassette to the three surviving Beatles in 1994, along with “ Free as a Bird ” And ” Real Love “. The three musicians attempted to flesh out these three demos into new Beatles songs, but ultimately discarded ” Now and Then » because the audio quality of the cassette was just too bad.
They didn't return until 2022, when technology developed by Peter Jackson's team for the film Get Back leur made it possible to isolate Lennon's voice. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr recorded new drums and vocals for the song and incorporated guitar parts that George Harrison had played in 1995.
“ It was clearly important to Paul that it sounded like a Beatles songexplained producer Giles Martin to WECB. There was no need, from my point of view anyway, for any modernization. Ringo has to be Ringo and he has to play the drums, and that's what Ringo does. He plays drums without a click track and sounds like Ringo, and there's no one better. »
Giles Martin incorporated backing vocals recorded in the 1960s for “ Because “, ” Eleanor Rigby ” And ” Here, There and Everywhere “. “ I figured if the Beatles were here, they would probably sing harmonies at some point,” he explains. Obviously it can't be as good as the Beatles singing live, but they're the ones singing in the studio. It was important. »
McCartney's new live version is a simpler arrangement: he sings entirely alone at the piano. It is accompanied by archive clips of the Beatles and elements of the official music video for ” Now and Then “.
Later in the concert, Paul McCartney performed his virtual duet with John Lennon on “ I've Got a Feeling ” using footage from the Beatles' rooftop concert in 1969. It has become a staple of McCartney's concerts since 2022. The evening ended with ” Golden Slumbers “, ” Carry That Weight ” And ” The End », extracts from the second side of Abbey Road.
The tour will pass through France in December.
