The Santa Barbara Bowl has been known to punch above its weight. Radiohead has performed there five times, even though they could’ve played at much bigger venues in Los Angeles or San Francisco. The Foo Fighters have performed there three times, most recently in a memorable show in 2023, but that’s probably mostly thanks to guitarist Chris Shiflett being from Santa Barbara. The Bowl even had Bob Marley in for gigs in the 1970s.
But, for my money (and that’s a lot of money, as ticket prices weren’t cheap!), the prize for legendary performances at the Santa Barbara Bowl goes to Sir Paul McCartney’s epic show on Friday night. This was a warm-up, phones-free gig for McCartney’s second North American leg for his Got Back tour.
McCartney is, quite simply, one of the most talented and accomplished songwriters in history. As part of The Beatles, he and John Lennon composed much of the soundtrack of the 1960s. He continued to have great success in the 1970s and beyond with Wings and as a solo artist, with a record 32 No. 1 hits to his credit.
The 4,600 or so people lucky enough to get tickets to the Bowl show heard a healthy sampling of these No. 1 songs, plus many others which showed McCartney’s amazing breadth and depth as a songwriter and performer. It’s worth noting that this was the second visit to the Santa Barbara Bowl by a Beatle, with Ringo Starr giving a memorable performance there in 2014.
After a two hour show to open his tour, Paul McCartney waves to fans just minutes after his last song while leaving the Santa Barbara Bowl Friday night. About 5000 thrilled fans were able to buy seats through a lottery system a week ago. pic.twitter.com/iLF1gWz73J
— John Palminteri (@JohnPalminteri) September 27, 2025
McCartney’s show kicked off with “Help!”, which McCartney watchers note he had not performed since his 1990 tour. (For the record, I saw him on that tour as a college student in Ames, Iowa.) Amazingly, that song turned 60 years old this year, bringing some reflective perspective to the lyrics “When I was younger, so much younger than today…”
His early setlist roughly alternated between Beatles and post-Beatles songs, with a highlight being “Got To Get You Into My Life,” nicely enhanced by the Hot City Horns made up by Mike Davis (trumpet), Kenji Fenton (saxophone), and Paul Burton (trombone).
The rest of the lean, amazing band was Rusty Anderson (guitars), Brian Ray (guitars, bass), Paul “Wix” Wickens (keyboards, etc), Abe Laboriel Jr (drums, choreography during “Dance Again”). Throughout the evening, McCartney fluidly jumped between bass, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, piano, and even mandolin. Stunning onscreen visuals accompanied each song.
After “My Valentine,” which McCartney wrote for his wife Nancy, things landed more firmly in Beatles territory. I was pleasantly surprised to hear the gem “I’ve Just Seen a Face” from the album “Help!”, which is one of those songs which convinced the younger me that there was much more to The Beatles than just their hit songs.
McCartney introduced the next song with, “OK, so now, we’re gonna take you back in time. A long time ago. We’re gonna take you back to a little town in the north of England, called Liverpool. In that city there was four young men that formed a group, and did rather well…”
He then described getting a record contract and working with producer George Martin to record their first song. That song was “Love Me Do”, the debut U.K. single by The Beatles, which had the crowd joyfully singing along. Afterwards, McCartney said, “When we first came over here, you couldn’t hear our music for the girls screaming.”
This dutifully led to all of the girls at the Santa Barbara Bowl, young and old, screaming.
“That’s it!” said McCartney. “Imagine trying to play through that.”
As you might surmise from the above, McCartney was playful and pretty chatty with the audience.
Another example: when he took off his jacket before tackling the riff-driven “Let Me Roll It” there were loud screams of approval. He joked, “That’s the only wardrobe change of the whole evening.” That song ended with a “Purple Haze”-esque tribute to the “late, great Jimi Hendrix”, who McCartney told of seeing at a little club in London, which he described as a “magic” experience.
A mid-set highlight was “Blackbird,” which is a bit of a right-of-passage song for guitarists trying to emulate their musical heroes. This was just McCartney accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, so no vocal help from his bandmates. I expect that McCartney would be the first to admit that his 83-year-old voice has lost some of its former strength, but I’d argue that it also brought emotional vulnerability to the story of “this moment to arise.”
