The 3 Songs Paul McCartney Expects to Hear at Every Rolling Stones Concert

Paul McCartney is no stranger to putting together a concert setlist. The Beatles stopped touring in the mid-1960s, but their bassist hit the road when he formed Wings in 1971, and he’s been at it ever since. He knows he needs to play “Hey Jude” on every tour, and Paul said he expects The Rolling Stones to perform three specific songs when they play live. 

Paul McCartney explains why he expects to hear 3 songs at Rolling Stones concerts

Some Paul songs probably don’t make his live shows, such as the embarrassing Wings song “Hi Hi Hi.” It was a solid outtake from 1973’s Red Rose Speedway that Macca said doesn’t hold up. When he toured with Wings after The Beatles split up, however, the only songs he avoided were Fab Four tunes.  

His old band’s hits were well-known and not very old, and his second group was new and still establishing itself. Paul saw little benefit in trotting out the recent classics.

“That was very specifically the period after The Beatles when I was trying to establish Wings, and I had to say to myself, ‘Yeah, you’re an ex-Beatle, but you’re trying to do something new, so you’ve got to leave that alone,’” Paul told Esquire in 2022. “It’s a risky business because the promoters didn’t like that. They said, ‘Can’t you just do ‘Yesterday’ at the end of the show?’ ‘No!’”

Once Wings became a well-known group on its own merits around 1976, Paul was more willing to dive into his Beatles past. Which was how he arrived at the three songs he wants to hear The Rolling Stones play at their concerts.

“It was about 1976 when Wings had a big successful American tour that I thought, ‘You know what? It’s OK now.’ I felt that I’d succeeded in having a life after The Beatles.

“And then I was able to think what I’d known all along … Which is, ‘If I’m in an audience, I wanna hear the hits. I don’t want to see the Stones do their new album. I want ‘Satisfaction,’ ‘Honky Tonk Women,’ [and] ‘Ruby Tuesday.’”

Paul McCartney

It took a few years, but Paul figured out what most classic rock musicians know: You have to appease the fans and strike a balance between new and old. Wings’ 1976 tour focused on that band’s hits, but the setlists often included songs from Beatles catalog (per Concert Archives). 

Musicians that continue creating new tunes should feel free to promote that work. Still, they don’t want to forget about the songs that delivered success and fame. If and when he sees them perform, Paul expects The Rolling Stones to incorporate their outstanding ballad “Ruby Tuesday,” the classic riff of “Street Fighting Man,” and the No. 1 hit “Honkey Tonk Women” in their set.

Paul will reportedly play on the new Rolling Stones album

Believe it or not, Paul might be in a position to enforce his three-song mandate on The Rolling Stones. As he once told Howard Stern in 2020, he “goes to see them every time they come out [and play].”

Now the relationship between The Beatles and Stones, which was never as contentious as the media portrayed it in the 1960s, could become even closer. Paul and Ringo Starr reportedly collaborated on the Stones’ next album. The two bands worked on each other’s songs in the 1960s — Paul and John Lennon worked on two Stones songs, for instance — and now it seems the remaining members of two of the biggest bands in rock history will unite again. 

Paul McCartney expects The Rolling Stones to play three songs live if he sees them in concert in support of their next album. Macca might even join them on stage since he reportedly worked on the record along with Ringo Starr. If he does play live with the Stones, he might be able to persuade them to play “Ruby Tuesday,” “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” and “Honkey Tonk Women.”

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