All The Photos Of Paul McCartney Performing At Bonnaroo You Could Ever Want

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

"We're about to see a goddamned Beatle." You couldn't walk five feet without hearing at least one person utter that glowing refrain during night two of Bonnaroo around the What Stage (not that you could walk five feet; by nightfall, the 16-acre Manchester, Tennessee, farm was packed to the silo with 70,000 people). Paul McCartney was about to take the stage, and yes, he was a goddamned Beatle, as well as a goddamn Wing and goddamn one of the greatest rock 'n' roll songwriters of all-time. The man wrote "I've Just Seen a Face," for goddamn sake.

And then we saw him, Mecca, looking a bit looser than in his Beatle days, but still youthful, forever The Cute One. For two and a half hours, he played classic after classic, everything from pumped versions of "Eight Days of Week," "Helter Skelter," and "All My Loving" to pyrotechnic power ballad "Live and Let Die" to loving tributes to George and John with "Something" and "Here Today" to the delicate "Yesterday" and "Blackbird," where part of the stage he stood on rose 30 feet in the air, giving the people a half-mile away a sight line to him and his acoustic guitar.