Paul McCartney Behind His Recent Club Gig

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Paul McCartney at Pappy & Harriet’s, Pioneertown, CA on October 13, 2016 (Photo via his Facebook page)

You might recall that Paul McCartney recently thrilled a group of 300 lucky fans when he booked a performance at the tiny Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace in Pioneertown, Calif., between his two October Desert Trip gigs.

In a new entry in the blog on his website, Macca explains how the show came about. We’ll let him take it from here…

“Midweek, we decided we’d just do a crazy pop-up thing, at this biker’s roadhouse in Pioneertown, which is near the Joshua Tree National Park. We actually arrived in the area a bit early, so we could go to the National Park. We all went, got out the car, had our photos taken with the Joshua Trees and even though we didn’t stay long, it was nice, it was sunset. It was great and we had a band photo taken. And then we sort of hopped off and then went to Pappy and Harriet’s, which is this biker roadhouse. A great little gig. It was pretty magical because there was a little barn, where we got to rehearse in. But all our gear was at the little gig, so we didn’t have any equipment. We just had to rehearse acoustically! So you know, when it was time for the guitar solo of ‘Junior’s Farm,’ like, ‘Take me down, Junior!’ we all had to go really quiet, so you could hear Rusty.

“It was great though. Somebody, a reviewer, I think, was with some kids who couldn’t get in, and they actually really enjoyed this little rehearsal – they could hear it! And they had to have listened hard, because we had to play so quietly! But it was fun when the solo came around, we all just went to like zero volume almost. That was a good thing, it set us up. Then we did the gig, which was just hot and sweaty.

“And we’d invited David Hockney, a great English painter. He came and I said, ‘David, I hope you’re gonna sketch this!’ He said, ‘Oh, I haven’t got anything with me.’ And I said, ‘Well, what about your iPad?’ He’s really good on the iPad, he paints on it. And he said, ‘Oh, I haven’t…’ And then somebody said, ‘Your iPhone!’ So he did. He sketched on his iPhone. I haven’t seen any results yet, but he loved the gig, apparently. He sent us a note saying that that he loved it. It was a very special little show.”

McCartney has posted a “behind-the-scenes” video about the Pioneertown performance, which you can watch here.