Paul McCartney Opens 2017 Tour With Return to Tokyo’s Budokan
by Best Classic Bands Staff
Paul McCartney made his first public performance of 2017 at Tokyo’s legendary Budokan on April 25. He had played the venue two years earlier and famously performed there with The Beatles in 1966, the first rock band to play at the sacred venue.
At that first performance over 50 years ago, the Fab Four played just 11 songs. In 2015, he performed 28 songs at the Budokan as part of his “Out There” tour.
On this night, at age 74, McCartney outdid himself with a career-spanning 31-song set that mixed in Beatles numbers, Wings songs, and solo favorites, and even The Quarrymen’s “In Spite of All the Danger.”
McCartney kicked off the set as he did the 2016 edition of his “One on One” tour when he revived “A Hard Day’s Night” for the first time in decades. He then rotated his repertoire with ’70s-era Wings numbers like “Jet,” “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five” and “Live and Let Die” with Beatles songs from a decade earlier like “Drive My Car,” “Yesterday,” “Blackbird” and “Hey Jude.”
Watch McCartney perform “Magical Mystery Tour”
To help promote the 50th anniversary re-release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, he performed two songs from that 1967 album.
The set also included such solo hits as “Every Night” and “Maybe I’m Amazed.” He finished with three songs from side two of Abbey Road: “Golden Slumbers,” “Carry That Weight” and “The End.” (The complete set list is below.)
Watch him perform “Maybe I’m Amazed”
McCartney also performed “I Wanna Be Your Man,” which he had previously brought out at the 2016 Desert Trip shows but hadn’t played since 1993 before that.
The encore began with “Yesterday.”
Paul McCartney April 25, 2017 Setlist at The Budokan, Tokyo, Japan
A Hard Day’s Night
Jet
Drive My Car
Junior’s Farm
Let Me Roll It
I’ve Got a Feeling
My Valentine
Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five
Maybe I’m Amazed
We Can Work it Out
Every Night
In Spite of All the Danger
Love Me Do
Blackbird
Here Today
Queenie Eye
Lady Madonna
I Wanna Be Your Man
Magical Mystery Tour
Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite!
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
McCartney waving to the crowd at the end of his performance
Back in the U.S.S.R.
Let it Be
Live and Let Die
Hey Jude
Encore
Yesterday
Hi, Hi, Hi
Golden Slumbers
Carry That Weight
The End
McCartney is touring in 2022. Tickets are available here and here.
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