They may have to rename it Maccabury.
Sir Paul McCartney delivered one of the most thrilling, uplifting, banger-filled, star-studded sets this 50-plus-year-old festival had ever seen, including a duet with John Lennon from beyond the grave, more pyrotechnics than a Hollywood disaster movie and a climactic guitar battle with not one but two superstars of different American rock generations: Bruce Springsteen and Dave Grohl.
On Friday night, 20-year-old Billie Eilish became the youngest person to headline Glastonbury. On Saturday, McCartney became the oldest, at 80. If it was viewed in terms of competition, it would really be no contest. When it comes to knowing exactly what an audience wants and delivering it with pinpoint perfectionism, the Oldies rule. And even amongst rock’s veterans, nobody has a more universally loved cross-generational back catalogue than McCartney, with the Beatles, Wings and solo. Famously a people pleaser, he was certainly committed to pleasing the festival faithful.
McCartney and his tightly drilled combo just kept knocking them out for three solid gold hours, one absolutely storming classic after another, sending waves of excitement up the packed hillside, and turning the biggest crowd of the 2022 Glastonbury festival into the world’s biggest choir. I mean, really, you haven’t heard a singalong until you’ve heard 200,000 voices doing the na na nas on Hey Jude.
Detractors say McCartney can’t sing like he used to. And certainly his voice has thinned over the decades, grown weaker and more fragile. Nevertheless he is still singing in the same keys and hitting all the right notes, using warrior skills to make up for any loss of youthful vigour. He roared through Wings classic Let Me Roll It, weaving in a wild lead solo. He briefly paused the show for stewards to help a man in the crowd, joking: “It wasn’t my solo was it?”
