The UK is in the middle of the annual summer flurry of concerts, tours and festivals.
Some of the biggest names in the world from Pink to Guns ‘n Roses, Billy Joel and Elton John have hit the stages everywhere from Glastonbury to British Summertime Hyde Park.
Paul McCartney, however, has been focussing on promoting the new Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London.
It features extraordinary images of all four Beatles from their heyday in the band together, including some which have never been seen before.
At the launch, the icon also named the fellow artist who had changed live shows for everyone.
McCartney was looking back fondly of the days when pop stars were only expected to do a couple of numbers at a show – and at most appear on stage for half an hour.
He said: “You can’t now do an hour, we used to do a half hour. That was The Beatles thing – half an hour and we got paid for it. I tried to work out why was it so short.
“Well, because there were a lot of people on the bill, and I think when you went to a thing if you were a comedian the promoter would say ‘how long can you do? Four minutes?’ The guy would say yes, so they would do four, and so we thought, ‘well, half an hour that’s like epic’… It didn’t seem strange.”
McCartney blamed it all on one man – Bruce Springsteen. Asked if it was the US rock legend who changed the face of modern concerts, McCartney drily said: “He did…
“These days, pretty much there’s a main act and there might be a warm-up act. Then, it was a lot of people on the bill because nobody did long, now people will do three or four hours. I blame Bruce Springsteen – I’ve told him so, I said ‘It’s your fault man.'”
The two stars, of course, are great pals, with Springsteen joining the Beatles legend on stage for the final show of his Get Back Us Tour last June.
