November 13, 2005 18:30

McCartney: The Final Frontier!

Beatle plays the first ever rock show in outer space

Photo Gallery: Paul McCartney
Photo: Pa Photos

Paul McCartney has successfully become the first musician to broadcast live music into space.

As reported earlier this week, McCartney agreed to play a show in California wherein two songs, The Beatles’ ‘Good Day Sunshine’ and new solo track ‘English Tea’ would be broadcast 354km above Earth to US astronaut Bill McArthur and his Russian crew-mate Valery Tokarev.

This became reality last night (November 12) at the close of McCartney’s show in Anaheim, which was broadcast to wake up the two explorers for their 44th day in space.

The former Beatle said from the stage: “I can’t believe that we’re actually broadcasting into space! This is sensational. I love it.”

McArthur responded with a couple of zero-gravity flips, and thanked McCartney, saying: “That was simply magnificent. We consider you an explorer just as we are.”

McCartney agreed to the broadcast after learning that ‘Good Day Sunshine’ was regularly used by NASA to wake up astronauts.

He said: “I was extremely proud to find out that one of my songs was used for the crew of Discovery this summer. In our concert we hope to repay the favour.”