Sept 15, 2017: McCartney Welcomes Guest at MSG: Springsteen

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Bruce Springsteen joins Paul McCartney at Madison Square Garden on Sept. 15, 2017 (Photo from McCartney’s Twitter page)

The audience at Madison Square Garden on September 15, 2017, went completely nuts when, midway into his encores, Paul McCartney asked a couple of “friends of ours to come up and rock with us tonight.” Those friends were Bruce Springsteen and Little Steven Van Zandt, who strapped on guitars and helped McCartney and his band on a fired-up “I Saw Her Standing There.”

They were all having so much fun up there—Springsteen was beaming throughout—that they then played the song all the way through a second time! Watch them below.

The appearance by the New Jersey visitors was an obvious highlight of a 40-song set that, otherwise, contained no real surprises but plenty of peaks. As he’d been doing throughout his One on One tour, McCartney began the MSG show with “A Hard Day’s Night” and then ran through a cross-section of Beatles material, Wings and solo songs.

With the landmark Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band receiving renewed attention on its 50th anniversary, celebrated with a massive 2017 boxed set crammed with alternate takes and more, the former Beatle performed “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite,” the reprise of the title song and “A Day in the Life.”

The Beatles’ catalog was well represented, from early rockers like “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “Love Me Do” and “All My Loving” through favorites like “Blackbird,” “Eleanor Rigby,” “I Wanna Be Your Man,” “Lady Madonna,” “I’ve Just Seen a Face” and “You Won’t See Me,” and of course “Yesterday,” “Let It Be,” “Hey Jude,” “And I Love Her,” “Helter Skelter” and the Abbey Road-closing medley, which ended the show (as it has for years now).

Watch McCartney play two career favorites

McCartney also performed “In Spite of All the Danger,” which he co-wrote with George Harrison in 1958, and included his usual tribute to Harrison, “Something,” as well as “Here Today,” a song he wrote about missing John Lennon.

Watch “In Spite of All the Danger”

Wings and solo songs performed included the usual “Band on the Run,” “Maybe I’m Amazed” and “Live and Let Die,” with its attendant pyrotechnics display. See the full set list below.

McCartney returned to the Garden the next night, then Brooklyn, Long Island and Detroit, before moving on to South America, Mexico and, in December, Australia and New Zealand.

Watch the first take on “I Saw Her Standing There” with Springsteen and Van Zandt

And the second take…

Paul McCartney Madison Square Garden, NYC, Sept. 15, 2017, Setlist
A Hard Day’s Night
Junior’s Farm
Can’t Buy Me Love
Jet
All My Loving
Let Me Roll It
I’ve Got a Feeling
My Valentine
Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five
Maybe I’m Amazed
I’ve Just Seen a Face
In Spite of All the Danger
You Won’t See Me
Love Me Do
And I Love Her
Blackbird
Here Today
Queenie Eye
New
Lady Madonna
FourFiveSeconds
Eleanor Rigby
I Wanna Be Your Man
Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!
Something
A Day in the Life
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
Band on the Run
Back in the U.S.S.R.
Let It Be
Live and Let Die
Hey Jude

Encores
Yesterday
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)
Helter Skelter
I Saw Her Standing There
(with Bruce Springsteen and Steven Van Zandt)
I Saw Her Standing There (reprise)
(with Bruce Springsteen and Steven Van Zandt)
Golden Slumbers
Carry That Weight
The End

Related: It happened again in 2022!

McCartney has announced new dates for his “Got Back” tour. Tickets available here and here.

Tickets to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street band are available here and on StubHub.