On Saturday night (June 25th) Paul McCartney welcomed Bruce Springsteen and Dave Grohl onstage during his first appearance at England's Glastonbury festival in 18 years. The show, which turned out to be “Macca's” 500th with his band of the past two decades, marked Dave Grohl's first live performance since the death of Foo Fighters' drummer Taylor Hawkins back on March 25th.
Grohl joined McCartney for two songs, tackling the Beatles' 1963 Please Please Me opener “I Saw Her Standing There” and 1973's Wings classic “Band On The Run.”
Springsteen repeated his two-song set with McCartney that they played back on June 16th at New Jersey's MetLife Stadium, with “The Boss” leading the way on his 1984 favorite, “Glory Days” before duetting with McCartney on Ringo Starr's signature “Beatlemania” tune — “I Wanna Be Your Man.” Both Grohl and Springsteen came back out to trade solos on “The End” portion of the show-closing Abbey Road-medley.
Paul McCartney explained that at this stage of his career, how he's perceived as an artist is pretty much irrelevant to him or his work: “I'm not really fussed about what I am now. Y'know, 'cause I've been a lot of stuff I wanted to be. So, y'know, if I was ever trying to become a title — 'a rock and roller' — well, y'know, I don't think of myself as anything in particular. Y'know, obviously, as you get older it gets harder to be a punk. But I'm not really fussed about that, 'cause I think it'd be, like, daft to suddenly really try to be 15-years-old. So I have to accept to a degree what I am, y'know? I think of myself, basically, as a sort of rocker, who can write ballads as well.”