It’s no secret that The Beatles‘ primary message over their all-too-brief decade-long run from 1960 to 1970 was all about love, but that doesn’t mean that love was always shared among the band’s four members.
In an epic, three-hour concert at Los Angeles’ Dodger Stadium on Saturday night that spanned a whopping 38 songs, Paul McCartney took a rare quiet moment to urge the 50,000-plus fans staring up at him to tell people they love them early and often. “If you’ve got something really nice that you want to say to someone, you sometimes put it off,” McCartney said onstage. “You say, ‘Oh, I’ll tell them tomorrow, or I’ll catch them next week.’ And sometimes it can be too late and you don’t get to say it.”
This led into the song “Here Today,” which McCartney wrote following the death of his Beatles mate John Lennon in 1980 and released on his 1982 solo album Tug of War. “When we were kids in Liverpool, it’s not the kind of thing you could say, in those days anyway, to a guy; you couldn’t say, ‘I love you, man,'” he lamented. “You were just trying to be too hard, you were trying to be macho and cool, so you never really got around to saying stuff like that.”
Fast-forward to the night’s six-song encore and a very (unbelievably) special guest to close out McCartney’s Freshen Up Tour: Beatles drummer Ringo Starr. When McCartney introduced his former bandmate to deafening screams across the ballpark, he didn’t hesitate to make his feelings known. “I love you, man!” McCartney shouted to Starr before the drummer sat behind the kit to run through the reprise of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” (with its appropriate show-ending lyrics) and the frenetic White Album classic “Helter Skelter.” As he exited the stage, Starr shared his own “I love you, man!” with Paul, who shot back, “I love you, man — peace and love, Ringo!”
It was the perfect display of the philosophy McCartney has embodied over his 60-year career in music — and it was just one highlight in a night of them. Below, find the best moments from the final stop of McCartney’s Freshen Up Tour.
Photo:Samir Hussein/WireImage
Story: Billboard.com