Paul McCartney – Nashville July 26, 2010

Paul McCartney came to Nashville in 1974 to record some and promised he would be back to actually play live…well he did although it was 36 years later. 2010 was his first Nashville concert ever. The closest the Beatles got to Nashville was in Memphis in 1966.

A year after he came to Nashville in 1974 I became a very young Beatles fan. Read everything, listened to everything that I could get my hands on, and saw what limited things I could. In the 80s I got to see some of the rooftop Let It Be concert on MTV. It was like the pictures I’d seen coming to life…it made it real…or as real as it got to me.

When the Paul McCartney concert was announced in spring of 2010… I bought tickets right away. I just knew something would happen. The concert would be postponed or something awful would happen…there was no way I was going to see him. My wife, my son Bailey, and I had tickets. Sure enough…on the night of the concert…just a couple of hours before it started… a tornado did damage in Nashville (no injuries) and a warning was out for downtown. While we were there and I just knew…so this is how it’s all going to end…me with a McCartney ticket in my hand.

Waiting at the venue…McCartney came on an hour late to wait for all the warnings to die down. When he came on I was pretty much in shock…all the years reading, watching, and listening to the guy…he wasn’t yet real until he broke into “Venus and Mars” an old Wings song. I was 43 and I felt like a 12 year old kid and I was full of emotion. When he started his first Beatles song of the night…All My Loving…it was even more emotion. This is the man who played with Lennon, Harrison, and Starr at the Cavern Club, Hamburg, and all over the world.

I always was jealous of my friends who liked modern bands…who could just go and see them in concert when we were younger and buy their new records. Most of the bands I grew up liking had broken up or changed years ago.

The concert was worth the wait.

This was Bailey’s first concert…his second was Ringo, third was Paul McCartney again, and fourth was The Who…I told him he was lucky…my first concert was REO Speedwagon…no offense to them but there is no comparison. Jennifer actually got to see Elvis for her first concert…when she was a small child in 1976 in West Virginia…

Paul played around three hours of solo, Wings, Fireman, and of course Beatles songs. With as many songs as Paul has…he could have played most of the night without repeating a song. I saw him again in 2014 and again he was great and added a few more songs… but nothing will beat that first time.

Setlist for July 26, 2010

Venus and Mars
Rock Show
Jet
All My Loving
Letting Go
Got to Get You Into My Life
Highway (The Fireman Song)
Let Me Roll It
The Long and Winding Road
Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five
Let ‘Em In
My Love
I’m Looking Through You
Tequila (The Champs cover)
Two of Us
Blackbird
Here Today
Dance Tonight
Mrs. Vanderbilt
Eleanor Rigby
Ram On
Something
Sing the Changes (The Fireman song)
Band on the Run
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
Back in the U.S.S.R.
I’ve Got a Feeling
Paperback Writer
A Day in the Life / (With Give Peace A Chance Snippet)
Let It Be
Live and Let Die
Hey Jude

Encore:
Day Tripper
Lady Madonna
Get Back

Encore 2:
Yesterday
Helter Skelter
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)
The End

Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player.

28 thoughts on “Paul McCartney – Nashville July 26, 2010”

    1. In 2010 his voice was great…in 2014 there was a little difference…maybe he had a cold…I could tell a slight difference.

      No because until Vanderbilt football stadium started to let people play there and Bridgestone arena was built…both in the 90s….Nashville didn’t have a place big enough to have a giant act….oh and the Titans stadium in the 90s.

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  6. Great setlist. And, wow, what a background story – I can only imagine what kind of suspense you went through!

    While there weren’t any weather challenges, I also will never forget my first Paul McCartney concert. It was in Dortmund, Germany in October 1989 during the tour McCartney did in the wake of the “Flowers in the Dirt” album. I was 23 years at the time.

    In fact, I just checked setlist.fm, and it was either Oct 16 or Oct 17 – honestly, I can’t remember the exact date!😀

    Linda was still around. Most folks in the audience looked old enough to have seen the actual Beatles.

    Paul and the band just sounded fantastic! Undoubtedly, the highlights were the Beatles tunes. Some folks couldn’t hold back their tears. Jeez, I’m starting to well up as I’m writing this!

    Here’s a link to the setlist, which I hope will work!

    https://www.setlist.fm/setlists/paul-mccartney-13d6bd15.html

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    1. You brought up something that is very interesting. I don’t know if it’s because of the Beatles 1 album and it spurred their popularity among the youth but here…there were a good 70 percent of the people under the age of 25-30…Bailey made that remark there….
      When we saw Ringo a couple of years later…same thing…a LOT of young people.

      I started to well up also…I just used the word emotion in the review lol.

      Your link sent me to a list of shows in 2020 and 19…is it close to my setlist? I would imagine it’s pretty different.