Next up was, for me, the emotional core of the evening: the new and final Beatles song “Now and Then.” This song reminds us that the world is missing two Beatles, John and George, plus we’re personally missing others that we have known and loved. “Now and then, I miss you / Now and then, I want you to be there for me.”
After this song, Paul simply stated, “Thank you John for writing that beautiful song.”
The horns were put to good use with the energetic next tracks “Lady Madonna” (with Paul’s magic piano showing images and designs on the front) and “Jet.” But of all songs, the one which got everyone in full-on party mode was the bouncy “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” with its sing-along chorus. “Get Back” kept the party going, and featured nice onscreen footage from the Get Back recording sessions.
The tempo then slowed but spirits soared with “Let It Be.” Afterwards, Paul told the story, “Some of you may know, in the ’60s I was going through a bit of a bad patch, and I was kind of drinking too much, smoking too much, going a bit crazy. It was fun. But I was overdoing it, and I was feeling a bit wasted. So I went to sleep and I had a dream where I saw my mother. She had died 10 years previously, but she came into the dream, and it was so beautiful — wow — seeing her again, after all that time. She seemed to know that I was kind of going through the trouble, and she said, ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry, it’s going to be alright. Just let it be.’ Thanks, mum.”
Next up was “Live and Let Die,” the theme song from the 1973 James Bond film with the same name. Having felt the heat from the pyrotechnics usually used during this song, it was a minor disappointment that the explosions were digital-only. But I’m not sure if the Santa Barbara Bowl would’ve survived the real thing, so this choice was probably for the best.
The main set closed with arguably the quintessential Beatles song “Hey Jude.” As McCartney accurately described in his wonderful 2021 book The Lyrics, “The song has since become a highlight of our live show, and the refrain has taken on a life of its own. When people ask me why I still tour, I tell them it’s because of communal moments like this.” Indeed, it was truly a magical experience to be belting out the “Na na na’s” with everyone else at the Santa Barbara Bowl!
After a few minutes of applause, the band came back onstage waving the U.S., U.K., California, and rainbow flags. The first song of the encore was “I’ve Got a Feeling,” a true Lennon-McCartney hybrid with a cool late-’60s groove. The “Everybody had a hard year” part was provided by footage of John Lennon from The Beatles’ famous rooftop concert. Afterwards, Paul remarked, “I love that one. I get to sing with John again.”
By this point, the curfew was fast approaching, but not before “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)” — “we hope you have enjoyed the show… we’re sorry but it’s time to go” — launched right into one of my personal favorites, “Helter Skelter.”
It’s hard to believe that this song was written by the same guy who wrote “Yesterday” and “Blackbird.” “Helter Skelter” was inspired by Pete Townshend claiming that The Who had recorded the “loudest, dirtiest, the rockiest thing ever,” which Paul took as a challenge. By now reclaimed from the Charles Manson association, this was McCartney rocking out with the best of them.
This brings us to the now-expected but perfect conclusion of a Paul McCartney show, namely the “Abbey Road” medley “Golden Slumbers / Carry That Weight / The End.” Notably, the Santa Barbara Bowl concert was exactly 56 years after the U.K. release of the “Abbey Road” album, which just emphasizes the timelessness of the Beatles’ music.
This medley is an epic journey from soulful lullaby to sing-along chorus to drum solo to a friendly guitar battle, ending with the couplet / epitaph “And in the end the love you take / Is equal to the love you make.” That sums it up, doesn’t it?
The Santa Barbara community was truly blessed to have had a visit from Paul McCartney, who performed a concert for the ages. Visiting bands have been known to enthuse about performing at the same venue where Bob Marley played. Methinks that many future artists will be saying the same thing about Sir Paul McCartney.
Setlist:
Help!
Coming Up
Got to Get You Into My Life
Let Me Roll It
Getting Better
Let ‘Em In
My Valentine
Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five
I’ve Just Seen a Face
Love Me Do
Dance Tonight
Blackbird
Now and Then
Lady Madonna
Jet
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
Get Back
Let It Be
Live and Let Die
Hey Jude
Encore:
I’ve Got a Feeling
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)
Helter Skelter
Golden Slumbers
Carry That Weight
The End
Jeff Moehlis is a Noozhawk contributing writer and a professor of mechanical engineering at UC Santa Barbara. Upcoming show recommendations, advice from musicians, interviews and more are available on his web site, music-illuminati.com. The opinions expressed are his own.