Paul McCartney Blames Bruce Springsteen for His 3 Hour Shows

Paul McCartney is still touring, and he hasn’t slowed down since turning 80. McCartney has still performed three hour sets at his summer shows. The former Beatle said he has to play that long to keep up with Bruce Springsteen. 

McCartney was a guest on the Fly on the Wall podcast on Oct. 12. Hosts Dana Carvey and David Spade interview people connected with Saturday Night Live, and McCartney has been on many times. Even Spade was impressed by McCartney’s three hour performances, so McCartney explained. 

Bruce Springsteen set the standard, Paul McCartney is just keeping up

McCartney noted Springsteen’s five hour concert in February, topping his own three and four hour records. 

“I blame Bruce Springsteen,” McCartney said on Fly on the Wall. “I know him and I said to him, ‘It’s your fault, man. Five hour things and the rest of us look measly if we do an hour.’”

The Beatles used to play half-hour sets

It has taken McCartney his entire career to work up to the three hour show. McCartney recalled the early Beatles sets that were barely 30 minutes. 

“The Beatles used to do a half hour. Dig that. That was it. Again, it’s lovely because you start thinking back, what was the reason for that? Why did we do that? I know when we first started playing clubs and things, the promoter would come up to the comedian and say, ‘How long do you do?’ The comedian was like, ‘Four minutes.’ ‘You can do four minutes?’ ‘Yeah okay.’ 

So the comedian would do four minutes so we thought, well, God, if we do 20 minutes, that’s a marathon. We stretched it to 30.”

Paul McCartney has well over 3 hours of music 

Another advantage the Beatles had was that there were four of them. They shared the workload. Now, McCartney sings every song. 

“The great thing was John would do some of the songs, I would do some of the songs, George would do some of the songs and Ringo would,” McCartney said. “So split that through 30 minutes and we’ve hardly done anything.”

Spade and Carvey pointed out that the Beatles songs were usually under three minutes. That was the standard in ‘60s music. So their entire early catalog would fill 30 minutes. Now, McCartney has not only the whole Beatles catalog, but Wings and his solo work. 60 plus years of music, so even three hours wouldn’t even cover all the greatest hits.