Credit: Raph PH

Paul McCartney told Bruce Springsteen his shows are too long

Fri 16 June 2023 15:20, UK

Speaking at the Tribeca Film Festival, Paul McCartney revealed he told Bruce Springsteen his mammoth concerts are too long.

McCartney, who performed an extensive three-hour headline set at Glastonbury last year, was speaking to Conan O’Brien ahead of the release of his upcoming photography book 1964: Eyes of the Storm. Reflecting upon that time, McCartney recalled how The Beatles would only play 30-minute shows, but explained how Springsteen changed the standard lengths of concerts forever.

“I blame Bruce Springsteen,” McCartney joked to the former talk show host. “I told him so. I said, ‘It’s your fault,'” he added. When O’Brien said Springsteen “ruined it for everyone,” the former Beatle agreed with his assessment.

McCartney elaborated: “He did! We used to do a half hour. That was like The Beatles’ thing – and we got paid for it. I tried to work out, ‘Why was it so short?’ Well, because there was a lot of people on the (lineup).”

He added: “When you went to a thing, if you were a comedian, the promoter would say, ‘How long can you do? Four minutes?’ And the guy would say yes. So we thought, ‘Half an hour – that’s epic!’ But that was it. With a Beatles show, we were on and off like that, and it didn’t seem strange.”

Meanwhile, McCartney recently confirmed The Beatles will release one “last” song later this year. The track was recently finished with the help of artificial intelligence. “We were able to use that kind of thing (AI) when Peter Jackson did the film Get Back, it was us making the Let It Be album. He was able to extricate John’s voice from a ropey little bit of cassette and a piano,” he told BBC Radio 4.

“He could separate them with AI. They tell the machine, ‘That’s a voice, this is the guitar, lose the guitar.’ And he did that, so it has great uses. So when we came to make what will be the last Beatles record it was a demo that John had that we worked on and we’ve just finished it up, it’ll be released this year,” McCartney revealed.

“We were able to get John’s voice and make it pure through AI and then we could mix the record, as you would normally do,” he concluded.