“Overdoes it”: Paul McCartney explains how Bruce Springsteen progressed live performance
Paul McCartney has always been a child of stage performance. Even though The Beatles had stopped performing live by the end of the 1960s, every subsequent solo tour that McCartney has done has been a major event, whether through his incredible light shows with Wings or him delivering the greatest Beatles tribute setlist that anyone has ever seen in the modern age. As far as he was concerned, it all came back to progressing the live show forward just like the Fab Four did with recording, and Bruce Springsteen has been upping his game for the past few decades.
Then again, the version of McCartney that exists today seems unthinkable compared to the version that ended up playing three-hour-long setlists today. While he and his Liverpool mates had to be put through the wringer when working in Hamburg, some of their biggest shows could usually wrap up in just under half an hour. And who knows, if you were actually sitting within two feet of the speakers, maybe you would actually hear something over the screaming fans.
That approach was more than enough to work with in the 1960s, but even in terms of classic rockers, Springsteen was a completely different breed. Many artists did most of their damage onstage, but for ‘The Boss’, it was about making something that was much more than a bunch of songs. It was an experience, and that meant that the sets had to get a little bit longer.
Whereas most artists would headline stadiums and play for an hour and be out of there, Springsteen’s shows seemed like a massive reunion of resident misfits, with The Boss serving as the emcee of the entire show. Throughout every one of his songs, the heartland rocker also had a lot to unpack, and hearing in-depth stories about how he wrote every tune tended to creep up in the preamble to every one of their tracks.
For any classic rocker, this was the next step of what a live show could be, but that also meant a lot more work. It’s one thing to be able to put together a setlist that’s all energy all the time, but now people are looking at a setlist the same way that most screenwriters look at films, usually having a growing arc before coming to the grand finale.
As much as McCartney admired Springsteen for taking a chance, he knew that he also had his work cut out for him. When speaking to Esquire about how he structures his shows, the former Beatle credited Springsteen for taking the live show just enough too far, saying, “Springsteen overdoes it, too. You know what it is? We’ve got a lot of songs.”
It might seem like a thankless job to have to play for that long, but Springsteen and McCartney both know what it means to give the best to their audience. Every person in the house has come to their shows expecting to have the time of their lives, and whenever they get to see either of them in concert, there’s no doubt that they’ve heard every song that they expected.
McCartney’s discography might be a lot bulkier than Springsteen’s, but hearing him play everything from George Harrison’s ‘Something‘ to ‘Band on the Run’ to ‘Let It Be’ is the same as when Springsteen kicks into ‘Born to Run’ at the end of every one of his shows. Each of them might have played those songs countless times and probably never want to play them again, but if it means giving their fans a night to remember, then it’s worth it.