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  7. I tried to do this on my smartphone, but I guess it outsmarted me! 🙂

    Okay, here comes the second attempt, using old-fashioned copying and pasting…

    Westfalenhalle 1, Dortmund, Germany, October 17, 1989

    Setlist:
    • Figure of Eight
    • Jet
    • Rough Ride
    • Got to Get You Into My Life
    • Band on the Run
    • Ebony and Ivory
    • We Got Married
    • Maybe I’m Amazed
    • The Long and Winding Road
    • Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
    • Good Day Sunshine
    • Can’t Buy Me Love
    • Put It There (with “Hello, Goodbye” outro snippet)
    • Things We Said Today
    • Eleanor Rigby
    • This One
    • My Brave Face
    • Back in the U.S.S.R.
    • I Saw Her Standing There
    • Twenty Flight Rock (Eddie Cochran cover)
    • Coming Up
    • Let It Be
    • Ain’t That a Shame (Fats Domino cover)
    • Live and Let Die
    • Hey Jude

    Encore:
    • Yesterday
    • Play Video
    • Get Back
    • Golden Slumbers
    • Carry That Weight
    • The End

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    1. Yes you did get a few I didn’t…Coming Up I would have loved to hear and he played more of the Abbey Road with your show.

      Just a great show…the man could play for hours and hours and never repeat a song.

      Great list man!

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      1. You won’t be surprised if I tell you it felt the closest to a dream come true for a Beatles fan like me! And Paul’s backing musicians were dynamite, especially during the Beatles tunes, just like his current touring band.

        According to Wikipedia, except for keyboarder Paul Wickens, none of the other guys from back then still are with Paul. Apparently, Wickens joined the lineup for that 1989-1990 tour, so you’re now talking 30-plus years – that’s truly extraordinary!

        Gosh, what a thrill it must be to perform with a living music legend like Paul McCartney. Though maybe it’s not always fun. I seem to recall reading somewhere he can be pretty demanding and isn’t a happy camper when musicians make mistakes…

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      2. Christian…I couldn’t believe it when I saw him! I thought it was a dream…This concert made him real…not just someone out of a book or film! I started to imaging when I was watching him…think of the people who he has met in his life!

        He was there for the history…not just that…he MADE the history. It was mind boggling.

        Oh yea…I can imagine it’s tough working for him. He is such a great musician that he demands the same….if he was still around I’m sure George Harrison would tell a story or two.

        His current guys have been with him for a while now…love the drummer…he is a huge guy.

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  10. I bet you were about to explode watching him play. I was nearly hysterical when I got prime, fifth row seats at a Foreigner concert. I was loopy at my very first concert…you’ve seen me comment about The Police’s Synchronicity Tour. Then, there was getting to meet Def Leppard & Journey…

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    1. Yes I was…it was building up since I was 8 years old. Years and years of researching…he wasn’t real to me at that point….that made him real.
      It was like seeing Santa or Paul Bunyan.

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  11. Wow, what a set list! That must have been some concert.

    When I was in my teens, I saw Creedence Clearwater Revival and Elton John, both thanks to tickets my sister had won on a radio station! Both were thrilling, but I wasn’t nearly as excited as my sister, who was a rabid fan of them both. Probably the most excited I ever was to see a concert was Tears For Fears in 1990 and Foster the People in 2014. I was 60 years old when I saw that concert, but like you so eloquently put it, I felt like a 12 year old. Most of the attendees were 15-35, with a fair number in their 40s, but I’m certain my partner and I were the oldest ones there!

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    1. Oh my goodness! You saw Creedence. WOW. I have a bootleg video of them at the Albert Hall. They sounded really good and also very loud. Sorry…I get so excited talking to people who have seen bands like that. Elton would have been great also. I would have loved to have seen him during his 70s run.

      My neighbor saw The Who with Keith Moon in the early seventies. I have talked to him about that.

      In 2017 my son saw Foster The People and it was his first concert on his own. He loved it and actually met the band. They were up front meeting people in the lobby.

      Thank you for sharing your experiences.

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      1. Yeah, I was only 17 when I saw CCR and 20 when I saw Elton John. I finally saw Coldplay in 2016, but it was at the massive Rose Bowl stadium along with some 75,000 other people. It was a great concert, but with such a huge venue and them being fly specks hundreds of feet away, it didn’t feel all that special to me. Another fantastic show I saw was Carole King & James Taylor, in St. Louis in 2010. It was a thrill seeing those two great legends.

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      2. I’d like to ask something if you don’t mind. I’m 53 so I didn’t start going til 1982 but those early 70s concerts…how was the sound compared to now?
        That is amazing…75,000 people. I’ve never been to that big of a concert. I could see something that big being an event more than a concert. King and Taylor would have been great.
        I’ve been to around 50 in my life but because of my taste…most have been older artists.

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      3. I honestly think those earlier concerts were louder than the more recent ones I’ve seen. Perhaps I’ve lost a bit of my hearing in my old age (though it’s still really good compared to many of my contemporaries, a lot of whom are half deaf), but concerts don’t seem nearly as deafening as they did years ago. The last concert I saw was Young The Giant w/Fitz & the Tantrums and COIN at the L.A. Forum in August 2019. That was a great show too.

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      4. That is really interesting. I think it’s because the PA Systems (but not the amps as much) have improved and they run everything through it so they can control it now.

        The Forum has hosted some great concerts in it’s history. I was given tickets to an outside concert three years ago…Boston…not a concert I would normally go to but it was enjoyable.
        Thank you again for answering that question. Anything in that era and you have my attention.

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    1. I know… her mother wanted to be sure she was there. I’m glad she got to go. Jen said he was wearing a white jumpsuit…I looked up and found the exact day.
      Bailey is lucky…REO doesn’t compare to Paul!

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