Paul McCartney Australian tour in 2023: Got Back shows start in Adelaide
When Paul McCartney returns to tour Australia later this year, almost 60 years since The Beatles first played here, he has chosen an unorthodox locale for the tour debut.
When four musicians from Liverpool arrived in Australia in June 1964, nowhere was the phenomenon of Beatlemania more pronounced than in Adelaide, where an estimated 300,000 people – about half of the city’s population – turned out to welcome The Beatles.
Today, one of the men at the centre of that storm reflects on the British rock band’s whirlwind Australian debut with one word and a sly smirk: “Mayhem,” said Paul McCartney.
Speaking exclusively with The Australian last week on a video call from New York, McCartney added, “It was just crazy. We never knew whether the Aussies are going to like us, or how much they knew about us. We came in not knowing, but pretty soon found out. They were crazy, and it was really great. Nobody minds a bit of adulation!”
Now 81, McCartney is one of two surviving band members alongside drummer Ringo Starr, having lost his friends John Lennon and George Harrison to murder and cancer, respectively, in 1980 and 2001.
The singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist’s passion for performance remains undimmed, and when he returns to Australia later this year, he has chosen an unorthodox locale for the tour debut.
He and his four-piece band will perform a comparatively intimate indoor concert at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre on October 18.
The show will take place a few kilometres north of the former site of Centennial Hall, where The Beatles had performed four half-hour concerts on June 12 and 13 1964. Demolished in 2007, the historic hall – where concert capacity was about 3000 – has since been replaced by the Adelaide Showgrounds.
Judging by the universal acclaim heaped upon McCartney’s headline performance at British festival Glastonbury last year – a three-hour extravaganza featuring cameos from Bruce Springsteen and Dave Grohl – the band leader and his colleagues retain an uncommon drive and effervescence in the live arena, while traversing a remarkable 60-year recording catalogue.
McCartney’s previous Australian tour in late 2017 was met with a similarly superlative response. His six-date Australian run is an extension of a tour titled Got Back, which began in the US last year. After Adelaide, the tour will move on to outdoor stadiums interstate, concluding at the Gold Coast on November 4.
With the benefit of nearly 60 years’ hindsight, what does McCartney make of the hysteria that greeted his old band, both here and elsewhere?
“I don’t know,” he said. “I think when The Beatles came out, it had been a pretty lean period up till then for young people. And so suddenly, we came on the scene and struck a chord with a lot of young people; they thought that we thought similar to them, and I don’t know, was there a cocky attitude or something? And hey – the music wasn’t bad.”
In his only Australian interview, McCartney spoke about his surprise at the impact of The Beatles: Get Back docuseries issued by director Peter Jackson in 2021; some snappy advice offered by his father long ago that still rings true today; and the recent resolution of a recurring nightmare that had haunted him for much of his life.
The Weekend Australian on Saturday will feature McCartney in a Review story that canvasses the above subjects and more.
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