Paul McCartney is to play his first UK gigs in a decade during April – and promises the biggest show of BEATLES songs ever seen in the UK.
Paul McCartney will open his seven date tour in Sheffield on April 5, rounding up with two shows in London on April 18 and 19. The tour will be his first in Britain since the New World Tour of 1993.
The ‘Back In The World’ tour follows his bank busting ‘Driving Rain’ jaunt around the US, Canada, Mexico and Japan last year. The dates in the US alone sucked in a whopping $52.8million (£33.9million). Playing Beatles songs not heard by their co-writer in decades, it was dubbed the “the greatest hits show on Earth”.
“I had a lot of fun touring this show around America last year, but now I’m bringing it on home and that’s special to me as I always look forward to playing to a home crowd,” Paul McCartney said this morning (February 18). “I think people are going to like this gig – when I was thinking of what songs to play I just imagined myself as one of the audience and thought ‘What would I like to hear him play?’
“So that means we’ll be playing some of my Beatles stuff – rather a lot of Beatlesstuff, actually – some Wings stuff and some more recent stuff; so basically the show pretty much spans my whole career. And I’m really getting off on playing it all with my new band.”
On March 17, [/a] will also release a new album and DVD to coincide with the tour – a 37-song live album of the show, titled ‘Back In The World’, and ‘Back In The US’ – a three-hour DVD filmed inside the tour during its recent run across America.
‘Back In The World’ will feature ‘She’s Leaving Home’, ‘Michelle’, ‘All My Loving’, ‘Back In The USSR’, ‘Band On The Run’, ‘Blackbird’, ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’, ‘Eleanor Rigby’, ‘Hello Goodbye’, and ‘Hey Jude’ amongst others.
[a]Paul McCartney will kick off with some European dates in March before travelling to the UK.
The dates in full are:
Paris (March 25)
Barcelona
(28)
Antwerp, (April 1)
Sheffield Hallam Arena, (April 5, 6)
Manchester, MEN Arena, (9)
Birmingham NIA (13, 14)
London Earls Court (18, 19)
Arnhem (25)
Cologne (27, 28)
Hanover (30)
Copenhagen (May 2)
Stockholm (4)
Vienna (14)
Hamburg (21)
Dublin (27)
Tickets – priced £35 and £45 – will go on sale on Friday (February 21).
To buy, [url=]click here or call the NME Ticketline on 0870 1 663 663.