Paul McCartney unstoppable during marathon show of Beatles and Wings hits

Half a dozen songs into Paul McCartney’s night at Acrisure Arena on Monday, he paused to slip off his double-breasted jacket.

Cue the high-pitched screams of fans, and for a moment, it was like being transported back to seeing the 21-year-old Beatle on “The Ed Sullivan Show” on Feb. 9, 1964, instead of McCartney solo in Palm Desert on Monday, Sept. 29.

McCartney shrugged as if to say, ‘”What? Who, me?” and the crowd screamed more, proving even at 83, he’s still the cute Beatle.

And, even at 83, he simply cannot stop.

Can’t stop touring: This run of shows, which started in Santa Barbara on Friday, Sept. 26, before heading to the desert on Monday, is a continuation of the Got Back Tour he began in 2022.

Can’t stop singing: After performing 26 songs in just under two hours at the Santa Barbara Bowl, a shorter set for McCartney, he got back to his usual kind of set at Acrisure Arena with 35 songs across two hours and 40 minutes.

Can’t stop giving: There’s really no practical need for McCartney to tour as much as he has in recent years. He’s got more money and fame than anyone needs; he’s got a wife, five kids and a gaggle of grandkids. But Sir Paul still feels compelled to share his songs around the world to anyone who ever loved the music he’s made in the Beatles, Wings and as a solo artist.

The night began with “Help!” – a Beatles hit that, before this new leg of the tour, McCartney hadn’t played live since 1990. In an instant, the crowd was on its feet, singing along with every word. The 1980 solo single “Coming Up” followed, and while it’s not as well known as the Beatles and Wings songs that made up the majority of the set, almost as many sang along to this one, too.

That’s kind of the deal at McCartney’s concerts at this point. When you have songs that are so beloved, songs that are part of the fabric of the lives of Boomers, sure, but also Gen Xers, Millennials, and even Gen Z, they trigger some center of pleasure in the brain the moment the opening notes arrive.

The Beatles’ “Got to Get You Into My Life” and “Drive My Car” raced at fast tempos with a horn section adding filigrees to the former, McCartney’s band delivering the “Beep-beep yeah!” choruses to the latter.

“This is the second night of our tour, so we’re young and fresh and restless,” McCartney declared at the finish of the Wings’ tune “Letting Go,” which was followed by that band’s even better-known song, “Let Me Roll It.”

That last one saw McCartney switch from his classic Hofner bass to an electric guitar, playing the tune’s signature riffs to kick it off with his band. From there, he and the band slipped into the Beatles’ “Getting Better,” unison guitar stabs accenting the beat.

And if you might be feeling a bit tired just from reading about the pace of the show about a quarter of the way into it, know that McCartney doesn’t seem to have broken a sweat.

Things did slow down briefly, with the gentle piano ballad of Wings’ “Let ‘Em In,” the love song “My Valentine,” written for his wife Nancy, who was at the arena on Monday, and a gorgeous take on his early solo number “Maybe I’m Amazed.”

From there, McCartney and his band did a mini-set of nostalgia-themed numbers, coming out in front a screen that portrayed a rural front porch to play the first song he and his mates ever recorded – “In Spite of All the Danger,” captured on tape in Liverpool when the band was still called the Quarrymen – and then “Love Me Do,” their first single as the Beatles.

The band left the stage for McCartney to sing and play acoustic guitar on “Blackbird,” one of his loveliest and most meaningful songs – it was inspired, he noted, by the racial discrimination he observed in the American South in the ’60s.

“Sometimes you don’t get to say things you want to say to your mates because you’re trying to be rough and tough,” McCartney told the audience, still alone on the elevated platform where he’d done “Blackbird. “So, me and John [Lennon] never got to say, ‘I love you, man,’ to each other.”

“Here Today,” the song that followed, was McCartney’s ode to his friend and co-songwriter in the Beatles, after his death in 1980. The wistful nostalgia continued with “Now and Then.”

That song was one Lennon had written but left incomplete. In the ’90s, McCartney, Ringo Starr and the late George Harrison worked on it but also left it unfinished, which it stayed until 2023 when McCartney and Starr finished it, using guitar tracks Harrison had made and vocals Lennon had recorded, turning what had been considered a lost Beatles’ single into a 2023 release.

The band returned, and the show shifted into a harder rock vibe for the second half of the show. McCartney played a rollicking piano motif as he sang the Beatles’ “Lady Madonna,” switched to a ukulele – given to him by Harrison, whose wife Olivia was there – to do an arrangement of Harrison’s “Something” they’d created, and led the crowd in a singalong of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.”

Did we say it rocked harder? Well, hold on, because leading up to the end of the main set we got “Band on the Run,” which built from McCartney’s gentle piano and vocal opening to its huge finish, “Get Back” which blazed with intensity, and “Live and Let Die,” which roared both in its music and in the jets of flames, flash-bangs and fireworks the likes of which I’m not sure I’ve ever seen on a stage this small.

Thank goodness for the softer bookends around “Live and Let Die,” which was preceded by “Let It Be” and followed by “Hey Jude,” two of the most hymn-like and moving songs in McCartney’s catalog.

The encore opened with “I’ve Got a Feeling,” which McCartney crafted into a virtual duet with Lennon, using footage from Peter Jackson’s Beatles’ documentary “Get Back.”

A rapid-fire run through “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)” and “Helter Skelter” proved there was plenty of gas left in the tank with the three-hour mark just out of sight.

The suite-like flow of “Golden Slumbers,” “Carry That Weight,” and “The End” then wrapped up the night.

As McCartney waved farewell to the crowd, he finished with a shout that he’d see them next time. He can’t stop, so you can probably take him at his word.