![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Paul-McCartney-Poster-1800x917.webp.webp\")
Courtesy: Karen Bliss<\/p>\nThree generations of music fans \u2014 from a baby with protective headphones to grandparents with their adult children \u2014 got to see a living legend, Paul McCartney, Friday night at Hamilton\u2019s TD Coliseum, for the official grand opening of the $300million\u00a0 reconstructed 40-year-old arena where the former Beatle played in 2016 when it was FirstOntario Centre.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The 83-year-old played an impressive 36 songs over a nearly three-hour show for the final Canadian stop on his Got Back Tour, which began in 2022 and ends Nov. 25 in Chicago.<\/p>\n
The career-spanning set dated as far back as his pre-Beatles band Quarrymen\u2019s 1958 \u201cIn Spite of All the Danger,\u201d and included such Beatles hits as \u201cLove Me Do,\u201d \u201cBlackbird,\u201d \u201cGet Back\u201d and \u201cHey Jude;\u201d songs from his next band Wings, like \u201cJet,\u201d \u201cLive and Let Die\u201d and \u201cBand On The Run,\u201d and solo songs \u201cMaybe I\u2019m Amazed\u201d and \u201cMy Valentine.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
A large poster on the exterior of TD Coliseum read \u201cWelcome To TD Coliseum, Paul,\u201d and when the sold-out crowd of 13,000 left the building at 11 p.m., they were handed a souvenir \u201cgrand opening\u201d McCartney poster.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Courtesy: Karen Bliss<\/p>\n
While McCartney didn\u2019t mention anything about the newly transformed arena \u2014\u00a0including the new modern backstage artist digs \u2014 or that he was the first artist to play a ticketed event there since the interior was gutted and rebuilt (Earth Wind & Fire played a private free show Tuesday), he did address the crowd after opening the show with Beatles classic \u201cHelp\u201d and solo \u201cComing Up.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, hello Hamilton. It\u2019s great to be back. I have a feeling we\u2019re gonna have some fun in here tonight. We got some old songs, we got some new songs and we\u2019ve got some in between songs for you \u2014 and this next one is definitely not a new one,\u201d he said, launching into 1966\u2019s \u201cGot To Get You Into My Life.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Iconic](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Paul-McCartney1-1800x917.webp.webp\")
Courtesy: Mike Highfield<\/p>\n
The lifelong vegan was dressed in a double-breasted blazer and slacks, with a crisp white shirt underneath. He soon removed the jacket with its colourful lining to reveal a waste coat. Looking incredibly trim and not showing any glimpse of being tired as the show progressed hour by hour, he put us younger folks to shame who had to take breaks to sit down.<\/p>\n
McCartney has also long adhered to a personal rule of not drinking even one sip of water onstage for his marathon shows, which are longer than most A-list artists on the planet, except, perhaps, Bruce Springsteen. Another super human feat for an octogenarian, no less.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was joined onstage by longtime musicians Rusty Anderson (guitar), Brian Ray (bass\/guitar), Paul \u201cWix\u201d Wickens (keyboards) and Abe Laboriel Jr (drums), all of whom he\u2019s been playing with since 2002, in addition to the three-piece Hot City Horns (Mike Davis, trumpet; Kenji Fenton, sax; and Paul Burton, trombone) who joined the band in 2018.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
McCartney himself played bass, of course, guitar, upright piano, grand piano, mandolin and ukulele, the latter a gift from George Harrison which he brought out for the beginning of \u201cSomething.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He also surprised the crowd by having two dozen members of the local Paris Port Dover Pipe Band for one of the encore songs, \u201cMull of Kintyre.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Vibrant](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Paul-McCartney2-1800x917.webp.webp\")
Courtesy: Mike Highfield<\/p>\n
McCartney engaged the audience on a few numbers, getting them to sing \u201cmost gloriously\u201d to \u201cOb-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,\u201d as well as the na na nas on \u201cHey Jude\u201d (some people brought signs) and frightened the hell out of us with the enormous fiery pyro explosions for the standout rocker \u201cLive and Let Die,\u201d mock holding his ears as if it was way too loud.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He dedicated \u201cMy Valentine\u201d to his wife Nancy who was in the audience, reminisced about what a privilege it was to have met producer George Martin, before playing the first song the Beatles cut at Abbey Road, \u201cLove Me Do,\u201d sang the\u00a0 final Beatles\u2019 song 2023\u2019s \u201cNow and Then\u201d (\u201cthank you John for writing that beautiful song\u201d) and \u201cI\u2019ve Got a Feeling,\u201d which had Lennon\u2019s voice on video. \u201cI love doing that song because it lets me sing with John one more time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The stories he told onstage are worth tracking down on Instagram or YouTube. They include song preambles such as seeing Jimi Hendrix in London in a small club called Bag O\u2019Nails. He then played a bit of \u201cFoxy Lady\u201d at the end of Wings\u2019 \u201cLet Me Roll It.\u201d He also talked about writing \u201cBlackbird,\u201d after being told their Beatles show in Jacksonville, Florida, was segregated. \u201cWhat\u2019s that?\u201d he asked the promoter, who explained that Black and white people sat on different sides of the room. \u201cWell, that\u2019s stupid,\u201d McCartney replied, adding that the band refused and they never played a segregated show.<\/p>\n
Primarily, the night was a walk down memory lane and a loving nostalgic tribute to the Beatles, especially Lennon and Harrison. There was tons of old footage playing on the backdrop, and he said more than once how much he loved and missed his late bandmates.<\/p>\n
Near the start of the seven-song encore, he said, \u201cWe\u2019ve had a great time tonight but there comes a time when we have to go home. It\u2019s round about the same time you\u2019re gonna go home.\u201d He then thanked the numerous people in his \u201cbest crew on the planet\u201d and added, \u201cMost of all we want to thank you. Give yourselves a round of applause. You were great.\u201d<\/p>\n
We hope the band was given grand opening posters too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three generations of music fans \u2014 from a baby with protective headphones to grandparents with their adult children…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":301430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,9998,9999,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-301429","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-paul-mccartney","11":"tag-the-beatles","12":"tag-top-news","13":"tag-top-stories","14":"tag-topnews","15":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}