For the E Street Band’s second-ever show in the Beatles’ birthplace, McCartney joins the band for “Can’t Buy Me Love” and “Kansas City”
Bruce Springsteen is performing his first-ever shows in Liverpool, England — the birthplace of the Beatles — this week, so naturally Paul McCartney came out to join the E Street Band for a couple of songs Saturday.
Wednesday marked Springsteen’s first concert in Liverpool, and it was a Beatle-less affair. Saturday brought the Boss back to the city’s Anfield stadium, and it was a pretty routine E Street show again until the encore, when Springsteen and company welcomed out McCartney:
“Thank you Liverpool. You’re lucky tonight, we have a young man, a local young man from Liverpool, he’s gonna play with us tonight, I think he has a lot of talent, and I believe he’s gonna be going places,” Springsteen quipped in his introduction. “So let’s bring out Paul McCartney.”
McCartney first led the band on a rendition of the Fab Four classic “Can’t Buy Me Love” — Springsteen and the E Street Band’s first time performing that song live — followed by a rendition of Little Willie Littlefield’s “Kansas City” that was popularized by Little Richard and then the Beatles on Beatles for Sale.
The two rock legends have shared the stage together on a handful of occasions over the past dozen-plus years: At London’s Hyde Park in July 2012, and again at New York’s Madison Square Garden in September 2017 (both times they played “I Saw Her Standing There”).
They also performed together during McCartney’s East Rutherford, New Jersey gig in June 2022 (playing the Beatles’ “I Wanna Be Your Man” and Springsteen’s own “Glory Days”) and, most recently, a week later during McCartney’s headlining set at Glastonbury.
Mirroring the Beatles’ own sojourn from Liverpool to Germany, Springsteen and the E Street Band’s European tour next heads to Berlin on June 11. McCartney, who played a residency at New York’s tiny Bowery Ballroom back in February, has no tour dates presently on his 2025 calendar.
