I was just getting out of a New York Film Festival screening for Monday Morning Matinee when I got a few texts and social media posts that were telling me Paul McCartney tweeted that he was playing in Times Square at 1 p.m. It was 12:55. Luckily, I was at Lincoln Center, only 20 blocks from Times Square, and immediately hailed a cab and made my way down to everyone’s favorite tourist trap.
I got there and the crowd was actually not as full as you would have expected, with some people confused about the whole thing, not sure to truly believing that Sir Paul McCartney would be playing for free in Times Square. There was a giant truck that was also a stage, and it certainly looked like it was actually going down. Enough people were at least interested in checking it out, and slowly but surely it got very crowded, very fast.
A few cabs drove up to the stage and just from the crazed reaction of the people closest to the taxi’s, you knew he had arrived. He came on stage and sure enough, I’m looking at freaking Paul McCartney in the flesh. Pretty surreal, to say the least.
He launched into “New” the new single and title of his new album. Boy, did he sound great. He told the crowd he only had 15-minutes to play, and he played all new songs of the album. The titles were “Save Us”, “Everybody Out There”, and “Queenie Eye.” They all sounded great.
It was a short set, but it was still cool to see Paul in such a random setting with such a surprised appreciative crowd. I can now check off seeing A Beatle/Paul McCartney live, and hope to see a proper show soon.
Find some photos of his performance below.
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