Paul McCartney “blames Bruce Springsteen” for long gigs
nme.comPaul McCartney has said that he “blames” Bruce Springsteen for increasingly long stage times.The 81-year-old former Beatle was speaking during an episode of Conan O’Brien’s ‘Needs A Friend’ podcast when he reflected on the increasingly extensive sets that artists are expected to play — and said that Springsteen was to blame.According to the bassist, songwriter and singer, it was The Boss who began the trend of performing mammoth sets that go on for hours, which made it impossible to get away with shorter sets.
He also explained that The Beatles would often only play for 30 minutes during their ’60s heyday, and this was never an issue with fans.“These days, pretty much there’s the main act and there might be a warm-up act,” he began. “Then [in 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.“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.”He continued, trying to explain why it was normal to play a shorter set in the past, and explaining that it was largely due to the number of other acts that would perform during the show.“I tried to work out why was it so short.
Read more on nme.com
