Paul McCartney: Beatles star hits out at Bruce Springsteen for why artists now have long concerts

Paul McCartney has blamed Bruce Springsteen for creating the trend of lengthy concerts. The Beatles musician recently appeared on Conan O’Brien’s Needs a Friend podcast, where he blamed The Boss for making it difficult to get away with performing shorter concerts.

American rockstar Springsteen, 73, is known for treating his fans to energetic and lengthy concerts. His shows average around three hours, and he once entertained crowds in Helsinki, Finland, for four hours and six  minutes.

McCartney has shared his displeasure at Springsteen for increasing concertgoers’ expectations of longer sets. The 81-year-old explained that back in the day, there were extra musicians on the lineup because nobody wanted to perform for hours. He said: “These days, pretty much there’s the main act, and there might be a warm-up act. 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.’"

He also recalled the Beatles playing much shorter sets of around 30 minutes compared with three or four hours in  modern day. “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. That was it. A Beatles show. We were on and off like that. It didn’t seem strange.”

Last year, Paul McCartney was joined on stage at Glastonbury by Springsteen as he celebrated his 80th birthday with a three-hour headline slot. The musician was spotted at this year’s festival as he joined The Pretenders onstage at the end of their set.