At 83, Paul McCartney takes Hamilton crowd through longest list of greatest hits any artist ever had

In the midriff of the jubilation at TD Coliseum in william rowan hamilton, playing the longest lean of sterling(a) hits any artist has ever had, Paul McCartney paused to talk about Blackbird.

That’s the song he wrote after being inspired by the civil rights movement in the United States in the 1960s. On Friday night, in front of a sold out crowd, he told the story of how the Beatles were asked to play a show in Jacksonville, Florida in 1964.

The promoter said the show was segregated. Black people on one side and white people on the other. The Beatles refused, McCartney recalled, saying "well that's stupid... And he must have realized there was a bit of money involved so he integrated the show. It was the first one."

McCartney led the grateful crowd on his magical history tour starting in Liverpool and their first number one hit single, From Me To You, with stops at the first song the Beatles ever recorded, Hello Little Girl and the first song they played for legendary producer Sir George Martin, Love Me Do.

He paid tribute to his Beatles bandmates, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. He played 1982's Here Today that let him say how much he loved and missed Lennon, easier than saying it in person, face-to-face. He played the ukulele Harrison gave him, to start McCartney's version of Harrison’s Something.

McCartney, 83, kept going and going through his list of hits with the Beatles, Wings and as a solo artist.

He went from Get Back to Let it Be. He performed Mull of Kintyre with help from the local 25-member Paris Port Dover Pipe Band. Live and Let Die, a classic from his Wings years, nearly set the house on fire.

“He hasn’t taken a sip of water,” said Hamilton's Mike Guyatt. He was there with his wife Mary and their friends. The tickets were a gift for their 70th birthdays from daughters Sarah, Amanda and Alyson.

"Thank you for the music and thank you for the memories," Guyatt said on his way out. "He’s a genuinely good person."

Paul McCartney sings 'Drive My Car' and 'Something' at show in Hamilton during Got Back tour

Before the show, Tim Potocic, owner of Hamilton's Sonic Unyon Records, said he had been waiting just about all his life for this moment to arise.

"I have been told by people that I'm going to have all the feels," Potocic said. "I'm going to be a grown man crying. I've prepped myself for that."

"I'm a guy that loves live music," said Potocic, the organizer behind Supercrawl, Hamilton's annual free music, arts and culture festival, now in its 15th year.

"I think it will be an earth-shattering moment for me to be in the room," he said, adding he just wanted to enjoy the experience. "I'll take a couple quick photos then put my phone away."

McCartney — with Starr, the last surviving members of The Beatles — might be the world's most famous living musician.

After two shows in Montreal, his sold-out Hamilton show — his first in the city since 2016 — is the last Canadian stop on his Got Back tour, which began in 2022 and ends in Chicago on Tuesday.

After that, who knows?

Abbie Jolly was excited McCartney is in Hamilton, even though she couldn't go — tickets were too expensive, going for between $265 and $5,000 each.

She and her son, Russell, were at the Hamilton Central Library, next door to TD Coliseum, on Friday afternoon to join a Beatles singalong before the show. She said it would be "the next best thing."

Jolly said her family is from Liverpool, McCartney's home town, and she was named after Abbey Road, the last album the Beatles ever recorded.

"Our grandparents met on Penny Lane," she said, referring to the Liverpool street made famous by the Beatles song of the same name.

Jolly said there's a deep connection between Hamilton and Liverpool, two cities that are on the water — Liverpool on the Mersey River and Hamilton on Lake Ontario — and filled with hard-working people. "A lot of heart, a lot of love in those cities," she said.

The TD Coliseum was designed to lure legends like McCartney away from bigger cities like Toronto and Vancouver.

The arena, previously known as FirstOntario Centre and Copps Coliseum, opened Friday after a $300-million facelift that took two years to complete, just in time to host the Got Back tour.

Cardi B, the Jonas Brothers and K-Pop band Twice are set to perform in the coming months. Then, in March, the arena will host The Junos, Canada's biggest night in music.

It seats 18,000 and includes box seats at floor level, a new artist lounge and new restaurants, including celebrity chef Matty Matheson's new pub-style restaurant, the Iron Cow Public House.

Hamilton celebrates before the Paul McCartney concert at TD Coliseum

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