Paul McCartney has shared his experiences of seeing Bob Dylan live on stage.
Speaking about this during an interview with The Rest Is Entertainment, McCartney has said that while he remains a huge fan of the singer, he felt he “couldn’t tell what song he was doing”.
In this interview, McCartney spoke about what he admires about Dylan, like his ability to do what feels right for him, regardless of what people might think of it, especially when it comes to omitting some of his biggest hits from a live set.
On why he feels he needs to play his biggest hits at each show, Paul McCartney said: “I think we could do songs [most people] don’t know and have a lot of ‘black holes’… But they’ve paid a lot of money".
He continued: “I remember as a kid, I used to go to shows and save up. I went to a Bill Haley concert […] I’d saved for months and done a paper round and done everything. And I knew what I wanted: I wanted him to do his hits. And if he got all clever on me, I would be like, ‘oh, OK.’ I’d let him indulge himself".
Elsewhere, Paul McCartney detailed how his approach is different from what he has seen of Dylan.
“In fact, talking about Mr Dylan, I’ve been to see a couple of Bob’s shows, and honestly, I couldn’t tell what song he was doing. Now, that’s a bit much, because I know his stuff", he said.
He went on to add that while he understands if Dylan “doesn’t want to do ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ – maybe he’s fed up with it”, from a fan’s perspective, “I would like to hear it. And I paid!”.
Paul McCartney went on to say that playing the biggest hits can be a great way of uniting the audience, especially issues like political divide.
“Particularly these days – you do something like ‘Hey Jude’ and you see the whole audience singing together,” he explained. “In Trump’s America, where Republicans and Democrats are at each other’s throats – when we do that song, they’re not. They’re all loving it", he said.
“It’s like, wow. Suddenly, this room has forgotten all of that. We’re not going to argue; we’re just going to sing together. Those kinds of things, I think, are valuable".
Last month, Bob Dyland added a dozen dates to this ongoing World Tour. Find out more on this here.
Last week, Paul McCartney spoke about how his recent duet with Beatles bandmate, Ringo Starr, Home To Us came about. The track features on McCartney's upcoming album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, which arrives later this month (May 29). More on this from Nova here.
