Flashback: Neil Young and Paul McCartney Play ‘A Day in the Life’
When Neil Young and Paul McCartney perform at the second night of the mega classic rock concert in Indio, California this October odds are pretty high they’ll perform a song or two together. They’ve been friends for decades and have shared the stage many times, including the 2004 Bridge School Benefit when they played “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” and “Hey Jude.”
“The first song I learned to play was a Beatles song – ‘Give Me Money, That’s What I Want,’” Young said when he inducted McCartney in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999. “Paul McCartney is one of the greatest songwriters ever. He’ll be remembered hundreds of years from now.”
Neil Young played “A Day in the Life” every night on the public address system before he took the stage on the 1978 Rust Never Sleeps tour, but he never actually sang the 1967 Beatles classic until he came to Europe in the summer of 2008.
A thrashed-out rendition closed out nearly every show for the next year, and when the tour finally ended with a show in London’s Hyde Park on June 27th, 2009, McCartney himself ran onto the stage to sing his original lines from the song. He then stuck around for about four insane minutes of feedback and noise.
It went much better than a Bruce Springsteen show three years later at the same venue in which McCartney came out for an encore of “I Saw Her Standing There,” but authorities pulled the plug when they went past curfew.
Check out a video of Young and McCartney playing “A Day in the Life” below. It might be a little preview of what’s to come in October.
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