Paul McCartney recently appeared on the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast, where he spoke about the length expected for massive acts now at shows — and blames Bruce Springsteen for setting this standard.
“You were on package bills,” McCartney said. “These days, pretty much there’s a main act and there might be a warm-up act. But then, it was a lot of people on the bill because nobody did long [sets]. Now people will do three, four hours. I blame Bruce Springsteen. I’ve told him so. I said, ‘It’s your fault, man!’”
Springsteen’s concerts typically run for anywhere from three to four hours. Other acts, including Taylor Swift on The Eras Tour, are following his lead. For contrast, McCartney pointed out that not only can you not do an hour anymore, but The Beatles used to get paid for thirty-minute sets.
“I tried to work out, why was it so short?” he adds, giving some backstory. “Well, because there were a lot of people on the bill. I think, if you were a comedian, the promoter would say, ‘How long can you do? Four minutes?’ The guy would say yes, so they would do four, and so we thought, ‘Well, half an hour — that’s epic.’ That was it. A big Beatles show, we were on and off like that. It didn’t seem strange.”
Check out Paul McCartney’s full episode here.