Beatles legend Paul McCartney is in his early 80s he is he is still able to play marathon three-hour concerts. He still hops on stage every show.
In a recent interview with Conan O’Brien the former Beatle revealed the reason.
He said the reason is that people have come to expect long shows, something that wasn’t always the case.
And it’s all Bruce Springsteen’s fault.
“These days, pretty much there’s main act and there might be a warm-up act,” McCartney said, per the Daily Mail. “Then [the 1960s], it was a lot of people on the bill because nobody did long, now people will do three or four hours.
“I blame Bruce Springsteen – I’ve told him so; I said, ‘It’s your fault man.’”
That makes sense. Think Woodstock. Which musicians from the area didn’t perform there? It seems like they let anyone with a guitar onstage, and that was doable because everyone played short sets.
“He did,” McCartney said when asked if Springsteen set the trend for everyone, “You can’t now do an hour, we used to do a half hour. That was The Beatles thing – half an hour and we got paid for it.”
“I tried to work out why was it so short. Well, because there were a lot of people on the bill, and I think when you went to a thing 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 like epic,” he said. “It didn’t seem strange.”
